BEWICK'S .ESOP.* Wr trust that the present and rising generation
are aware of the great excellence of the woodcuts of Bewick. No doubt we may be told that he is "old-fashioned," but then so are the hills. And if we can manage to get Vicat, Cole, or Millais to paint a glimpse of them for us, even the most enlightened among us can endure their being so old. A fine, very great, and genuine genius was that of Thomas Bewick, the Newcastle engraver. Engravers have often done much greater work than scores of painters. Without an effort, we think of Diirer and Marc Antonio, of Miller and Samuel Cousins. Some such "engraver "as these was Bewick. But apart from his artistic endowments, that were of the highest order, be was a true and earnest student of nature, a real "naturalist," in its best sense, not a great collector of birds and pinned butterflies, interesting as such a man is who does not take an undue, pedantic pride in his specialties, and his discoveries of a hair here or a line there ; and above all, not a naturalist, or rather an unnaturalist, who subjected the objects of his wonder to experiments and vivisections, if haply he might discover a remedy for those who would rather expire themselves, than be healed with the salve extracted from the tor- tured frames of marvellous and innocent creatures ; nevertheless, Bewick was a naturalist in a sense that is perhaps higher than any other. He was a patient and lynx-eyed observer of those by-paths of living nature—noticed but by the few—where curious realms of interest and poetry, varied by grotesquely weird and humorous elements, open themselves out to the silent watcher of the wild creatures in their native homes. And happily, this wild witchery of nature does exist, in an endless, beautiful order, far beyond the scope of and notwithstanding the private specula- tions of the "king of the beasts" as to the doctrine of the struggle for existence, rendered more exciting by his warm, prac- tical assistance in it with "gins," and physiological laboratories, and ovens divorced from their wholesome offices to other and unsavoury ends. But this comparative impotence of the human factor in its uglier aspect is the consoling fact that makes us trust that the cruelties of mankind, though inevitable, are within control. To a man like Bewick, it is not too much to say that the vision of Nature was a series of sacred tableaux.
Beiricls Select Fables. London : Longmans and Co.
When rambling in the Scottish woods, he watched the wood- pigeon, sitting alone amid the fir-branch, the bright, clear burn below her murmuring the same tune as in the days of the Queen of Scots, he noted her mild round eye, her feathers preened exquisitely and laid smoothly in their place, just as he would have laid them, had he but been given the power over them that he did possess over their loving image on his little plane of box. What was it to him but an agony to see the bird shot and skinned, and have expounded to him the foundations and structure of this iridescent heap of claw and feathers ? The last films due to life and colour and breathing rhythm were indeed for him the essential finishing-touches of the bird, exhibiting their tiny gold ripplings and plumy hollows to form a palpitating, living creature, pale lilac in the warm sunset. With the mild note that issued trustfully from her slender throat stopped, and her ringed eye glazed and dull, all the chief beauty and in- terest of the bird was gone, to men like Bewick and Thomas Edward. This principle of living beauty penetrates the whole structure, per- meates through and through the preparatory constructions, and is laid, as a lovely, closely-woven garment, where it usually meets the eye of man. Not beauty in any specialist's sense, not alone the beauty that an expert doubtless sees in the successful in- termingling of complicated oily cogs ; but harmony, beauty so arranged as to completely satisfy the mind and heart ; and yet is never too bright, seldom too dim, and not to be ticketed under the analogies of the theories of the schools of Art, whether of the " Impressionists " or the "Realists," the "Classi- cist "or the" Prae-Raphaelites." But the men of science who ignore the overwhelming significance of this element of beauty will never enlighten men much about animate creation. It is as though in pretending to expound to us the essentials of Gothic architecture, with its labyrinth of sculptured and delicate foliage, in due and rich effect upon a form of fine proportion and grace, they were to rest content with explaining the ground-plans, and holding forth to us on the character of the elevation. Some recent works* of Mr. Ruskin bear directly upon this neglect by so- called science, of what may be, in all probability, among the chief raisons dare of these specific existences in the kingdom of nature. We do not, indeed, affirm that Mr. Ruskin affords us an adequate clue to the whence, though perhaps he does in a great measure to the wherefore, of beauty. Nevertheless, he gives a multitude of most striking and, in our opinion, most truthful indications of the directions in which real men of "science "—of true and essential knowledge—should pursue, as they have in a few renowned instances pursued, their reverent inquiries amongst sentient creatures.
