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IN A FEW DAYS WILL BE PUBLISHED,

In 3 vols. post 8vo,

BROTHER JONATHAN:

OR,

THE NEW-ENGLANDERS.

PRINTED FOR WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, EDINBURGH; AND T. CADELL, STRAND, LONDON.

T

Want of Room obliges us to omit our usual Lists of Works Published and Preparing, &c.

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WHEN reputations have been gained, still it often happens that few are really acquainted with the grounds on which they rest. Most people have heard of the name of Bewick. Yet inquire of the many upon what foundation the fame of this name is built, and, nine times out of ten, the answer shall be, "upon the excellence of his wood engravings." Even so. Ask what sort of excellence, and, upon the second interrogatory, the catechumen is at a nonplus. We shall be excused if we devote a few pages to the genius and works of Bewick.

Thomas Bewick was born in the year 1753, at Cherryburn, in the parish, and near the village, of Ovingham, one of the few aces in Northumberland which can boast of having given birth to a man of pre-eminent talent. He was educated, together with his younger brother John, at Ovingham school, then conducted by the Reverend Christopher Gregson. At the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to the late Mr Ralph Beilby, engraver at Newcastleupon-Tyne. At this time, it is said, he rarely omitted a Sunday's visit to his father at Cherryburn, a distance of about fourteen miles. Sometimes, on his arrival, he would find the river Tyne too deep to be forded. On such occasions he would shout his inquiries across the water, and contentedly return home. He seems to have early turned his attention to that peculiar branch of his art for which he has since become so celebrated. In 1775, he obtained a premium from the Society of Arts for his wood engraving of the" Old Hound." The position of the huntsman's house in this little cut

VOL. XVIII.

betrays some faint traces of his genius. This success probably incited him to the more eager prosecution of this species of engraving. The result was, that the first edition of the History of Quadrupeds was published by Mr Beilby and himself, for they had now become partners, in the year 1790. This was the spring of his reputation. In 1795, Mr William Bulmer, the well-known printer, published the Traveller and Deserted Village of Goldsmith, and the Hermit of Parnell, with woodcuts by Thomas and John Bewick.The beauty and novelty of the engravings strongly attracted public attention. Many, indeed, were at first sceptical as to the possibility of such effects being produced from wood. Amongst the incredulous was said to have been his late Majesty, who was only convinced of the truth by actual inspection of the blocks. In 1796, the Chace of Somerville was published in a similar manner; and, in the same year, Mr Bewick lost his younger brother and coadjutor John, who died of consumption. He was now rapidly rising to celebrity; and in the year 1797 was published the first volume of his History of British Birds, containing the Land Birds. This, perhaps, is the best of his works. There is a little anecdote connected with this publication. In one of the tail-pieces, Bewick's strong delight in satirical humour led him a little too far across the debateable land of decorum. Unconvinced, however, and inconvincible did he remain, until a considerable number of impressions had got into circulation. He was then compelled to have the offending part in the remainder of the

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edition daubed over with Indian ink. In the second edition the block is altered.

The second volume of British Birds, consisting of the Water Birds, was not published until 1804. Lastly, in 1818 were published Select Fables of Æsop and others, collected and embellished by Thomas Bewick. It may be interesting to some to know, that the tail-piece at p. 162 of the first edition of this work bears the date of his mother's death; and that at p. 176 of his father's. The final tail-piece is a view of Ovingham churchyard, in which is the family burying-place.— Such is the brief outline of the life and principal works of Bewick. The external history of genius is in general easily told.

That Thomas Bewick has been the great improver of the art of wood-engraving, it is needless to say. He may indeed be called the father of the art ; and his fame has, more than anything else, been the cause of the attention which has ever since been paid to this species of engraving. It cannot be doubted, however, that, in the mere mechanical excellence of his craft -in fineness of line-in sharpness and in smoothness, he has been outdone by some of his pupils. Bewick's excellence is not of the mechanical sort. He will esteem this no left-handed compliment. His fame does not rest upon this. It is his graphic tact-the truth of his conception and delineation of nature, that will carry him down to posterity. He is in reality, in essence, as one may say, A PAINTER; and his fame rests upon a foundation similar to that of other painters. It is true he uses the graver, not the pencil. It is true he has limited his range of subject. But the great-the captivating excellence of Bewick is, nevertheless, pictorial. He is great as an admirer and faithful exhibitor of nature; not as a cutter of fine lines, and a copyist of the designs of others.

Of Bewick's powers, the most extraordinary is the perfect and undeviating accuracy with which he seizes and transfers to paper the natural objects which it is his delight to draw. His landscapes are absolute fac-similes; his animals are whole-length portraits. Other books on natural history have fine engravings, they are coloured or uncoloured; copper or wood, but still, to use a common exression, they "are all tarred with one ick." Neither beast nor bird in them

has any character-like a servant who has never been at place-not even a bad one. Dog and deer, lark and sparrow, have all airs and countenances marvellously insipid, and of a most flat similitude. A flock of dandies would not have a more unintellectual likeness to each other, a more deplorable proximity of negation. They are not only all like each other, but not one of them like anything worth looking at. A collection of family portraits, all "tenth transmitters of foolish faces." This is no joke. You may buy dear books or cheap books, but if you want to know what a bird or quadruped is, to Bewick you must go at last. Study Bewick, and you know a British bird as you know a man, by his physiognomy. You become acquainted with him as you do with Mr Tims, to whom you were introduced last Wednesday. You can make him out even at a distance, as sailors say, by" the cut of his jib." There is no need, as in other cases, of counting primaries and secondaries, or taking an inventory of his tail before you can identify him. You may admire him, as a novel heroine sometimes admires the hero, altogether for his je ne sçuis quoi-and this is the very quintessence of refinement in bird-fancying.

