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+Project Gutenberg's George Cruikshank, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: George Cruikshank
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: May 21, 2006 [EBook #2648]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE CRUIKSHANK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
+
+
+By William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+
+* Reprinted from the Westminster Review for June, 1840. (No 66.)
+
+
+Accusations of ingratitude, and just accusations no doubt, are made
+against every inhabitant of this wicked world, and the fact is, that a
+man who is ceaselessly engaged in its trouble and turmoil, borne hither
+and thither upon the fierce waves of the crowd, bustling, shifting,
+struggling to keep himself somewhat above water--fighting for
+reputation, or more likely for bread, and ceaselessly occupied to-day
+with plans for appeasing the eternal appetite of inevitable hunger
+to-morrow--a man in such straits has hardly time to think of anything
+but himself, and, as in a sinking ship, must make his own rush for the
+boats, and fight, struggle, and trample for safety. In the midst of such
+a combat as this, the "ingenious arts, which prevent the ferocity of
+the manners, and act upon them as an emollient" (as the philosophic bard
+remarks in the Latin Grammar) are likely to be jostled to death, and
+then forgotten. The world will allow no such compromises between it and
+that which does not belong to it--no two gods must we serve; but (as one
+has seen in some old portraits) the horrible glazed eyes of Necessity
+are always fixed upon you; fly away as you will, black Care sits behind
+you, and with his ceaseless gloomy croaking drowns the voice of all more
+cheerful companions. Happy he whose fortune has placed him where there
+is calm and plenty, and who has the wisdom not to give up his quiet in
+quest of visionary gain.
+
+Here is, no doubt, the reason why a man, after the period of his
+boyhood, or first youth, makes so few friends. Want and ambition (new
+acquaintances which are introduced to him along with his beard) thrust
+away all other society from him. Some old friends remain, it is true,
+but these are become as a habit--a part of your selfishness; and,
+for new ones, they are selfish as you are. Neither member of the new
+partnership has the capital of affection and kindly feeling, or can even
+afford the time that is requisite for the establishment of the new firm.
+Damp and chill the shades of the prison-house begin to close round
+us, and that "vision splendid" which has accompanied our steps in our
+journey daily farther from the east, fades away and dies into the light
+of common day.
+
+And what a common day! what a foggy, dull, shivering apology for light
+is this kind of muddy twilight through which we are about to tramp and
+flounder for the rest of our existence, wandering farther and farther
+from the beauty and freshness and from the kindly gushing springs of
+clear gladness that made all around us green in our youth! One wanders
+and gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in a storm
+of politics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to rise--to
+mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink a stone to the
+bottom.
+
+The reader who has seen the name affixed to the head of this article
+scarcely expected to be entertained with a declamation upon ingratitude,
+youth, and the vanity of human pursuits, which may seem at first sight
+to have little to do with the subject in hand. But (although we reserve
+the privilege of discoursing upon whatever subject shall suit us, and by
+no means admit the public has any right to ask in our sentences for any
+meaning, or any connection whatever) it happens that, in this particular
+instance, there is an undoubted connection. In Susan's case, as recorded
+by Wordsworth, what connection had the corner of Wood Street with a
+mountain ascending, a vision of trees, and a nest by the Dove? Why
+should the song of a thrush cause bright volumes of vapor to glide
+through Lothbury, and a river to flow on through the vale of Cheapside?
+As she stood at that corner of Wood Street, a mop and a pail in her hand
+most likely, she heard the bird singing, and straight-way began pining
+and yearning for the days of her youth, forgetting the proper business
+of the pail and mop. Even so we are moved by the sight of some of Mr.
