The following are among those referred to by Bewick:—“Youth’s Instructive and Entertaining Story-Teller, being a Choice Collection of Moral Tales, Chiefly deduced from real Life, calculated to enforce the Practice of Virtue, and expand every social Idea in the Human heart. Adorned with emblematical cuts from the most interesting part of each Tale, and methodised after the Plan recommended by the late ingenious Dr Goldsmith. To which is added, by way of Preface, Thoughts on the Present Mode of Education.” (Newcastle, T. Saint.) Three Editions, circa 1774-7-8, 12mo, thirty-seven woodcuts. The cuts in this book are larger than any in the preceding books. We give the cut at page 48 of a Shipwrecked Sailor kneeling on a rock saying his prayers, the tide rising around him, which is the first and earliest engraving of this subject by T. Bewick, afterwards one of his favourite Vignettes in the “British Birds.” The others are all about the size of the cuts in “Gay’s Fables,” 1779, or “Select Fables,” 1784, and have similar borders.
“Bob Easy.”
“The Huntsman and Old Hound.”
“Jackson” refers to this and the following two works:—“Gay’s Fables.” Fables by the late Mr Gay, in One Volume complete, Newcastle, printed by and for T. Saint, 1779, 12mo, 77 cuts of Fables, with borders and 33 Vignettes; for the tasteful and clever engraving of five of the cuts (one, the Huntsman and Old Hound[1]) the Royal Society of Arts presented Bewick with their medal; it is further embellished with a beautifully engraved Frontispiece, by R. Beilby (T. Saint, Newcastle, 1779). We give an impression of the original wood-engraving, exceedingly interesting, as now Bewick seems to have received the required impetus or encouragement to produce the engravings for “Select Fables,” T. Saint, 1784. In three parts. Part I. Fables extracted from Dodsley’s; Part II. Fables, with Reflections in Prose and Verse; Part III. Fables in Verse; to which are prefixed the Life of Æsop, and an Essay upon Fable, A New Edition Improved. For this edition a new set of cuts was engraved by Thomas Bewick. “These cuts were then deemed superior to any of Bewick’s previous productions.” The same year another impression of this work was printed with the same title page, but considerable variations in the letterpress, and vignettes occur at pages 122, 125, and 152, which are not in the former edition, printed in 1784, 12mo. This is the book we now reprint (Saint’s collection of Bewick’s blocks having passed into my hands.) An original copy of the 1784 edition in fine state is so rare, that a copy has realised, at auction, £7, 10s. Bewick says (p. 60, “Memoir,” 1862): “Some of the Fable (“Gay,” 1779) cuts were thought so much of by my master (Beilby), that he, in my name, sent impressions of a few of them to be laid before the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c., and I obtained a premium.” (Seven guineas, which he took intense pleasure in presenting to his mother.) We have thus, by easy stages, travelled through the various phases of talent, to the most important work produced before his well-known “British Quadrupeds,” first published 1790; “British Birds,” 1797, 1804; and his large edition of “Æsop’s Fables,” 1818 (each work embellished with his inimitable and ever-pleasing vignettes). Examples from all these works follow.
“The Chillingham Wild Bull.”—Bewick’s large engraving of this subject, with border, has realised twenty guineas. See “Jackson on Wood-Engraving.”