Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/492

450 450 PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. world-wide reputation that we feel justified in devoting a page or two to his memory. Thomas Bewick was born at Cherryburn, twelve miles to the west of Newcastle, in 1753, receiving a limited, but as far as it went a thorough education ; his genius displayed itself in early childish days by such chalk drawings on barn-walls and stable-doors as have almost invariably discovered the bent of youthful artistic genius. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to Mr. Beilby, of Newcastle, an engraver in copper-plate, and though Beilby's business lay rather in the production of brass door-plates, and the emblazoning of spoons and watches, than in Fine Art illustrations, the master soon appreciated and encouraged his pupil's wonderful talents. During the period of his apprenticeship, young Bewick paid only nincpence a week for his lodging, and brought back a coarse brown loaf in every weekly visit to his home at Cherryburn. As soon as his term of seven years had expired, he still continued in Beilby's service, but devoted himself henceforth to wood-engraving. Shortly afterwards he received a premium from the Society of Arts for a woodcut of the " Huntsman and the Old Hound," and this induced him in the follow- ing year to go to London in quest of labour and fortune, but he found the metropolis so little to his liking that he writes home : " I would rather be herding sheep on Mickley Bank-top than remain in London, although for doing so I was to be made the premier of England." With his distaste for town life and his strong love for the country for its scenery changing with every season, for its living forms of animal and plant life, for all, in short, that incessantly appealed to a wonderful artistic instinct, Bewick was