+Cruikshank's works--the "Busen fuhlt sich jugendlich erschuttert," the
+"schwankende Gestalten" of youth flit before one again,--Cruikshank's
+thrush begins to pipe and carol, as in the days of boyhood; hence misty
+moralities, reflections, and sad and pleasant remembrances arise. He
+is the friend of the young especially. Have we not read, all the
+story-books that his wonderful pencil has illustrated? Did we not
+forego tarts, in order to buy his "Breaking-up," or his "Fashionable
+Monstrosities" of the year eighteen hundred and something? Have we
+not before us, at this very moment, a print,--one of the admirable
+"Illustrations of Phrenology"--which entire work was purchased by
+a joint-stock company of boys, each drawing lots afterwards for the
+separate prints, and taking his choice in rotation? The writer of this,
+too, had the honor of drawing the first lot, and seized immediately
+upon "Philoprogenitiveness"--a marvellous print (our copy is not at
+all improved by being colored, which operation we performed on it
+ourselves)--a marvellous print, indeed,--full of ingenuity and fine
+jovial humor. A father, possessor of an enormous nose and family, is
+surrounded by the latter, who are, some of them, embracing the former.
+The composition writhes and twists about like the Kermes of Rubens. No
+less than seven little men and women in nightcaps, in frocks, in bibs,
+in breeches, are clambering about the head, knees, and arms of the man
+with the nose; their noses, too, are preternaturally developed--the
+twins in the cradle have noses of the most considerable kind. The second
+daughter, who is watching them; the youngest but two, who sits squalling
+in a certain wicker chair; the eldest son, who is yawning; the eldest
+daughter, who is preparing with the gravy of two mutton-chops a savory
+dish of Yorkshire pudding for eighteen persons; the youths who are
+examining her operations (one a literary gentleman, in a remarkably neat
+nightcap and pinafore, who has just had his finger in the pudding);
+the genius who is at work on the slate, and the two honest lads who are
+hugging the good-humored washerwoman, their mother,--all, all, save,
+this worthy woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome
+certainly are they, and yet everybody must be charmed with the picture.
+It is full of grotesque beauty. The artist has at the back of his own
+skull, we are certain, a huge bump of philoprogenitiveness. He loves
+children in his heart; every one of those he has drawn is perfectly
+happy, and jovial, and affectionate, and innocent as possible. He makes
+them with large noses, but he loves them, and you always find something
+kind in the midst of his humor, and the ugliness redeemed by a sly
+touch of beauty. The smiling mother reconciles one with all the hideous
+family: they have all something of the mother in them--something kind,
+and generous, and tender.
+
+Knight's, in Sweeting's Alley; Fairburn's, in a court off Ludgate
+Hill; Hone's, in Fleet Street--bright, enchanted palaces, which George
+Cruikshank used to people with grinning, fantastical imps, and merry,
+harmless sprites,--where are they? Fairburn's shop knows him no more;
+not only has Knight disappeared from Sweeting's Alley, but, as we are
+given to understand, Sweetings Alley has disappeared from the face of
+the globe. Slop, the atrocious Castlereagh, the sainted Caroline (in
+a tight pelisse, with feathers in her head), the "Dandy of sixty," who
+used to glance at us from Hone's friendly windows--where are they? Mr.
+Cruikshank may have drawn a thousand better things since the days when
+these were; but they are to us a thousand times more pleasing than
+anything else he has done. How we used to believe in them! to stray
+miles out of the way on holidays, in order to ponder for an hour before
+that delightful window in Sweeting's Alley! in walks through Fleet
+Street, to vanish abruptly down Fairburn's passage, and there make one
+at his "charming gratis" exhibition. There used to be a crowd round the
+window in those days, of grinning, good-natured mechanics, who spelt
+the songs, and spoke them out for the benefit of the company, and who
+received the points of humor with a general sympathizing roar. Where are
+these people now? You never hear any laughing at HB.; his pictures are a
+great deal too genteel for that--polite points of wit, which strike one
+as exceedingly clever and pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet,
+gentleman-like kind of way.
