Note

As we conceive all will feel an interest in the character and history of this extraordinary man; we make no apology for introducing here some memoranda of his more familiar hours, contributed to Loudon's Magazine in 1829-30, shortly after his death, by his personal friend, John F. M. Dovaston, Esq. A. M.

"The brief and desultory remarks I am about to incorporate amid the congenial pages of your Magazine of Natural History, arise from a fond and fertile memory of much conversation, and a long and frequent correspondence, with my excellent and beloved friend.

"The first time I had a personal interview with the venerable Bewick, was at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on Wednesday, October 1, 1823, after perambulating the romantic regions of Cumberland and Westmoreland with my friend, John E. Bowman, Esq. F.L.S. We had been told that he retired from his work-bench on evenings to the "Blue Bell on the side," for the purpose of reading the news. To this place we repaired, and readily found ourselves in the presence of the great man. For my part, so warm was my enthusiasm, that I could have rushed into his arms, as into those of a parent or benefactor. He was sitting by the fire in a large elbow-chair, smoking. He received us most kindly, and in a very few minutes we felt as old friends. He appeared a very large athletic man, then in his seventy-first year, with thick, bushy, black hair, retaining his sight so completely as to read aloud rapidly the smallest type of a newspaper. He was dressed in very plain brown clothes, but of good quality, with large flaps to his waistcoat, grey woollen stockings, and large buckles. In his under-lip he had a prodigious large quid of tobacco, and he leaned on a very thick oaken cudgel, which, I afterwards learned, he cut in the woods of Hawthornden. His broad, bright, and benevolent countenance at one glance bespoke powerful intellect and unbounded good-will, with a very visible sparkle of merry wit. The discourse at first turned on politics (for the paper was in his hand), on which he at once openly avowed himself a warm Whig, but clearly without the slightest wish to provoke opposition. I at length succeeded in turning the conversation into the fields of natural history, but not till after he had scattered forth a profusion of the most humorous anecdotes, that would baffle the most retentive memory to enumerate, and defy the most witty to depict. I succeeded by mentioning an error in one of his works; for which, when I had convinced him, he thanked me, and took the path in conversation we wished. In many instances, I must remark, though frequently succeeding to the broadest humour, his countenance and conversation assumed and emitted flashes and features of absolutely the highest sublimity; indeed, to an excitement of awful amazement, particularly when speaking on the works of the Deity.

"Thus happily situated, I paid little attention to the iron tongue of the neighbouring steeple of St. Nicholas, whether he told the long and loud 'hour o' night's black arch the keystane,' or the wee bit ane ayont it. The fine old fellow, this jolly old Cock o' the North, as I facetiously called him, would persist in seeing us to our hotel, where we renewed our libations even to "sangs and clatter." Very early in the morning he kindly came again with his great cudgel to our chambers; and removed us to his neat and hospitable residence amid the fields and gardens above Gateshead, on the opposite bank of the Tyne. Here we brokefast with his family, consisting then of his good old dame (who died February 1, 1826, aged seventy-two), one son, and three daughters. He now conducted us amid the curiosities of Newcastle, public buildings, pictures, and libraries; and, what is more to my present sketch, his own workshops. Here we saw his manner of producing his beautiful art; and his nests of almost numberless drawers, each filled with one layer of finished blocks, with their faces upward, on many of whose maiden lineaments, fresh and sharp from the graver, the ink-ball had never been pressed. They are all cut on box-wood, which is procured from abroad of as large circumference as possible, at a great expense, and is paid for by weight. This is sawn "across, at right angles to the cylindrical growth of the tree (I mean as a cucumber is sliced), in pieces, when finished, exactly the thickness of the height of the metallic types, with which the blocks are afterwards incorporated in the pressman's form, or iron frame. One surface of this block is made extremely smooth, on which is traced in black and white lines, the figure or design; the white is then cut out, and the black left. Though this was the method he took with his pupils, of whom he had constantly a numerous succession, he had early acquired so ready a facility himself, that simply with the graver on little, and often no outline, he worked the design on the blank block at once. His tools, many of his own contrivance and making, were various in sizes and sorts. Some, broad gouges for wide excavation; some narrow, for fine white lines; and some many-pointed for parallels, which, either straight or wavy, he cut with rapidity, by catching the first tooth of the tool in the last stroke, which guided it equidistant with the former. He spoke with great approbation of the graphic talents of his late brother John; and repeatedly said, that, had he lived, he might have attained to greater eminence than himself. When they both began, the art was almost lost, and totally neglected; but has, through his hands and ingenuity, been almost, as it were, reinvented, and brought to its present high pitch o perfection: and many of the most celebrated wood-engravers have been his pupils. Here he gave us his opinion of the old method of cross-hatching, a style not now used, or even known, and he said useless ; as every effect may be produced by parallel lines, broader or narrower, at greater or less distances; and in the lighter parts, by a little sinking of the surface of the block. The latter is one of his own inventions, and by it a judicious pressman can produce every gradation of shade from very black to nearly white; between which he preferred those of intermediate strength, being decidedly against a black impression. He thought the old engravers effected 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; or by the use of cross or double blocks, requiring two impressions to produce a single figure. Numberless specimens of this cross-hatching may be found in the great old edition of Fox's Book of Martyrs, where it is often widely and wantonly thrown away, even where not required; a proof, that it must have been executed without much art or labour: in honest old Gerard's valuable Herbal: in that of Parkinson : and in Felix Valgrise's beautiful folio edition of Matthiolus' Commentaries on Dioscorides, Venice, 1583: and many other ancient books in my collection. Mr. Bewick's own Horse-traveller in a Storm, where he shows black and white rain, is a specimen of the use of two blocks. A person acquainted only with the common method would be at a loss to conceive how the union of the absolutely opposite styles of engraving, on copper and wood, could be effected. The black diagonal lines, particularly those on the foreground, constitute its great curiosity as a woodcut. In many of his tail-pieces, he has given 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 very seldom engraved from any other copy than nature, having the bird (always alive if possible), or other subject, before him, and sketching the outline on the block, filling up the foregrounds, landscapes, and light foliage of trees, at once with the tool without being previously pencilled. It was curious to observe his economy of box-wood; the pieces being circular, he divided them according to the size of his design, so as to lose little or none; and should there be a flaw, or decayed spot, he contrived to bring that into a part of the drawing that was to be left white, and so cut out. He said, blocks, in durability of lines, incalculably outlasted engravings on copper, which wear very much in cleaning with chalk for every impression; but editions of wood-blocks must be very numerous indeed before they show any feebleness. In early life he had cut a vignette for the Newcastle newspaper; and this year it had been calculated that more than nine hundred thousand impressions had been worked off; yet is the block still in use, and not perceptibly impaired. A faint impression therefore, is by no means to be attributed to the wearing out of the block but to the feebler pull of the pressman; and this may be proved by observing that when any one is remarkably black or light, all that are pulled off that same form partake of a similar degree of strength or faintness. I have now in my library a copy, though, I am sorry to say, spoiled with my having written the margins all over with ornithological observations, of the very first edition of the Birds, in which many of the impressions are far feebler than the corresponding ones in the very last edition; and in the same edition the same blocks vary in all shades. Let not collectors, therefore, yet despair, who have missed becoming purchasers in the rapid, and now, since the good man's death, more rapid sale of his valuable works.