his death to occupy his old shop in St. Nicholas Churchyard, where, by the way, it still exists (1886), with a tablet proclaiming its history, and rejoicing in a window upon which his name is scratched. In 1823 he went to Edinburgh, where he made his only sketch upon the stone ('The Cadger's Trot'). In 1827 he was visited by the American naturalist Audubon, who has left an interesting account of his impressions (Ornithological Biography, 1835, iii. pp. 300 et seq.), and he came to London. But he was old and in failing health; and it is recorded that when driven to the Regent's Park he declined to alight in order to see the animals. His last work, in addition to the never completed 'History of British Fishes' already referred to, was a large cut, intended to serve as a cottage print of the kind familiar to his boyhood. Progressing with this, a lean-ribbed. And worn-out old horse waiting patiently in the rain for death, he was overtaken by the illness to which he succumbed. Copies of the block in its unfinished state were struck off in 1832 by R. E. Bewick, and it was again reprinted at Newcastle, in 1876, by Mr. Robert Robinson of Pilgrim Street.
Bewick died on 8 Nov. 1828, at his house, 19 West Street, Gateshead. He is buried in Ovingham churchyard by the side of his wife, who had preceded him in February 1826. His character seems to have been that of a thoroughly upright and honourable man, independent but unassuming, averse to display, very methodical, very industrious, and devoted to his fireside, his own folk, and that particular patch of earth which constituted his world. In such scant glimpses as we get of him in letters and the recollections of friends, it is chiefly under some of these latter aspects. Now he is chatting to the country people in the market-place, or making friends with some vagrant specimen of bird or beast; now throwing off a sketch at the kitchen table to please the bairns, or working diligently at the 'Birds' in the winter evenings to the cheery sound of his beloved Northumberland pipes.
As an engraver Bewick has been justly styled the restorer of wood engraving in England. It is to the impulse which it received from his individual genius that its revival as an art must be ascribed. To give an account of the special features of his technique here would, however, be impossible. But two points may be mentioned in special. In the first place, he was among the earliest, if not the earliest, to cut upon the end of the wood instead of along it, as had been the practice of the old plank or knife cutters; and, in the second, he was the inventor of what is technically known as 'white line' in wood-engraving. Of this he may be allowed to give his own definition. Speaking in the 'Memoir,' p. 241, of the effect produced in a woodcut by plain parallel lines as opposed to cross lines, he goes on: 'This is very apparent when to a certainty the plain since of the wood will print as black as ink and balls can make it, without any further labour at all; and it may easily be seen that the thinnest strokes cut upon the plain surface will throw some light on the subject or design, and if these strokes are made wider and deeper, it will receive more light; and if these strokes again are made still wider, or of equal thickness to the black lines, the colour these produce will be a grey; and the more the white strokes are thickened, the nearer will they, in their varied shadings, approach to white, and, if quite taken away, then a perfect white is obtained.' Bewick, in short, paid most attention, not to what he left, but to what he cut away from the block. He regarded himself as making a white design upon a black block which was to produce a black design upon white paper. To his knowledge of this method must be ascribed the effect of his work, but to understand it thoroughly some treatise such as Hamerton's 'Graphic Arts,' 1882, or Linton's 'Practical Hints on Wood Engraving,' 1879, should be consulted. In the latter work the point is very clearly and fully explained.
There are numerous portraits of Bewick. Miss Bewick of Cherryburn (his great-niece) has a picture of him when young, by a local artist, George Gray. Then there is the engraving by Kidd in 1798, after Miss Kirkley. There are also at least three well-known portraits by James Ramsay. One of these, that engraved by Burnet in 1817, is in the Newcastle Natural History Society's Museum; the National Portrait Gallery contains another, dated 1823; and a third is the little full-length, engraved by F. Bacon in 1852, the original of which is in the possession of Mr. R. S. Newall of Gateshead. Besides these there is an excellent portrait by Good of Berwick, showing Bewick in old age, as well as a portrait by Nicholson, belonging to Mr. T. Crawhall of Condercum, and etched by Flameng in 1882 for the Fine Arts Society. Nicholson also did another picture, engraved by Ranson in 1810, and there is a miniature by Murphy, engraved by J. Summerfield. Lastly, there is E. H. Baily's bust in the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society's Library, which was engraved in the 'Century Magazine' for September 1882, and is regarded by those who knew Bewick as an excellent likeness.