+
+There must be no smiling with Cruikshank. A man who does not laugh
+outright is a dullard, and has no heart; even the old dandy of sixty
+must have laughed at his own wondrous grotesque image, as they say Louis
+Philippe did, who saw all the caricatures that were made of himself. And
+there are some of Cruikshank's designs which have the blessed faculty of
+creating laughter as often as you see them. As Diggory says in the play,
+who is bidden by his master not to laugh while waiting at table--"Don't
+tell the story of Grouse in the Gun-room, master, or I can't help
+laughing." Repeat that history ever so often, and at the proper moment,
+honest Diggory is sure to explode. Every man, no doubt, who loves
+Cruikshank has his "Grouse in the Gun-room." There is a fellow in the
+"Points of Humor" who is offering to eat up a certain little general,
+that has made us happy any time these sixteen years: his huge mouth is a
+perpetual well of laughter--buckets full of fun can be drawn from it. We
+have formed no such friendships as that boyish one of the man with the
+mouth. But though, in our eyes, Mr. Cruikshank reached his apogee some
+eighteen years since, it must not be imagined that such is really the
+case. Eighteen sets of children have since then learned to love and
+admire him, and may many more of their successors be brought up in the
+same delightful faith. It is not the artist who fails, but the men who
+grow cold--the men, from whom the illusions (why illusions? realities)
+of youth disappear one by one; who have no leisure to be happy, no
+blessed holidays, but only fresh cares at Midsummer and Christmas, being
+the inevitable seasons which bring us bills instead of pleasures. Tom,
+who comes bounding home from school, has the doctor's account in his
+trunk, and his father goes to sleep at the pantomime to which he takes
+him. Pater infelix, you too have laughed at clown, and the magic wand of
+spangled harlequin; what delightful enchantment did it wave around you,
+in the golden days "when George the Third was king!" But our clown lies
+in his grave; and our harlequin, Ellar, prince of how many enchanted
+islands, was he not at Bow Street the other day,* in his dirty,
+tattered, faded motley--seized as a law-breaker, for acting at a penny
+theatre, after having wellnigh starved in the streets, where nobody
+would listen to his old guitar? No one gave a shilling to bless him: not
+one of us who owe him so much.
+
+     * This was written in 1840.
+
+We know not if Mr. Cruikshank will be very well pleased at finding his
+name in such company as that of Clown and Harlequin; but he, like them,
+is certainly the children's friend. His drawings abound in feeling for
+these little ones, and hideous as in the course of his duty he is from
+time to time compelled to design them, he never sketches one without
+a certain pity for it, and imparting to the figure a certain grotesque
+grace. In happy schoolboys he revels; plum-pudding and holidays his
+needle has engraved over and over again; there is a design in one of the
+comic almanacs of some young gentlemen who are employed in administering
+to a schoolfellow the correction of the pump, which is as graceful
+and elegant as a drawing of Stothard. Dull books about children George
+Cruikshank makes bright with illustrations--there is one published by
+the ingenious and opulent Mr. Tegg. It is entitled "Mirth and Morality,"
+the mirth being, for the most part, on the side of the designer--the
+morality, unexceptionable certainly, the author's capital. Here are
+then, to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied by George
+Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a common!
+Such a light, brisk, airy, gentleman-like drawing was never made upon
+such a theme. Who, cries the author--
+
+         "Who has not chased the butterfly,
+            And crushed its slender legs and wings,
+          And heaved a moralizing sigh:
+            Alas! how frail are human things!"
+
+A very unexceptionable morality truly; but it would have puzzled another
+than George Cruikshank to make mirth out of it as he has done. Away,
+surely not on the wings of these verses, Cruikshank's imagination begins
+to soar; and he makes us three darling little men on a green common,
+backed by old farmhouses, somewhere about May. A great mixture of blue
+and clouds in the air, a strong fresh breeze stirring, Tom's jacket
+flapping in the same, in order to bring down the insect queen or king
+of spring that is fluttering above him,--he renders all this with a few
+strokes on a little block of wood not two inches square, upon which one
+may gaze for hours, so merry and lifelike a scene does it present. What
+a charming creative power is this, what a privilege--to be a god, and
+create little worlds upon paper, and whole generations of smiling,
+jovial men, women, and children half inch high, whose portraits are
+carried abroad, and have the faculty of making us monsters of six feet
+curious and happy in our turn. Now, who would imagine that an artist
+could make anything of such a subject as this? The writer begins by
+stating,--
+
+         "I love to go back to the days of my youth,
+            And to reckon my joys to the letter,
+          And to count o'er the friends that I have in the world,
+            Ay, and those who are gone to a better."
