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ATHANIEL HURD, who was born in Boston, Feb. 13, 1730, and who died in 1777, was the best of our early engravers of book-plates. Very little is now known of him, the principal source of information being an article in the third volume of “The New England Magazine,” published in Boston in 1832 by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The only known portrait of Hurd, which is copied from an original painting of him by Copley, and which in 1832 was owned by a descendant of Hurd in Medford, Mass., also accompanies this article, and shows him as a young man with smooth face, very pleasing and intelligent features, and wearing a cap, white neck-cloth, and clothes of a pattern which give him a decidedly clerical appearance.

The only book-plate work mentioned in this article is the large plate for Harvard College. It is said that the prints done in red ink were for use in the highly valuable books which the students were not allowed to take from the library. Several brilliant caricatures, a portrait of the Rev.

Dr. Sewell of the Old South Church, done in 1764, and a few other examples of his art are mentioned. He is (probably inaccurately) claimed to be the first person who undertook to engrave on copper in the United States. He was a man of natural talent and real genius, was self-instructed in his art, and was regarded as the foremost seal-cutter and die-engraver of his time, in this country.

The following advertisement from the Boston “Gazette” of April 28, 1760, is of some interest:—

“Nathaniel Hurd Informs his Customers he has remov’d his shop from Maccarty’s Corner on the Exchange to the Back Part of the opposite Brick Building, where Mr. Ezekiel Price kept his Office, where he continues to do all Sorts of Goldsmiths Work. Likewise engraves in Gold, Silver, Copper, Brass, and Steel, in the neatest Manner, and at reasonable Rate.”

Hurd worked principally in the Chippendale style; he made some plates in the Jacobean and a few in the Ribbon and Wreath styles, but he died before the latter was much in use, and the former was really going out when he took up the making of plates. Judging from the appearance of his work, his first attempts were in the Chippendale style, and the few Jacobeans he made were done after he had attained considerable efficiency.

One of his earliest specimens was undoubtedly the plate of Edward Augustus Holyoke, the famous doctor of Boston, who lived to be one hundred years old, and who was but a year or two the senior of Hurd. In this plate he used a design which he evidently believed he could improve upon, and in which he felt there were good features, for we find a number of future plates of very similar design but much better execution. In the Holyoke plate the work is very crude, the lines are stiff, the drawing is poor, and the lettering of the motto and name are not good. An ugly scroll is placed under the name, and the festoon of cloth which is draped at the bottom of the frame and around the motto ribbon is especially poor; the shell at the base of the escutcheon which figures so often in future plates is here used, and the queer little flow of water from it would not be recognized as such were this the only specimen in which it occurs; the arrangement of the rose sprays, the form of the shield, and the employment of the shelly edge show a thorough study of the elements of this style. Very likely this design was copied in great part from some foreign example which had come into his possession.

In the Thomas Dering plate, which is the earliest plate dated and signed by an American engraver, this same design is improved upon; it is more compact in appearance, a little freer in execution, and the drawing is improved. The name is still not very well engraved, and top-heavy flourishes weigh down the capitals.

In the Theodore Atkinson plate the same design is still further improved upon; the flow of water from the scallop shell is here caught in a little bowl, a little additional flowery ornamentation is added, and the heraldic drawing is better. The name is again embellished with graceless flourishes.

The design seems to reach perfection in the Wentworth plate; every feature is markedly better, the water still flows out of the scallop shell, the same shaped shield is used and the motto is placed upon a graceful ribbon with ends which run off into fancy foliations. The name is neat in appearance, but still there are too many scrolls.