"I"
(says the writer of the note) "was chiefly instrumental to this
ingenious artist's [Bewick's] excellence in this art. I first initiated
his master, Mr. Ra. Beilby (of Newcastle) into the art, and his first
essay was the execution of the cuts in my Treatise on Mensuration,
printed in 4to, 1770. Soon after I recommended the same artist to
execute the cuts to Dr. Horsley's edition of the works of Newton.
Accordingly Mr. B. had the job, who put them into the hands of his
assistant, Mr. Bewick, who executed them as his first work in wood, and
that in a most elegant manner, tho' spoiled in the printing by John
Nichols, the Black-letter printer. C.H. 1798."
"C.H." is Dr. Charles Hutton, the Woolwich mathematician. His note is a
little in the vaunting vein of that "founder of fortun's," the excellent
Uncle Pumblechook of _Great Expectations_, for his services scarcely
amounted to "initiating" Bewick or his master into the art of engraving
on wood. Moreover, his memory must have failed him, for Bewick, and not
Beilby, did the majority of the cuts to the _Mensuration_, including a
much-praised diagram of the tower of St. Nicholas Church at Newcastle,
afterwards a familiar object in the younger man's designs and
tail-pieces. Be this as it may, Dr. Hutton's note was surely worth
rescuing from the ruthless binder's plough.
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