+
+This brings him to the consideration of his uncle. "Of all the men
+I have ever known," says he, "my uncle united the greatest degree of
+cheerfulness with the sobriety of manhood. Though a man when I was a
+boy, he was yet one of the most agreeable companions I ever possessed.
+. . . He embarked for America, and nearly twenty years passed by before
+he came back again; . . . but oh, how altered!--he was in every sense
+of the word an old man, his body and mind were enfeebled, and second
+childishness had come upon him. How often have I bent over him, vainly
+endeavoring to recall to his memory the scenes we had shared together:
+and how frequently, with an aching heart, have I gazed on his vacant and
+lustreless eye, while he has amused himself in clapping his hands and
+singing with a quavering voice a verse of a psalm." Alas! such are
+the consequences of long residences in America, and of old age even in
+uncles! Well, the point of this morality is, that the uncle one day in
+the morning of life vowed that he would catch his two nephews and tie
+them together, ay, and actually did so, for all the efforts the rogues
+made to run away from him; but he was so fatigued that he declared
+he never would make the attempt again, whereupon the nephew
+remarks,--"Often since then, when engaged in enterprises beyond my
+strength, have I called to mind the determination of my uncle."
+
+Does it not seem impossible to make a picture out of this? And yet
+George Cruikshank has produced a charming design, in which the uncles
+and nephews are so prettily portrayed that one is reconciled to their
+existence, with all their moralities. Many more of the mirths in
+this little book are excellent, especially a great figure of a
+parson entering church on horseback,--an enormous parson truly, calm,
+unconscious, unwieldy. As Zeuxis had a bevy of virgins in order to make
+his famous picture--his express virgin--a clerical host must have passed
+under Cruikshank's eyes before he sketched this little, enormous parson
+of parsons.
+
+Being on the subject of children's books, how shall we enough praise the
+delightful German nursery-tales, and Cruikshank's illustrations of
+them? We coupled his name with pantomime awhile since, and sure never
+pantomimes were more charming than these. Of all the artists that ever
+drew, from Michael Angelo upwards and downwards, Cruikshank was the man
+to illustrate these tales, and give them just the proper admixture of
+the grotesque, the wonderful, and the graceful. May all Mother Bunch's
+collection be similarly indebted to him; may "Jack the Giant Killer,"
+may "Tom Thumb," may "Puss in Boots," be one day revivified by his
+pencil. Is not Whittington sitting yet on Highgate hill, and poor
+Cinderella (in that sweetest of all fairy stories) still pining in her
+lonely chimney-nook? A man who has a true affection for these delightful
+companions of his youth is bound to be grateful to them if he can, and
+we pray Mr. Cruikshank to remember them.
+
+It is folly to say that this or that kind of humor is too good for the
+public, that only a chosen few can relish it. The best humor that
+we know of has been as eagerly received by the public as by the most
+delicate connoisseur. There is hardly a man in England who can read but
+will laugh at Falstaff and the humor of Joseph Andrews; and honest Mr.
+Pickwick's story can be felt and loved by any person above the age of
+six. Some may have a keener enjoyment of it than others, but all the
+world can be merry over it, and is always ready to welcome it. The best
+criterion of good humor is success, and what a share of this has Mr.
+Cruikshank had! how many millions of mortals has he made happy! We have
+heard very profound persons talk philosophically of the marvellous
+and mysterious manner in which he has suited himself to the time--fait
+vibrer la fibre populaire (as Napoleon boasted of himself), supplied a
+peculiar want felt at a peculiar period, the simple secret of which
+is, as we take it, that he, living amongst the public, has with them
+a general wide-hearted sympathy, that he laughs at what they laugh at,
+that he has a kindly spirit of enjoyment, with not a morsel of mysticism
+in his composition; that he pities and loves the poor, and jokes at the
+follies of the great, and that he addresses all in a perfectly sincere
+and manly way. To be greatly successful as a professional humorist,
+as in any other calling, a man must be quite honest, and show that his
+heart is in his work. A bad preacher will get admiration and a
+hearing with this point in his favor, where a man of three times his
+acquirements will only find indifference and coldness. Is any man more
+remarkable than our artist for telling the truth after his own manner?
