36 
MEMOIR Of THOMAS BEWICK. 
preceptor; and some are carrying the art to a stage 
of advancement, at which he himself had the candour 
to acknowledge, on the inspection of Northcote’s 
Fables, he had never conceived that it would arrive. 
It is almost needless to mention the names of Nes- 
bit and Harvey. Others were cut off by death, or 
still more lamentable circumstances, who would 
otherwise have done great credit to their master ; as 
Johnson, whose premature death occurred in Scot- 
land, while copying some of the pictures of Lord 
Breadalbane, Clennel, Hanson — Hole, whose exqui- 
site vignette in the title-page of Mr Shepherd’s 
Poggio gave the highest promise, was stopped in a 
more agreeable way, by succeeding to a handsome 
fortune. 
The last project of Mr Bewick was, to improve 
at once the taste and morals of the lower classes, 
particularly in the country, by a series of blocks on 
a large scale, to supersede the wretched, sometimes 
immoral, daubs with which the walls of cottages are 
too frequently clothed. A cut of an Old Horse, in- 
tended to head an Address on Cruelty to that noble 
animal, was his last production : the proof of it was 
brought to him from the press only three days before 
he died. 
It may be observed, that, in the works of the early 
