Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/460

 If this was the state of wood engraving in London, it was naturally lower at Newcastle. Mr. Ralph Beilby's business, indeed, was of a most miscellaneous character. He engraved pipe-moulds, bottle-moulds, brass clock-faces, coffin-plates, stamps, seals, bill-heads, crests, and ciphers. Young Bewick's first occupation on entering the establishment was to copy Copeland's 'Ornaments' as an exercise in drawing. From this he was set to etch sword-blades, and block out the wood about the lines on diagrams for the popular almanac known as the 'Ladies' Diary,' then edited by a Newcastle schoolmaster, afterwards the great Dr. Hut ton of Woolwich. He also prepared the cuts to Hutton's 'Treatise on Mensuration,' published by Saint in 1770, and, besides giving great satisfaction, is said to have shown some ingenuity in devising a double-pointed graver which was exceedingly useful in this particular work. Soon he was entrusted with most of Beilby's wood-engraving business, and executed several bill-heads which were highly approved. Then commissions for cuts for children's books began to be received, the chief employer being the Newcastle Newbery, Thomas Saint. The first efforts of this kind with which Bewick can be directly associated are the 'new invented Horn Book' and the 'New Lottery-Book of Birds and Beasts,' 1771. After these come the 'Child's Tutor, or Entertaining Preceptor,' 1772; the 'Moral Instructions of a Father to his Son,' 1772; and the 'Youth's Instructive and Entertaining Story Teller,' 1774. To the last Bewick himself refers in the Memoir' (p. 60), and his daughter acknowledged that he engraved the illustrations to the 'Moral Instructions' (Select Fables, Pearson's Reprint, p. xiii). It is not necessary, however, to linger on these merely tentative efforts, which he subsequently so greatly excelled. Before the end of his apprenticeship he had completed some cuts for 'Gay's Fables,' which were of far superior quality. So good were they considered by honest Mr. Beilby that he sent five blocks to the Society of Arts, who, in 1775, awarded a premium of seven guineas to the engraver. One of the five was the 'Hound and the Huntsman,' illustrating Gay's forty-fourth fable.

On 1 Oct. 1774 Bewick's period of apprenticeship terminated. After a few weeks le returned to Cherryburn, where he continued to work on his own account. In 1776 he made a pedestrian tour to the north, and in the same year started for London. Here he speedily found employment with an engraver named Cole, with Isaac Taylor, with Thomas Hodgson, the printer and publisher, and others. But London did not suit the sturdy Northumbrian, strongly attached to his birthplace and hungering for country sights and sounds. After brief trial he left London again for Newcastle, and shortly afterwards entered into partnership with his old master, Beilby.

For many years after his apprenticeship had come to an end, wood engraving seems to have been the exception rather than the rule of Bewick's work—the general business of the firm being of the indiscriminate character already described. Among other illustrated books attributed to this period are several that have attained an importance with collectors to which they are scarcely entitled. Such are 'Tommy Trip's History of Beasts and Birds,' 1779, which is supposed to have been a first draught of the more famous 'Quadrupeds' and 'Birds,' and the 'Lilliputian Magazine,' published by Carnan, Newbery's successor, but probably printed earlier at Newcastle. In both cases the letterpress is traditionally supposed to have been by Goldsmith, but the tradition is incapable of proof. The works which most deserve attention between 1774 and 1784 are the 'Gay's Fables' of 1779 and 'Select Fables' of 1784, both of which were printed and published by Saint of Newcastle. As already stated, the illustrations to the former had been begun during Bewick's apprenticeship. Many of these illustrations are plainly based upon the earlier copper plates designed by Kent, Wootton the animal painter, and H. Gravelot, for Tonson's and Knapton's editions issued in 1727 and 1738 respectively. In most cases Bewick distinctly improves upon his model, in some he breaks away from it altogether, e.g. in 'The Man, the Cat, the Dog, and the Fly,' and the 'Squire and his Cur,' which are little pictures in genre. The 'Select Fables,' now very rare, is an advance upon the Gay. It was an expansion of an earlier book of 1776 with ruder engravings from Bewick's hand, and this again was an offshoot from the before-mentioned 'Moral Instructions' of 1772. It has sometimes been denied that these earlier cuts were Bewick's, but without going minutely into the evidence the point may now be taken as established. The 'Select Fables' of 1784 was an improved issue of this book of 1776, the majority of the illustrations being designed afresh with greater finish and elaboration, and only thirteen of the best of the old cuts being reproduced. Following his practice in the Gay, Bewick seems to have again depended rather upon his predecessors than himself, most of the cuts being based upon those of the unknown illustrator of