+Hogarth's honesty of purpose was as conspicuous in an earlier time,
+and we fancy that Gilray would have been far more successful and more
+powerful but for that unhappy bribe, which turned the whole course of
+his humor into an unnatural channel. Cruikshank would not for any
+bribe say what he did not think, or lend his aid to sneer down anything
+meritorious, or to praise any thing or person that deserved censure.
+When he levelled his wit against the Regent, and did his very prettiest
+for the Princess, he most certainly believed, along with the great
+body of the people whom he represents, that the Princess was the most
+spotless, pure-mannered darling of a Princess that ever married a
+heartless debauchee of a Prince Royal. Did not millions believe
+with him, and noble and learned lords take their oaths to her Royal
+Highness's innocence? Cruikshank would not stand by and see a woman
+ill-used, and so struck in for her rescue, he and the people belaboring
+with all their might the party who were making the attack, and
+determining, from pure sympathy and indignation, that the woman must be
+innocent because her husband treated her so foully.
+
+To be sure we have never heard so much from Mr. Cruikshank's own lips,
+but any man who will examine these odd drawings, which first made him
+famous, will see what an honest hearty hatred the champion of woman has
+for all who abuse her, and will admire the energy with which he flings
+his wood-blocks at all who side against her. Canning, Castlereagh,
+Bexley, Sidmouth, he is at them, one and all; and as for the Prince, up
+to what a whipping-post of ridicule did he tie that unfortunate old man!
+And do not let squeamish Tories cry out about disloyalty; if the crown
+does wrong, the crown must be corrected by the nation, out of respect,
+of course, for the crown. In those days, and by those people who so
+bitterly attacked the son, no word was ever breathed against the father,
+simply because he was a good husband, and a sober, thrifty, pious,
+orderly man.
+
+This attack upon the Prince Regent we believe to have been Mr.
+Cruikshank's only effort as a party politician. Some early manifestoes
+against Napoleon we find, it is true, done in the regular John Bull
+style, with the Gilray model for the little upstart Corsican: but as
+soon as the Emperor had yielded to stern fortune our artist's heart
+relented (as Beranger's did on the other side of the water), and many
+of our readers will doubtless recollect a fine drawing of "Louis XVIII.
+trying on Napoleon's boots," which did not certainly fit the gouty
+son of Saint Louis. Such satirical hits as these, however, must not be
+considered as political, or as anything more than the expression of the
+artist's national British idea of Frenchmen.
+
+It must be confessed that for that great nation Mr. Cruikshank
+entertains a considerable contempt. Let the reader examine the "Life in
+Paris," or the five hundred designs in which Frenchmen are introduced,
+and he will find them almost invariably thin, with ludicrous
+spindle-shanks, pigtails, outstretched hands, shrugging shoulders, and
+queer hair and mustachios. He has the British idea of a Frenchman; and
+if he does not believe that the inhabitants of France are for the most
+part dancing-masters and barbers, yet takes care to depict such in
+preference, and would not speak too well of them. It is curious
+how these traditions endure. In France, at the present moment, the
+Englishman on the stage is the caricatured Englishman at the time of the
+war, with a shock red head, a long white coat, and invariable gaiters.
+Those who wish to study this subject should peruse Monsieur Paul de
+Kock's histories of "Lord Boulingrog" and "Lady Crockmilove." On the
+other hand, the old emigre has taken his station amongst us, and we
+doubt if a good British gallery would understand that such and such a
+character WAS a Frenchman unless he appeared in the ancient traditional
+costume.