It needs only to glance at the works of Bewick, to convince ourselves with what wonderful felicity the very countenance and air of his hals are marked and distinguished. There is the grave owl; the silly wavering lapwing; the pert jay; the impudent over-fed sparrow; the airy lark; the sleepy-headed gourmand duck; the restless titmouse; the insignificant wren; the clean harmless gull; the keen rapacious kite-every one has character. There are no " muffin faces." This is far beyond the mere pencilling of fur or feathers. It is the seizure and transfusion of countenance. In this, Bewick's skill seems unapproached and unapproachable by any other artist who has ever attempted this line. Were he to take the portraits of our friend James Hogg's present flock of sheep, we, Christopher North, would bet a thousand guineas that the shepherd should point out every individual bleater by his "visnomy," and this is something. Sir Thomas Lawrence could do no more for the Royal Yacht Club, and the Congress of Verona.

Bewick's vignettes are just as re

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markable. Take his British Birds, and in the tail-pieces to these two volumes you shall find the most touching presentations of nature in all her forms, animate and inanimate. There are the poachers tracking a hare in the snow; and the urchins who have accomplished the creation of a "snow man." In the humorous, there are the disappointed beggar leaving the gate open for the pigs and poultry to march over the good dame's linen which she is laying out to dry—or, what a methodist would call profane, the cat stealing the blind man's dinner whilst he is devoutly saying grace-or the thief who sees devils in every bush and stump of a tree-a sketch that Hogarth himself might envy: Then, in another strain, there is the strayed infant standing at the horses' heels, and pulling its tail, the mother in an agony flying over the stile-the sportsman who has slipped into the torrent; and the blind man and boy unconscious of "Keep on this side." In the satiric there is that best of burlesques upon military pomp, the four urchins astride of gravestones for horses, the first blowing a glass trumpet, and the others bedizened in tatters, with rushcaps and wooden swords.

Nor must we pass over his sea-side sketches all inimitable. The cutter chasing the smuggler-is it not evident they are going at least ten knots an hour? The tired gulls sitting on the waves,every curled head of which seems big with mischief. What pruning of plumage, what stalkings and flappings and scratchings of the sand, are not depicted in that collection of sea-birds on the shore! What desolation is there in that sketch of coast after a storm, with the solitary rock, the ebb tide, the crab just venturing out, and the mast of the sunken vessel standing up through the treacherous waters! What truth and minute nature is in that tide coming in, each wave rolling higher than his predecessor, like a line of conquerors, and pouring in amidst the rocks with increasing aggression! And last and best, there are his fishing scenes. What angler's heart but beats when he sees the pool-fisher deep in the water, his rod bending almost double with the rush of some tremendous trout or heavy salmon? Who does not recognize his boyish days in the fellow with the "set rods," sheltering himself from the soaking rain behind an old tree? What fisher has not seen yon "old

codger" sitting by the river side, peering over his tackle, and putting on a brandling? It is needless to recapitulate. Bewick's landscapes, in short, are upon the same principle with his animals. They are, for the most part, portraits. They are the result of the keenest and most accurate observation. You perceive every stone and bunch of grass has had actual existence. His moors are north-country moors, neither Scotch nor English. They are the progeny of Cheviot, of Rumpside, of Simondside, and of the Carter. The tail-piece of the old man, pointing out to his boy an ancient monumental stone, reminds one of the Milfield Plain and Flodden Field. Having only delineated that in which he himself has taken delight, we may deduce his character from his pictures. His hearted love of his native county, its scenery, its manners, its airs, its men and women; his propensity

"by himself to wander Adown some trotting burn's meander, An' no think lang;" his intense observation of nature and human life; his satirical and somewhat coarse humour; his fondness for maxims and old saws; his vein of worldly prudence now and then "cropping out," as miners call it, into daylight; his passion for the sea-side, and his delight in the angler's "solitary trade." All this, and more, the ad mirer of Bewick may deduce from his sketches.

We have sometimes almost wished that Bewick had been a painter. This is perhaps selfish-perhaps silly; yet we own we have often felt the wish. He would, undoubtedly, have made an admirable landscape-painter. We may be told, it is true, that tail-pieces do not require the filling up of larger pictures. But what landscape-painter of them all has materials for filling up better than Bewick? Had Bewick been a painter, one thing is certainthat he would not have been of the modern school; he would have been shy of the new-fangled academies ; he would have painted, as one may say, by experiment rather than syllogism, and attempted to pourtray things as they are, not as they ought to be; he would have been content with actual Nature, and not tried to dress her up or refine her in some impossible metaphysical crucible. "Not to speak it profanely," Bewick is no man to attempt to improve upon God Almighty,

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