APPENDIX. 



269 



indulgence only granted as a reward for good behaviour. He has the strongest feelings of 

 humanity towards the brute creation of any man I ever saw, particularly towards horses and dogs ; 

 and he told us several instances in which he had drawn himself into little difficulties by defending 

 them against the cruelty of their owners. His amiable and affectionate mind displayed itself in a 

 most interesting light, when he spoke in tears of his wife, then in a very poor state of health, and 

 of the talents of his late brother John, who was also a genius in engraving, but who died many 

 years ago [1795]. He repeatedly said that, had he lived, he would have attained to greater emi- 

 nence hr the art than himself. When they both began their career, it was almost lost and totally 

 neglected ; but he has brought it to its present high pitch of perfection, and many of the most 

 celebrated wood engravers of the present day have been his pupils. He told me the way by 

 which he attained, step by step, his present knowledge, and illustrated it by specimens of the 

 blocks. He also invented all his own tools, and directed the printers, upon whom much depends, 

 how to strike off the impressions properly. He also gave me his opinion, in answer to my queries, 

 of the old method of cross-hatching, a style not now used, and, he says, useless, as every effect may 

 be produced by engraving in parallel lines, thicker or thinner, at greater or less distances from 

 each other, and in the lighter parts, by a little sinking of the surface of the block. The latter was 

 one of his own inventions, and by it a judicious pressman can produce every gradation of shade 

 from black to nearly white. Bewick thinks the old engravers produced the cross-hatching either 

 by covering the block or metal plate with wax, through which the lines were cut, and an acid then 

 applied to eat into the surface of the plate ; or by the use of cross or double blocks, requiring two 

 impressions to produce a single figure. This latter plan he thought would succeed; and he gave 

 me (with many others) the tail-piece here inserted,* of a traveller in a storm, done in this way, in 

 imitation of cross-hatching. A person acquainted only with the common method would be at a 

 loss to conceive how the singular union of the opposite styles of engraving on copper and wood 

 could be exhibted in the same design. The black diagonal lines, particularly those on the fore- 

 ground, constitute its great curiosity as a wood engraving ; in addition to which the absolute life 

 he has given to the figures, and the circumstance of its not appearing in his published works, 

 render it highly valuable. In many of his tail-pieces he has given numerous imitations of etching 

 and cross-hatching ; but these are all worked in the usual manner, the surface of the wood being 

 picked out with infinite labour and surprising skill from between the lines. He seldom engraves 

 from any other copy than nature, having the bird or other subject before him, and sketching it 

 with a black-lead pencil on the surface of the block ; his foregrounds, landscapes, and light foliage 

 of trees, &c, are first traced with the tool, without being even previously pencilled out. It is 

 curious to observe his economy of box-wood, which is dear and difficult to be procured. He has 

 it sawn in the round to the thickness of the letter-types, and made very smooth on the surface : 

 the pieces being circular, he divides them according to his designs, so as to lose little or none ; 

 and should there be a flaw or decayed spot, he contrives to bring that into a part of the drawing 

 that is to be left white, and so cut out. We asked him as to the durability of the blocks ; he said 

 they incalculably outlast engravings on copper, which wear very much in cleaning for every 

 impression with chalk. But editions of wood blocks must be very remote indeed before they show 



* The cut inserted in the MS. is the Man riding amidst Rain, mentioned in our page 242, and printed on 

 page 5, vol. i., of the last edition of the " British Birds " (1847). 



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