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 Esop 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 expression, they "are all tarred with one stick." 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 sçais 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 animals 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

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 horse's 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 recognise 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 admirer 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,

as some seem to do. It is not his way to chop logic with nature, being modest enough to attend to what she says, in preference to lecturing himself. Our geniuses now-a-days appear to be proud to have, as they call it, "made a picture." Bewick probably would have been proud to have made you forget that his was a picture. If you took it for plain reality, he would not have been offended. Such humble ideas some people have.

All this, however, to own the truth, would have been no objection to us. Far from it. We are quite serious, Messieurs Academicians. Let us not, however, be misunderstood. We do not say that highly-wrought pictures are not to be painted; we only say we are apt to distrust those who paint them. When we hear the jargon of contrast," warmth," keeping," and "repose," and all the other technical slang of what is called virtu, we confess we have an instinctive dread of mischief. We cannot help it. Dr Johnson used to insist, that "he who would make a pun, would pick a pocket." Now, we don't go so far. But when we see a man perpetually insist upon displaying Nature in such lights as never were before, and never will be again-who must always have her in full-dress-and that a new suit -"always at the top of her bent," one way or other-ever in extremeswe say we shrewdly suspect such a man can have no very violent objection to what shall we call it-colour a little-or, as the editor of the Wonderful Magazine hath it, "indulge a falsity." Magnas est verity," we exclaim with thee, wonderful soul. Thy Latin may be bad, but thy sentiment is sound, in painting as well as morals. The overstrained taste for what may be called the extreme of the picturesque, whether in design or colouring, has always appeared to us a most dangerous one. It is a sort of dramdrinking at the eye. How often are we told, “True, sir, the place is very beautiful; but it won't make a picture!" Won't it? and why? Why should that which is confessedly beautiful in itself, become not so if faithfully transferred to canvass ? "Your most exquisite reason," Monsieur. This is unintelligible refinement; and is not the exclusive cultivation of this taste the readiest way to open a way for all manner of exaggeration? We repeat, we have seen pictures, and

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heard them praised too, that imitated humanity as abominably as Hamlet's ranting actor ever did. A picture may strut as well as a player, whatever some people may think to the contrary. There is no doubt that Nature sometimes produces combinations the most singularly beautiful, and mingles her tints with a gorgeous profusion that seems akin to the preternatural; but are we to stick exclusively to this? Are we to make the exception the rule and deduce canons of art, not from the common law of appearances, but from occasional deviations? Probably a natural rock that is perfectly square may be found are we, therefore, to paint nothing but square rocks? The grand evil of this system is, that it teaches us to think that nature, in her everyday and common guise, is not beautiful. This is a sad mistake. The flattest landscape that Salisbury Plain ever produced, if painted by a master-hand, would be worth looking at. We admire Dutch and Flemish pictures of pots of beer, tobacco-pipes, cabbages, Frows, and Boors. Is not this inconsistent? Is not the most common life-piece of scenery always better than a Dutch cheese? We recollect-we shall not easily forget it-a water-colour drawing-we have forgotten by whom, perhaps it might be by Fielding, no matter-it represented the encampment of a gang of gipsies about nightfall, or, as Burns would say, gloaming." The fire was just lighted, and the tent up. The place was a plain, flat, unpretending, dark, grassgreen field. The hedge ran in a straight line along the top of it, parallel with the horizon, a few ill-grown, scrubby-looking trees growing out of it at intervals. The sky was in the dull gray of twilight, merely gloomy, with a few dingy, mean-looking clouds, the advanced guard of night, passing over it. Nothing could be more common; and yet so true to nature was the whole, that nothing could be more admirable. That picture of all the rest won our heart; being common, it was rare-in "the Exhibition." And what would any man have gained by improving this sketch, as he would call it? by planting trees where trees were not, or raising hills where all was level? He would only please at last;-and is there no risk in thus tampering with reality? Nature is the best of gardeners. When we find

"the

certain things, absent or present, we may be sure there is a reason for it. How are we to know what egregious incompatibilities we may sometimes ignorantly produce by capriciously tampering with natural arrangement? Everybody would see the absurdity of painting a Norwegian pine amidst the sands of Africa, or of putting an iceberg under the line. But who can say how far this principle may be carried? who has ascertained where it stops? We must, however, conclude, and conclude with Bewick.

Arrived at that period of life when many men become averse to new undertakings, Bewick is busy with a projected History of Fishes. This might be expected from the strong and knotty character of his mind. A fullbodied vintage will improve in raciness for forty years. The oak grows for three centuries. We have been favoured with a sight of some of the cuts for this work, and can answer for their partaking, to the full extent, of the marked characteristics of his earlier works. We noticed, especially, two or three angling scenes, which might make the heart of a fisher leap at the recollection. Never were the mountain streams of Northumberland given as Bewick gives them. The Cockneys, to be sure, will not under

stand them, but that is of little import.

Mr Bewick is said to have noted down, from time to time, memoranda of his own life. We hope it is true. If we are not mistaken it will prove one of the best presents to the art that artist ever made. Let him put down his beginnings and progress, his feelings, his conceptions, his conclusions, his difficulties, his success; in short the mental formation and growth of his skill, and the record is invaluable. Above all we conjure him to write from himself. Let him jot down his ideas as they rise, without clipping or straining them to suit any set of conceited rules of composition. Let the book be of Thomas Bewick altogether, and only. Let him shun, as he would the plague, all contact with the race who commonly style themselves grammarians and critics; and if he does not publish in his lifetime we think he may as well, unless he has a particular reason to the contrary, not make Thomas Moore, Esq. his executor. There may be little danger in this case; but one really would not wish any Christian book, much more that of a man of genius, like Bewick, to run even the remotest risk of being put into the parlour fire to please "The Ladies."