MEMOIR OP THOMAS BEWICK. 
23 
air, and for indulgence in his accustomed rural habits. 
On his return to the North, he spent a short time in 
Scotland, and afterwards became his old master’s 
partner, while John, his brother, was taken as their 
joint-apprentice. 
About this time, Mr Thomas Saint, the printer 
of the Newcastle Courant, projected an edition of 
Gay’s Fables, and the Bewicks were engaged to 
furnish the cuts. One of these, “ The Old Hound,” 
obtained the premium of the Society of Arts, for the 
best specimen of wood-engraving, in 1775. An 
impression of this may be seen in the Memoir pre- 
fixed to “Select Fables,” printed for Charnley, New- 
castle, in 1820; from which many notices in the 
present Memoir are taken. Mr Saint, in 1776, 
published also a work entitled, Select Fables, with 
an indifferent set of cuts, probably by some inferior 
artist ; but in 1779 came out a new edition of Gay, 
and, in 1784, of the Select Fables, with an entire 
new set of cuts, by the Bewicks. 
It has been already said, that Thomas Bewick, 
from his earliest youth, was a close observer and ac- 
curate delineator of the forms and habits of animals ; 
and, during his apprenticeship, and indeed through- 
out his whole life, he neglected no opportunity of 
visiting and drawing such foreign animals as were 
