“To Martin Bryson, on Tyne Brigg, An upright, downright, honest Whig.” Bryson’s name occurs on a title-page as early as 1722. His house and stock were destroyed by the great Newcastle fire of 1750, and after this occurrence he took, William Charnley, the son of a Penrith haberdasher and one of his many apprentices, into partnership. To diverge for a moment from this pedigree of bibliopoles, we come to by far the greatest name connected in any way with the production of books at Newcastle--that, of course, of Thomas Bewick; and though his life belongs more properly to the history of engraving, for many years the books that were illustrated by his pencil gave the northern town such a world-wide reputation that we feel justified in devoting a page or two to his memory. Thomas Bewick was born at Cherryburn, twelve miles to the west of Newcastle, in 1753, receiving a limited, but as far as it went a thorough education; his genius displayed itself in early childish days by such chalk drawings on barn-walls and stable-doors as have almost invariably discovered the bent of youthful artistic genius. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to Mr. Beilby, of Newcastle, an engraver in copper-plate, and though Beilby’s business lay rather in the production of brass door-plates, and the emblazoning of spoons and watches, than in Fine Art illustrations, the master soon appreciated and encouraged his pupil’s wonderful talents. During the period of his apprenticeship, young Bewick paid only ninepence a week for his lodging, and brought back a coarse brown loaf in every weekly visit to his home at Cherryburn. As soon as his term of seven years had expired, he still continued in Beilby’s service, but devoted himself henceforth to wood-engraving. Shortly afterwards he received a premium from the Society of Arts for a woodcut of the “Huntsman and the Old Hound,” and this induced him in the following year to go to London in quest of labour and fortune, but he found the metropolis so little to his liking that he writes home: “I would rather be herding sheep on Mickley Bank-top than remain in London, although for doing so I was to be made the premier of England.” With his distaste for town life and his strong love for the country--for its scenery changing with every season, for its living forms of animal and plant life, for all, in short, that incessantly appealed to a wonderful artistic instinct, Bewick was easily persuaded by his old master, Beilby, to return to Newcastle, and enter into partnership with him--his brother John becoming their joint apprentice. The publication of the illustrations to “Gay’s Fables,” and the “Select Fables,” by the brothers, spread their reputation far and wide, and placed them far above competition in the art. In 1785, Thomas Bewick began the cuts for his “History of Quadrupeds,” though the work was not completed and published until 1790. The “text,” or literary