the more authentic.

The Contemporary View of Bewick

After 1790, when his _A general history of quadrupeds_ appeared with its
vivid animals and its humorous and mordant tailpiece vignettes, he was
hailed in terms that have hardly been matched for adulation. Certainly
no mere book illustrator ever received equal acclaim. He was pronounced
a great artist, a great man, an outstanding moralist and reformer, and
the master of a new pictorial method. This flood of eulogy rose
increasingly during his lifetime and continued throughout the remainder
of the 19th century. It came from literary men and women who saw him as
the artist of the common man; from the pious who recognized him as a
commentator on the vanities and hardships of life (but who sometimes
deplored the frankness of his subjects); from bibliophiles who welcomed
him as a revolutionary illustrator; and from fellow wood engravers for
whom he was the indispensable trail blazer.

During the initial wave of Bewick appreciation, the usually sober
Wordsworth wrote in the 1805 edition of _Lyrical ballads_:[1]

O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,
And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne!
Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,
For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.
What feats would I work with my magical hand!
Book learning and books would be banished the land.

If art critics as a class were the most conservative in their estimates
of his ability, it was one of the most eminent, John Ruskin, whose
praise went to most extravagant lengths. Bewick, he asserted, as late as
1890,[2] "... without training, was Holbein's equal ... in this frame
are set together a drawing by Hans Holbein, and one by Thomas Bewick. I
know which is most scholarly; but I do _not_ know which is best."
Linking Bewick with Botticelli as a draughtsman, he added:[3] "I know no
drawing so subtle as Bewick's since the fifteenth century, except
Holbein's and Turner's." And as a typical example of popular
appreciation, the following, from the June 1828 issue of _Blackwood's
Magazine_, appearing a few months before Bewick's death, should suffice:

Have we forgotten, in our hurried and imperfect enumeration of wise
worthies,--have we forgotten "_The Genius that dwells on the banks
of the Tyne_," the matchless, Inimitable Bewick? No. His books lie
in our parlour, dining-room, drawing-room, study-table, and are
never out