+
+A curious book, called "Life in Paris," published in 1822, contains
+a number of the artist's plates in the aquatint style; and though we
+believe he had never been in that capital, the designs have a great
+deal of life in them, and pass muster very well. A villanous race of
+shoulder-shrugging mortals are his Frenchmen indeed. And the heroes
+of the tale, a certain Mr. Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain
+O'Shuffleton, are made to show the true British superiority on every
+occasion when Britons and French are brought together. This book was one
+among the many that the designer's genius has caused to be popular; the
+plates are not carefully executed, but, being colored, have a pleasant,
+lively look. The same style was adopted in the once famous book called
+"Tom and Jerry, or Life in London," which must have a word of notice
+here, for, although by no means Mr. Cruikshank's best work, his
+reputation was extraordinarily raised by it. Tom and Jerry were as
+popular twenty years since as Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller now are;
+and often have we wished, while reading the biographies of the latter
+celebrated personages, that they had been described as well by Mr.
+Cruikshank's pencil as by Mr. Dickens's pen.
+
+As for Tom and Jerry, to show the mutability of human affairs and the
+evanescent nature of reputation, we have been to the British Museum and
+no less than five circulating libraries in quest of the book, and "Life
+in London," alas, is not to be found at any one of them. We can only,
+therefore, speak of the work from recollection, but have still a very
+clear remembrance of the leather gaiters of Jerry Hawthorn, the green
+spectacles of Logic, and the hooked nose of Corinthian Tom. They were
+the schoolboy's delight; and in the days when the work appeared we
+firmly believed the three heroes above named to be types of the most
+elegant, fashionable young fellows the town afforded, and thought
+their occupations and amusements were those of all high-bred English
+gentlemen. Tom knocking down the watchman at Temple Bar; Tom and Jerry
+dancing at Almack's; or flirting in the saloon at the theatre; at the
+night-houses, after the play; at Tom Cribb's, examining the silver cup
+then in the possession of that champion; at the chambers of Bob Logic,
+who, seated at a cabinet piano, plays a waltz to which Corinthian Tom
+and Kate are dancing; ambling gallantly in Rotten Row; or examining
+the poor fellow at Newgate who was having his chains knocked off before
+hanging: all these scenes remain indelibly engraved upon the mind, and
+so far we are independent of all the circulating libraries in London.
+
+As to the literary contents of the book, they have passed sheer away. It
+was, most likely, not particularly refined; nay, the chances are that it
+was absolutely vulgar. But it must have had some merit of its own, that
+is clear; it must have given striking descriptions of life in some part
+or other of London, for all London read it, and went to see it in its
+dramatic shape. The artist, it is said, wished to close the career
+of the three heroes by bringing them all to ruin, but the writer, or
+publishers, would not allow any such melancholy subjects to dash the
+merriment of the public, and we believe Tom, Jerry, and Logic, were
+married off at the end of the tale, as if they had been the most moral
+personages in the world. There is some goodness in this pity, which
+authors and the public are disposed to show towards certain agreeable,
+disreputable characters of romance. Who would mar the prospects of
+honest Roderick Random, or Charles Surface, or Tom Jones? only a very
+stern moralist indeed. And in regard of Jerry Hawthorn and that hero
+without a surname, Corinthian Tom, Mr. Cruikshank, we make little doubt,
+was glad in his heart that he was not allowed to have his own way.
+
+Soon after the "Tom and Jerry" and the "Life in Paris," Mr. Cruikshank
+produced a much more elaborate set of prints, in a work which was called
+"Points of Humor." These "Points" were selected from various comic
+works, and did not, we believe, extend beyond a couple of numbers,
+containing about a score of copper-plates. The collector of humorous
+designs cannot fail to have them in his portfolio, for they contain
+some of the very best efforts of Mr. Cruikshank's genius, and though not
+quite so highly labored as some of his later productions, are none the
+worse, in our opinion, for their comparative want of finish. All the
+effects are perfectly given, and the expression is as good as it could
+be in the most delicate engraving upon steel. The artist's style, too,
+was then completely formed; and, for our parts, we should say that we
+preferred his manner of 1825 to any other which he has adopted since.
