he completed his apprenticeship in 1774 at the age of twenty-one,
the art of engraving and cutting on wood was just beginning to show
signs of life after more than a century and a half of occupying the
lowest position in the graphic arts. Since it could not produce a full
gamut of tones in the gray register, which could be managed brilliantly
by the copper plate media--line engraving, etching, mezzotint and
aquatint--it was confined to ruder and less exacting uses, such as
ornamental headbands and tailpieces for printers and as illustrations
for cheap popular broadsides. When good illustrations were needed in
books and periodicals, copper plate work was almost invariably used,
despite the fact that it was more costly, was much slower in execution
and printing, and had to be bound in with text in a separate operation.
But while the Society of Arts had begun to offer prizes for engraving or
cutting on wood (Bewick received such a prize in 1775) the medium was
still moribund. Dobson[8] described its status as follows:

During the earlier part of the eighteenth century engraving on wood
can scarcely be said to have flourished in England. It existed--so
much may be admitted--but it existed without recognition or
importance. In the useful little _Etat des Arts en Angleterre_,
published in 1755 by Roquet the enameller,--a treatise so catholic
in its scope that it included both cookery and medicine,--there is
no reference to the art of wood-engraving. In the _Artist's
Assistant_, to take another book which might be expected to afford
some information, even in the fifth edition of 1788, the subject
finds no record, even though engraving on metal, etching,
mezzotinto-scraping--to say nothing of "painting on silks, sattins,
etc." are treated with sufficient detail. Turning from these
authorities to the actual woodcuts of the period, it must be
admitted that the survey is not encouraging.

[Illustration: Figure 2.--Wood Engraving Procedure, showing manipulation
of the burin, from Chatto and Jackson, _A treatise on wood engraving_,
1861. (See footnote 6.)]

Earlier, among other critics of the deficiencies of the woodcut, Horace
Walpole[9] had remarked:

I have said, and for two reasons, shall say little of wooden cuts;
that art never was executed with any perfection in England;
engraving on metal was a final improvement of the art, and supplied