A Floweret

Where lengthened ray

Gildeth the bark upon her way;

Where vision is lost in space,

To trace,

As resting on a stile,

In ascent of half a mile—

It is when the birds do sing,

In the evening of the spring.

The broad shadow from the tree,

Falling upon the slope,

You may see,

O’er flowery mead,

Where doth a pathway lead

To the topmost ope—

The yellow butter-cup

And purple crow-foot,

The waving grass up,

Rounding upon the but—

The spreading daisy

In the clover maze,

The wild rose upon the hedge-row,

And the honey-suckle blow

For village girl

To dress her chaplet—

Or some youth, mayhap, let—

Or bind the linky trinket

For some earl—

Or trim up in plaits her hair

With much seeming care,

As fancy may think it—

Or with spittle moisten,

Or half wink it,

Or to music inclined,

Or to sleep in the soft wind.

St Peter’s, August 1828.
L. C.

About 1831, Clennell having become much worse, his friends were again compelled to place him under restraint. He was accordingly conveyed to a lunatic asylum near Newcastle, where he is still living. Until within this last year or two, he continued to amuse himself with drawing and writing poetry, and perhaps may do so still. It is to be hoped that, though his condition appear miserable to us, he is not miserable himself; that though deprived of the light of reason, he may yet enjoy imaginary pleasures of which we can form no conception; and that his confinement occasions to him

“Small feeling of privation, none of pain.”VII.85

William Harvey, another distinguished pupil of Bewick, and one whose earlier engravings are only surpassed by his more recent productions as a designer on wood, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 13th of July 1796. Having from an early age shown great fondness for drawing, he was at the age of fourteen apprenticed to Thomas Bewick to learn the art of engraving on wood.VII.86 In conjunction with his fellow-pupil, W. W. Temple, he engraved most of the cuts in Bewick’s Fables, 1818; and as he excelled in drawing as well as in engraving, he was generally entrusted by Bewick to make the drawings on the block after Robert Johnson’s designs. One of the best cuts engraved by Harvey during his apprenticeship was a vignette for the title-page of a small work entitled “Cheviot: a Poetical Fragment,” printed at Newcastle in 1817. This cut, which was also drawn by himself, is extremely beautiful both in design and execution; the trees and the foliage are in particular excellently represented; and as a small picturesque subject it is one of the best he ever engraved.

Harvey was a great favourite of Bewick, who presented him with a copy of the History of British Birds as a new year’s gift on the 1st of January 1815, and at the same time addressed to him the following admonitory letter. Mr. Harvey is a distinguished artist, a kind son, an affectionate husband, a loving father, and in every relation of life a most amiable man: he has not, however, been exposed to any plots or conspiracies, nor been persecuted by envy and malice, as his master anticipated; but, on the contrary, his talents and his amiable character have procured for him public reputation and private esteem.

“Gateshead, 1st January, 1815.

“Dear William,

“I sent you last night the History of British Birds, which I beg your acceptance of as a new year’s gift, and also as a token of my respect. Don’t trouble yourself about thanking me for them; but, instead of doing so, let those books put you in mind of the duties you have to perform through life. Look at them (as long as they last) on every new year’s day, and at the same time resolve, with the help of the all-wise but unknowable God, to conduct yourself on every occasion as becomes a good man.—Be a good son, a good brother, (and when the time comes) a good husband, a good father, and a good member of society. Peace of mind will then follow you like a shadow; and when your mind grows rich in integrity, you will fear the frowns of no man, and only smile at the plots and conspiracies which it is probable will be laid against you by envy, hatred, and malice.

“To William Harvey, jun. Westgate.

In September, 1817, Mr. Harvey came to London; and shortly afterwards, with a view of obtaining a correct knowledge of the principles of drawing, he became a pupil of Mr. B. R. Haydon, and he certainly could not have had a better master. While improving himself under Mr. Haydon, he drew and engraved from a picture by that eminent artist his large cut of the Death of Dentatus, which was published in 1821.VII.87 As a large subject, this is unquestionably one of the most elaborately engraved wood-cuts that has ever appeared. It scarcely, however, can be considered a successful specimen of the art; for though the execution in many parts be superior to anything of the kind, either of earlier or more recent times, the cut, as a whole, is rather an attempt to rival copper-plate engraving than a perfect specimen of engraving on wood, displaying the peculiar advantages and excellences of the art within its own legitimate bounds. More has been attempted than can be efficiently represented by means of wood engraving. The figure of Dentatus is indeed one of the finest specimens of the art that has ever been executed, and the other figures in the fore-ground display no less talent; but the rocks are of too uniform a tone, and some of the more distant figures appear to stick to each other. These defects, however, result from the very nature of the art, not from inability in the engraver; for all that wood engraving admits of he has effected. It is unnecessary to say more of this cut here: some observations relating to the details, illustrated with specimens of the best engraved parts, will be found in the next chapter.