+The first picture, which is called "The Point of Honor," illustrates the
+old story of the officer who, on being accused of cowardice for refusing
+to fight a duel, came among his brother officers and flung a
+lighted grenade down upon the floor, before which his comrades fled
+ignominiously. This design is capital, and the outward rush of heroes,
+walking, trampling, twisting, scuffling at the door, is in the best
+style of the grotesque. You see but the back of most of these gentlemen;
+into which, nevertheless, the artist has managed to throw an expression
+of ludicrous agony that one could scarcely have expected to find in
+such a part of the human figure. The next plate is not less good. It
+represents a couple who, having been found one night tipsy, and lying
+in the same gutter, were, by a charitable though misguided gentleman,
+supposed to be man and wife, and put comfortably to bed together. The
+morning came; fancy the surprise of this interesting pair when they
+awoke and discovered their situation. Fancy the manner, too, in which
+Cruikshank has depicted them, to which words cannot do justice. It is
+needless to state that this fortuitous and temporary union was followed
+by one more lasting and sentimental, and that these two worthy persons
+were married, and lived happily ever after.
+
+We should like to go through every one of these prints. There is the
+jolly miller, who, returning home at night, calls upon his wife to
+get him a supper, and falls to upon rashers of bacon and ale. How he
+gormandizes, that jolly miller! rasher after rasher, how they pass away
+frizzling and, smoking from the gridiron down that immense grinning gulf
+of a mouth. Poor wife! how she pines and frets, at that untimely hour of
+midnight to be obliged to fry, fry, fry perpetually, and minister to the
+monster's appetite. And yonder in the clock: what agonized face is that
+we see? By heavens, it is the squire of the parish. What business has he
+there? Let us not ask. Suffice it to say, that he has, in the hurry of
+the moment, left up stairs his br----; his--psha! a part of his dress,
+in short, with a number of bank-notes in the pockets. Look in the next
+page, and you will see the ferocious, bacon-devouring ruffian of a
+miller is actually causing this garment to be carried through the
+village and cried by the town-crier. And we blush to be obliged to
+say that the demoralized miller never offered to return the banknotes,
+although he was so mighty scrupulous in endeavoring to find an owner for
+the corduroy portfolio in which he had found them.
+
+Passing from this painful subject, we come, we regret to state, to a
+series of prints representing personages not a whit more moral. Burns's
+famous "Jolly Beggars" have all had their portraits drawn by Cruikshank.
+There is the lovely "hempen widow," quite as interesting and romantic as
+the famous Mrs. Sheppard, who has at the lamented demise of her husband
+adopted the very same consolation.
+
+     "My curse upon them every one,
+     They've hanged my braw John Highlandman;
+
+     .      .     .      .
+
+     And now a widow I must mourn
+     Departed joys that ne'er return;
+     No comfort but a hearty can
+     When I think on John Highlandman."
+
+Sweet "raucle carlin," she has none of the sentimentality of the English
+highwayman's lady; but being wooed by a tinker and
+
+     "A pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle
+     Wha us'd to trystes and fairs to driddle,"
+
+prefers the practical to the merely musical man. The tinker sings with a
+noble candor, worthy of a fellow of his strength of body and station in
+life--
+
+         "My bonnie lass, I work in brass,
+            A tinker is my station;
+          I've travell'd round all Christian ground
+            In this my occupation.
+          I've ta'en the gold, I've been enroll'd
+            In many a noble squadron;
+          But vain they search'd when off I march'd
+            To go an' clout the caudron."
+
+It was his ruling passion. What was military glory to him, forsooth?
+He had the greatest contempt for it, and loved freedom and his copper
+kettle a thousand times better--a kind of hardware Diogenes. Of fiddling
+he has no better opinion. The picture represents the "sturdy caird"
+taking "poor gut-scraper" by the beard,--drawing his "roosty rapier,"
+and swearing to "speet him like a pliver" unless he would relinquish the
+bonnie lassie for ever--
+
+         "Wi' ghastly ee, poor tweedle-dee
+            Upon his hunkers bended,
+          An' pray'd for grace wi' ruefu' face,
+            An' so the quarrel ended."
