Your letter of the fourth inst., enclosing your promissory note at six months, came safe to hand. Having calculated upon being sooner paid, I was, I confess disappointed; but, however, on thinking all matters over respecting your present expenses in, as yet, an unproductive publication, and remembering your continual good wishes towards me, I now see that I have to thank you for the above remittance. You make me smile when you talk of my “accumulated wealth.” I might, indeed, have been, by this time, as rich as I ever wished to be, if my publications had been.... but that not being the case, that day must be longer put off. It may, indeed, happen all in good time, viz., when I am unable in the line of my business to be longer useful to the world. I may then, indeed, in the down hill of life, have it in my power to attain to the summit of my wishes, in retiring to a cottage, by a burn side, surrounded with woods and wilds, such as I was dragged from when young to exhibit myself upon the stage of the busy world. To such a place as this I hope to retire; and, if I am enabled to show kindness to old friends, and to be a good neighbour to those around me, and at the same time to fill up my leisure time in contemplation, and in the amusements of fishing and gardening, then I shall think that Providence has been pleased to single me out to be one of the happiest of men. I intend to go to press in the spring with a new edition of the Birds, printed with the same kind of small type as the Quadrupeds: the two volumes in one volume demy. I wish much to have one of your books, but I cannot engage in the sale of them, being sufficiently embarrassed with my own publications.
T. B.
Thomas Bewick
his mark
FOOTNOTES
[1]. As evidence of which, it is impossible to distinguish the cuts introduced into the last edition of “Birds” from those previously published. This is due to the well-known fact, as mentioned at page [243], that an immense number of impressions may be taken from a wood block; and to the system, peculiar to Thomas Bewick, of lowering all the more delicate parts.
[2]. The vignette placed at page [286]—a view of Cherryburn, with Mickley Bank in the distance, and a funeral procession descending the sloping pasture towards the boat, waiting to convey it across the Tyne to the last resting-place of the family at Ovingham—appears, from the date attached, to be the last vignette ever executed by Thomas Bewick.