The present book is a reprint of one of Bewick's earliest works. As such, the wood-blocks before us are to be regarded only as his elementary efforts. They are very much coarser, and less poetical, less fine in every respect, than the matchless and per- fect gems of engraving that lie produced in his British Birds,
British Quadrupeds, and a later edition of his Fa/des. Still, there is plenty of keen and humorous observation, and much homely beauty already perceptible in them. Indeed, the very coarseness of the blocks (we use " coarse " in a comparat ive sense, of course—compared to some of the saucyandshowy wood - mating of to-day, these are wrought in simplicity, tenderness, and sin- cerity) has probably been the condition of their reproduction, after so many years. These very blocks, we are told in the pre- face, were used originally in 1784, for the edition published by Saint, of Newcastle, and have been reissued more than once since then.
In llewick's best work, his fresh and sweet landscapes are fully as beautiful as his untiring watchfulness among tile animals. We have seen some of his engravings, perhaps two inches square, with a reach of landscape in it worthy of Turner, and not unlike in parts to some of the finest qualities of Turner's water-colour work. Ile would give us a hilly distance, with its familiar clump of firs here, and the grassy slope leading from them to a cluster of cottages among other trees there ; a slender ash, quite distinct from the alders and elms ; and far away beyond them, possibili- ties of many similar scenes, in yet smaller compass ; while towards the unobtrusive spectator, the road winds round the plantation, and gradually, imperceptibly we find ourselves watching his pack of hounds out for their morning's run, fresh and keen-scented, one of them lagging a bit to scratch his ear, an intensely canine expression, studied very marvellously from nature, lighting his eye, and the measured clatter of the huntsman's cob, strikes our imaginative sense. And all this, remember, is an inch and a half of
* Published by 0. Allen, Orpington.
box-wood, clearly, keenly, finely, freshly notched, as though the spirit of Nature herself had breathed a tiny image of her fair and ample handiwork upon its little roughened surface.
This book is an excellent one for its object. The fables are well told, their precision and correctness being probably due to the supervision of Oliver Goldsmith for the 1784 edition. There is also a life of ..-Esop, the wise and great father of the art of parable- teaching ; and an essay upon Fable, both of which, it has been con- jectured, are from the pen of Goldsmith. Happy the childhood that has easy and frequent access to a book like this. Good art alone should be offered to the uninitiated and the uncultivated classes, and those restless little seekers after truth in the state that Professor Clifford elegantly comments upon as "childhood and ignorance."
We believe it to be a profound mistake to offer " elementary " or second-rate art to young people, on the score of what appears to us to be unformed or blind powers of perception in them. The following fable may be given as an instance that has already called forth some of Bewick's finer gifts :—
" Tire WOLF IN DISGUISE.—There would be little chance of detecting hypocrisy, were it not always addicted to over-act its part. A wolf, who by frequent visits to a flock of sheep in his neighbourhood, began to be extremely well known to them, thought it expedient, for the more successful carrying on his depredations, to appear in a new character. To this end, he disguised himself in a shepherd's habit ; and resting his fore-feet upon a stick, which served him by way of crook, be softly made his approach towards the fold. It happened that the shepherd and his dog were both of them extended on the grass fast asleep, so that he would certainly have succeeded in his project, if he had not imprudently attempted to imitate the shepherd's voice. The horrid voice awakened them both ; when the wolf, encumbered with his dis- guise, and finding it impossible either to resist or flee, yielded up his life an easy prey to the shepherd's dog."
In the minute cut appended to this, we have the dog suddenly aroused, and straining his eyes eagerly in the direction of the sheep, persistently watching in one direction, as dogs do, though he sees nothing amiss, the scent of the wolf not having yet reached him. This shepherd dog is exactly a quarter of an inch long, yet the intense straining of his eye, his pricked-up ears, and his legs trembling for a spring, when be sees whither, are rendered inimitably. The shepherd behind him already sees the wolf ; as for the sheep, some are standing in a row as still as the dog, only, being sheep, look at the wolf, while others are hustling, scrambling, and scampering in any direction, though perpetually endeavouring to make it identical with that of the main flock. Behind, we have the quiet fields, a barn or two, the distant wood-
lands, a mountain rendered in as clear and felt form as if Titian had drawn it, and a sky of flaky brilliance, looking far, far away.
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