The one is from an edition of the "Fables of La Fontaine," published in 1728, and is an engraving on copper by Henri Causé. Here the graver in its work on the copper plate has with ease produced black lines as shown in the rays of the sun stretched across the sky, and with equal ease the clouds and the foreground are elaborately cross-hatched.
The other is from an edition of Bewick's "Select Fables," first published in 1784. The white line is predominant everywhere. The clouds in the sky are nothing but white lines. The bent sapling on the left is white against a black background, the bank with foliage by the roadside is cross-hatched in white, and the flying rain was produced by slight and delicate strokes with the graver.
Of the school of Bewick there are Luke Clennell and Charlton Nesbit, both of whom have engraved illustrations to Bewick's works. Poor Clennell and his wife both became insane, and the latter dying left three motherless children. William Harvey, John Thompson, Robert Branston, John Jackson, J. W. Whymper, and W. J. Linton, the author of a volume, "The Masters of Wood Engraving," are all men whose work worthily carried on the traditions which Bewick first inculcated in his great pioneer work in inaugurating the revival of wood engraving.
Some mention, too, should be made of George Baxter, a wood engraver, who invented a means, which he patented in 1830, of reproducing oil paintings in colour by having two or three printings from the blocks after colour had been applied to them.