About 1824 Mr. Harvey entirely gave up the practice of engraving, and has since exclusively devoted himself to designing for copper-plate and wood engravers. His designs engraved on copper are, however, few when compared with the immense number engraved on wood. The copper-plate engravings consist principally of the illustrations in a collected edition of Miss Edgeworth’s Works, 1832; in Southey’s edition of Cowper’s Works, first published in 1836, and since by Mr. Bohn in his Standard Library; and in the small edition of Dr. Lingard’s History of England.

The beautiful vignettes and tail-pieces in Dr. Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines, 1824, drawn and engraved by Mr. Harvey, may be considered the ground-work of his reputation as a designer, and by the kindness of Dr. Henderson we are enabled (in this second edition) to present impressions of seven of them. The cuts in the first and second series of Northcote’s Fables, 1828, 1833;VII.88 in the Tower Menagerie, 1828; in the Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society, 1831; and in Latrobe’s Solace of Song, 1837, were all drawn by him.

Among the smaller works illustrated with wood-cuts, and published about the same time as the preceding, the following may be mentioned as containing beautiful specimens of his talents as a designer on wood:—The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green; The Children in the Wood; A Story without an End, translated from the German by Mrs. Austin; and especially his one hundred and twenty beautiful designs for the Paradise Lost, and other poems of Milton, and his designs for Thomson’s Seasons, from which two works we select four examples with the view of exhibiting at the same time the talents of the distinguished engravers, viz., John Thompson and Charles Gray.

For various other works he has also furnished, in all, between three and four thousand designs. As a designer on wood, he is decidedly superior to the majority of artists of the present day; and to his excellence in this respect, wood engraving is chiefly indebted for the very great encouragement which it has of late received in this country.

The two cuts on pages 533 and 534 are also from drawings by Mr. Harvey; and both are printed from casts. The first is one of the illustrations of the Children in the Wood, published by Jennings and Chaplin, 1831; and the subject is the uncle bargaining with the two ruffians for the murder of the children. This cut is freely and effectively executed, without any display of useless labour.

The second is one of the illustrations of the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, published by Jennings and Chaplin, in 1832. The subject represents the beggar’s daughter and her four suitors, namely,—the gentleman of good degree, the gallant young knight in disguise, the merchant of London, and her master’s son. This cut, though well engraved, is scarcely equal to the preceding. It is, however, necessary to observe that these cuts are not given as specimens of the engravers’ talents, but merely as two subjects designed by Mr. Harvey.

What has been called the “London School” of wood engraving produced nothing that would bear a comparison with the works of Bewick and his pupils until the late Robert Branston began to engrave on wood. About 1796, the best of the London engravers was J. Lee. He engraved the cuts for the “Cheap Repository,” a collection of religious and moral tracts, printed between 1794 and 1798, and sold by J. Marshall, London, and S. Hazard, Bath. Those cuts, though coarsely executed, as might be expected, considering the work for which they were intended, frequently display considerable merit in the design; and in this respect several of them are scarcely inferior to the cuts drawn and engraved by John Bewick in Dr. Trusler’s Progress of Man and Society. Mr. Lee died in March, 1804; and on his decease, his apprentice, Henry White, went to Newcastle, and served out the remainder of his time with Thomas Bewick. James Lee, a son of Mr. J. Lee, the elder, is also a wood engraver; he executed the portraits in Hansard’s Typographia, 1825.

Robert Branston, like Bewick, acquired his knowledge of wood engraving without the instructions of a master. He was born at Lynn, in Norfolk, in 1778, and died in London in 1827. He served his apprenticeship to his father, a general copper-plate engraver and heraldic painter, who seems to have carried on the same kind of miscellaneous business as Mr. Beilby, the master of Bewick. About 1802 Mr. Branston came to London, and finding that wood engraving was much encouraged, he determined to apply himself to that art. Some of his first productions were cuts for lottery bills; but as he improved in the practice of engraving on wood, he began to engrave cuts for the illustration of books. His style of engraving is peculiarly his own, and perfectly distinct from that of Bewick. He engraved human figures and in-door scenes with great clearness and precision; while Bewick’s chief excellence consisted in the natural representation of quadrupeds, birds, landscapes, and road-side incidents. In the representation of trees and of natural scenery, Branston has almost uniformly failed. Some of the best of his earlier productions are to be found in the History of England, published by Scholey, 1804-1810; in Bloomfield’s Wild Flowers, 1806; and in a quarto volume entitled “Epistles in Verse,” and other poems by George Marshall, 1812.

