wholly unable to
carry it out; and when a block with one of Leech's drawings upon it was
sent to him as a test, he offered the execution of it to his young
acquaintance, Joseph Swain. So pleased was Leech with the result that he
strongly recommended that the man who had cut such a block should, in
place of the middleman, be installed as manager of the engraving
department; and from that time forward that important portion of the
work has remained in the hands of one of _Punch's_ most faithful, loyal,
and talented servants, of whom _Punch_ has happily had so many.

Mr. Swain had been brought up by his father from Oxford, his natal
town, when he was nine years of age, and five years later had been
placed with N. Whittock, a draughtsman of Islington, to learn the art
and craft of wood-cutting. But though Mr. Whittock was something of an
artist, he was less of an engraver; and finding after a few years that
he was making but little progress, young Swain applied for instruction
to Thomas Williams. That distinguished engraver was one of the few
excellent "facsimile men" of the day; and he agreed to accept the
applicant as "improver." At that time he was engaged in engraving the
blocks of an edition of "Paul et Virginie"--the well-known illustrated
edition which was published in Paris in 1838. For at that time there
were fewer facsimile engravers in Paris than in London, and what there
were, in point of ability, were not to be compared with the Englishmen;
so that it was no uncommon thing for the best work to be sent from
France to be executed in this country. On this particular work
Meissonier, Johannot, Horace Vernet, and others had been engaged; and
when that was finished, the series of works published by Charles Knight
provided endless work for the skilled gravers at Williams' command:
Harvey's "Arabian Nights," "Shakespeare," and the "History of Greece,"
and other notable works. It was a great school of engravers that existed
then, both of masters and pupils, and included, besides Thomas Williams
himself, his brother and sister, Samuel and Mary Ann Williams (a
brilliant engraver she, who never gained her due of reputation), John
Thompson, Orrin Smith, W. J. Linton, John Jackson, Mason Jackson, W. T.
Greene, Robert Branston, Landells, the Dalziel Brothers,[27] and Edmund
Evans. Most of them were soon employed by W. Dickes, under whose
management the Abbotsford edition of Scott's works was being executed;
and to Dickes, Jo