English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 18th century
'No Greek work is grander than the angry dog,' he says, referring to
a little picture of which an early proof, on the old rag-paper held
by collectors to be the only fitting background for a Bewick, now lies
before us. A tramp, with his wallet or poke at his side, his tattered
trousers corded at the knees, and his head bound with a handkerchief
under his shapeless hat, has shambled, in his furtive, sidelong fashion,
through the open gates of a park, only to find himself confronted by a
watchful and resolute mastiff. He lifts his stick, carved rudely with
a bird's head, the minute eye and beak of which are perfectly clear
through a magnifying glass, and holds it mechanically with both hands
across his body, just as tramps have done immemorially since the days
of the Dutchman Jacob Gats, in whose famous 'Emblems' there is an almost
similar scene. The dog, which you may entirely cover with a shilling,
is magnificent. There is not a line in its body which does not tell. The
brindling of the back, the white marking of the neck and chest--to say
nothing of the absolute moral superiority of the canine guardian to
the cowering interloper--are all conveyed with the strictest economy of
stroke. Another tailpiece, to which Ruskin gives the adjective 'superb,'
shows a man crossing a river, probably the Tyne. The ice has thawed into
dark pools on either side, and snow has fallen on what remains. He
has strapped his bundle and stick at his back, and, with the foresight
taught of necessity in those bridgeless days, is astride upon a long
bough, so that if by any chance the ice gives way, or he plumps into
some hidden fissure, he may still have hope of safety. From the bows
of the moored ferryboat in the background his dog anxiously watches his
progress. When its master is safe across, it will come bounding in his
tracks. The desolate stillness of the spot, the bleak, inhospitable look
of the snow-clad landscape, are admirably given. But Bewick is capable
of even higher things than these. He is capable of suggesting, in these
miniature compositions, moments of the keenest excitement, as, for
example, in the tailpiece to the Baboon in the second edition of the
'Quadrupeds.' A vicious-looking colt is feeding in a meadow; a little
tottering child of two or three plucks at its long tail. The colt's eye
is turned backward; its heel is ominously raised; and over the North
Country stile in the background a frightened relative comes rushing. The
strain of the tiny group is intense; but as the little boy was Bewick's
brother, who grew up to be a man, we know that no harm was done.
Strangely enough, the incident depicted is not without a hitherto
unnoticed parallel. Once, when Hartley Coleridge was a child, he came
home with the mark of a horse hoof impressed unmistakably upon his
pinafore. Being questioned, he admitted that he had been pulling hairs
out of a horse's tail; and his father could only conclude that the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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