The best specimen of Mr. Branston’s talents as a wood engraver is a large cut of the Cave of Despair, in Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing. It was executed in rivalry with Nesbit, who engraved the cut of Rinaldo and Armida for the same work, and it would be difficult to decide which is the best. Both are good specimens of the styles of their respective schools; and the subjects are well adapted to display the peculiar excellence of the engravers. Had they exchanged subjects, neither of the cuts would have been so well executed; but in this case there call be little doubt that Nesbit would have engraved the figure and the rocks in the Cave of Despair better than Branston would have engraved the trees and the foliage in the cut of Rinaldo and Armida. The cut on the previous page is a reduced copy of a portion of that of Mr. Branston.

Mr. Branston, like many others, did not think highly of the cuts in Bewick’s Fables; and feeling persuaded that he could produce something better, he employed Mr. Thurston to make several designs, with the intention of publishing a similar work. After a few of them had been engraved, he gave up the thought of proceeding further with the work, from a doubt of its success. Bewick’s work was already in the market; and it was questionable if another of the same kind, appearing shortly after, would meet with a sale adequate to defray the expense. The three cuts in the opposite page were engraved by Mr. Branston for the proposed work. The two first are respectively illustrations of the fables of Industry and Sloth, and of the Two Crabs; the third was intended as a tail-piece. The cut of Industry and Sloth is certainly superior to that of the same subject in Bewick’s Fables; but that of the Two Crabs, though more delicately engraved, is not equal to the cut of the same subject in Bewick.

Mr. Branston also thought that Bewick’s Birds were estimated too highly; and he engraved two or three cuts to show that he could do the same things as well, or better. In this respect, however, he certainly formed a wrong estimate of his abilities; for, it is extremely doubtful if—even with the aid of the best designer he could find—he could have executed twenty cuts of birds which, for natural character, would bear a comparison with twenty of the worst engraved by Bewick himself. The great North-country man was an artist as well as a wood engraver; and in this respect his principal pupils have also been distinguished. The cut on our present page is one of those engraved by Mr. Branston to show his superiority over Bewick. The bird represented is probably the Grey Phalarope, or Scallop-toed Sand-piper, and it is unquestionably executed with considerable ability; but though Bewick’s cut of the same bird be one of his worst, it is superior to that engraved by Mr. Branston in every essential point.

Between twenty and thirty years ago, a wood engraver named Austin executed several cuts, but did nothing to promote the art. William Hughes, a native of Liverpool, who died in February 1825, at the early age of thirty-two, produced a number of wood engravings of very considerable merit. He chiefly excelled in architectural subjects. One of his best productions is a dedication cut in the first volume of Johnson’s Typographia, 1824, showing the interior of a chapel, surrounded by the arms of the members of the Roxburgh Club. Another artist of the same period, named Hugh Hughes, of whom scarcely anything is now known, executed a whole volume of singularly beautiful wood engravings, entitled “The Beauties of Cambria, consisting of Sixty Views in North and South Wales,” London, 1823. The work was published by subscription at one guinea, or on India paper at two guineas, and was beautifully printed by the same John Johnson who printed William Hughes’ cuts in the “Typographia,” and who, a few years previously, had conducted the Lee Priory Press. The annexed four examples will give an idea of the high finish and perfection of this elegant series.

Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.

Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.

Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.

Hugh Hughes, del. et sc.

John Thompson,VII.89 one of the best English wood engravers of the present day, was a pupil of Mr. Branston. He not only excels, like his master, in the engraving of human figures, but displays equal talent in the execution of all kinds of subjects. Among the very many excellent cuts which have been engraved in England within the last twenty years, those executed by John Thompson rank foremost. As he is rarely unequal to himself, it is rather difficult to point out any which are very much superior to the others of his execution. The following, however, may be referred to as specimens of the general excellence of his cuts:—The title-page to Puckle’s Club, 1817, and the cuts of Moroso, Newsmonger, Swearer, Wiseman, and Xantippe in the same work; the Trout, the Tench, the Salmon, the Chub, and a group of small fish,VII.90 consisting of the Minnow, the Loach, the Bull-head, and the Stickle-back, in Major’s edition of Walton’s Angler;VII.91

many of the cuts in Butler’s Hudibras, published by Baldwyn in 1819, and reprinted by Bohn, in 1859, of which we annex an example; the portrait of Butler, prefixed to an edition of his Remains, published in 1827; and The Two Swine, The Mole become a Connoisseur, Love and Friendship, and the portrait of Northcote, in the second series of Northcote’s Fables. One of his latest cuts is the beautifully executed portrait of Milton and his daughters, after a design by Mr. Harvey, already given at page 531. The following cut—a reduced copy of one of the plates in the Rake’s Progress—by Mr. Thompson, engraved a few years ago for a projected edition of Hogarth’s Graphic Works, of which only about a dozen cuts were completed, is one of the best specimens of the art that has been executed in modern times. In the engraving of small cuts of this kind Mr. Thompson has never been surpassed; and it is beyond the power of the art to effect more than what has here been accomplished.

