Steel-engraved frontispieces to books on science, history, travels, architecture, and philosophy had become very common in the eighteenth century. The designs of these were more or less of a heavy classical type of architectural framing and allegorical figures, sometimes enclosing portraits or landscape views. Hogarth’s engraved designs and the work of Flaxman maybe said to be at the opposite poles of art; the dramatic realism of the former is in strong opposition to the classic idealism of the latter. The works of both have been used as book illustrations, but neither of them can be called book decorators, their engraved works being produced as plates, or as a series of pictures, and the text of the books written merely in explanation of the plates. The poet and highly imaginative artist, William Blake, in his designs for his “Songs of Innocence” (1789), and in his “Book of Job,” reverts to the old missal-painters’ manner of embodying together the text, ornament, and miniatures, in one decorative scheme of unity, in the artistic treatment of the page. Blake engraved his own designs, and printed them off in black and white, or sometimes in colour. During the later years in which steel engravings for books were in fashion, the revived art of wood-engraving was making a slow headway towards recognition and favour in England, and its complete revival was owing to the persistent efforts and genius of Thomas Bewick (1753-1828). Bewick was not only a wood-engraver and a craftsman of the highest order, but was an artist gifted with a fine feeling for humour and pathos, and many of his small compositions are characterized by a good deal of pictorial effect. His best works, from a technical point of view, are his illustrations of natural history, the finest of which are the illustrations in his book, the “History of British Birds,” which show Bewick at his best in the rendering of bird form and feather texture. He also designed and executed many dainty little compositions of landscapes with figures and animals as tailpieces. The school of Bewick, formed of his pupils and others, served to keep alive the art of wood-engraving until the revival was assured, for Bewick had a difficult task to get the public to appreciate his work during his lifetime. The names of his principal pupils were Luke Clennel, who was the most celebrated, and who was also a good water-colour painter; Charlton Nesbitt, Robert Johnson, and William Harvey. A self-educated engraver of some note was Robert Branston, of Lynn, Norfolk (1778-1827). John Thompson was a pupil of Branston, who excelled his master, and was the best engraver of his time in England.