John Thompson.

The English wood engravers, who next to Charlton Nesbit and John Thompson seem best entitled to honourable mention, are:—Samuel Williams;* Thomas Williams; Ebenezer Landells; John Orrin Smith;* George Baxter; Robert Branston; Frederick W. Branston; Henry White, senior, and Henry White, junior; Thomas Mosses;* Charles Gorway; Samuel Slader;* W. T. Green; W. J. Linton; John Martin; J. W. Whimper; John Wright; W. A. Folkard; Charles Gray;* George Vasey; John Byfield;* John Jackson;* Daniel Dodd, and John Dodd, brothers.—William Henry Powis, who died in 1836, aged 28, was one of the best wood engravers of his time. Several beautiful cuts executed by him are to be found in Martin and Westall’s Pictorial Illustrations of the Bible, 1833, and in an edition of Scott’s Bible, 1834; both works now published by Mr. Bohn. The following examples, principally taken from Martin and Westall’s Illustrations, will exemplify the talents of a few of the distinguished artists above mentioned. It would swell the book beyond its limits to give more, otherwise we might select from the same work, which contains one hundred and forty engravings, by all the principal wood engravers of the day.

JOHN MARTIN

JOHN JACKSON

The above cut was engraved by Mr. John Jackson in 1833. Abundant evidences of the versatility of his xylographic talent, are scattered throughout the present volume, of which, though not the author in a literary sense, he was at least the conductor and proprietor. Among the subjects pointed out by Mr. Chatto as engraved by Mr. Jackson, those on pages 473, 495, 496, 512, 605, 614, deserve to be mentioned.

JOHN MARTIN

F. W. BRANSTON

Mr. F. W. Branston, brother of Mr. Robert Branston, has long been known as one of our best engravers, as the annexed Specimen will shew.

JOHN MARTIN

E. LANDELLS

Mr. Ebenezer Landells, the engraver of this beautiful cut, has quite recently been lost to us. He was projector, and for a long time proprietor, of The Ladies’ Illustrated Newspaper, and has engraved an immense number of subjects of all classes.

JOHN MARTIN

W. H. POWIS

The talented engraver of the present subject has already been named, with commendation, at page 544. We learn that the sum paid him for engraving it was fifteen guineas, being three guineas more than the average price. Mr. Wm. Bagg, now a successful draftsman of anatomical subjects, made this and all the other drawings on the blocks at the rate of five guineas each, and Mr. John Martin had ten guineas each for the designs. As the volume contains 144 subjects it must have cost the projectors, Messrs. Bull and Churton, upwards of four thousand guineas: it may now be bought for a dozen shillings.

JOHN MARTIN

THOS. WILLIAMS

Mr. Thomas Williams ranks high as an engraver on wood, and the illustrated works of the last twenty years teem with his performances. Some of the engravings in the Merrie Days of England, 1859, are by him.

JOHN MARTIN

W. T. GREEN

The only other Illustration which we shall take from Martin and Westall’s Bible Prints is the above, engraved by Mr. W. T. Green, who continues to exercise his burin with great skill, and has recently engraved one of the plates in Merrie Days of England, and Favourite English Poems, and several of Maclise’s designs for Tennyson’s Princess. To this is added, as a vignette finish to the chapter, an engraving recently executed by him for an illustrated edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, now published in Bohn’s Library, and already mentioned at page 531.

One of the principal wood engravers in Germany, about the time that Bewick began to practise the art in England, was Unger. In 1779 he published a tract, containing five cuts of his own engraving, discussing the question whether Albert Durer actually engraved on wood: his decision is in the negative. In the same year, his son also published a dissertation, illustrated with wood-cuts, on the progress of wood engraving in Brandenburg, with an account of the principal books containing wood-cuts printed in that part of Prussia. They jointly executed some chiaro-scuros, and a number of trifling book-illustrations such as are to be found in Heineken’s Idée Générale d’une Collection complette d’Estampes. These cuts are of a very inferior character. Gubitz, a German wood engraver, who flourished about thirty years ago, executed several cuts which are much superior to any I have seen by the Ungers. Several of those engraved by Gubitz, bear considerable resemblance to the cuts of Bewick. The principal French wood engravers in the eighteenth century, subsequent to Papillon, were Gritner and Beugnet; but neither of them produced anything superior to the worst of the cuts to be found in the work of Papillon. With them wood engraving in France rather declined than advanced. Of late years the art has made great progress both in Germany and France; and should the taste for wood-cuts continue to increase in those countries, their engravers may regain for the art that popularity which it enjoyed in former times, when Nuremberg and Lyons were the great marts for works illustrated with wood engravings.

W. HARVEY

W. T. GREEN