+
+Hark how the tinker apostrophizes the violinist, stating to the widow
+at the same time the advantages which she might expect from an alliance
+with himself:--
+
+         "Despise that shrimp, that withered imp,
+            Wi' a' his noise and caperin';
+          And take a share with those that bear
+            The budget and the apron!
+
+         "And by that stowp, my faith an' houpe,
+            An' by that dear Kilbaigie!
+          If e'er ye want, or meet wi' scant,
+            May I ne'er weet my craigie."
+
+Cruikshank's caird is a noble creature; his face and figure show him to
+be fully capable of doing and saying all that is above written of him.
+
+In the second part, the old tale of "The Three Hunchbacked Fiddlers" is
+illustrated with equal felicity. The famous classical dinners and
+duel in "Peregrine Pickle" are also excellent in their way; and the
+connoisseur of prints and etchings may see in the latter plate, and in
+another in this volume, how great the artist's mechanical skill is as an
+etcher. The distant view of the city in the duel, and of a market-place
+in "The Quack Doctor," are delightful specimens of the artist's skill
+in depicting buildings and backgrounds. They are touched with a grace,
+truth, and dexterity of workmanship that leave nothing to desire. We
+have before mentioned the man with the mouth, which appears in this
+number emblematical of gout and indigestion, in which the artist has
+shown all the fancy of Callot. Little demons, with long saws for noses,
+are making dreadful incisions into the toes of the unhappy sufferer;
+some are bringing pans of hot coals to keep the wounded member warm;
+a huge, solemn nightmare sits on the invalid's chest, staring solemnly
+into his eyes; a monster, with a pair of drumsticks, is banging a
+devil's tattoo on his forehead; and a pair of imps are nailing great
+tenpenny nails into his hands to make his happiness complete.
+
+The late Mr. Clark's excellent work, "Three Courses and a Dessert," was
+published at a time when the rage for comic stories was not so great
+as it since has been, and Messrs. Clark and Cruikshank only sold their
+hundreds where Messrs. Dickens and Phiz dispose of their thousands.
+But if our recommendation can in any way influence the reader, we would
+enjoin him to have a copy of the "Three Courses," that contains some of
+the best designs of our artist, and some of the most amusing tales in
+our language. The invention of the pictures, for which Mr. Clark takes
+credit to himself, says a great deal for his wit and fancy. Can we, for
+instance, praise too highly the man who invented that wonderful oyster?
+
+Examine him well; his beard, his pearl, his little round stomach, and
+his sweet smile. Only oysters know how to smile in this way; cool,
+gentle, waggish, and yet inexpressibly innocent and winning. Dando
+himself must have allowed such an artless native to go free, and
+consigned him to the glassy, cool, translucent wave again.
+
+In writing upon such subjects as these with which we have been
+furnished, it can hardly be expected that we should follow any fixed
+plan and order--we must therefore take such advantage as we may, and
+seize upon our subject when and wherever we can lay hold of him.
+
+For Jews, sailors, Irishmen, Hessian boots, little boys, beadles,
+policemen, tall life-guardsmen, charity children, pumps, dustmen, very
+short pantaloons, dandies in spectacles, and ladies with aquiline noses,
+remarkably taper waists, and wonderfully long ringlets, Mr. Cruikshank
+has a special predilection. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with
+amazing gusto; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," and
+the immortal Fagin of "Oliver Twist." Whereabouts lies the comic vis in
+these persons and things? Why should a beadle be comic, and his opposite
+a charity boy? Why should a tall life-guardsman have something in him
+essentially absurd? Why are short breeches more ridiculous than long?
+What is there particularly jocose about a pump, and wherefore does a
+long nose always provoke the beholder to laughter? These points may be
+metaphysically elucidated by those who list. It is probable that Mr.
+Cruikshank could not give an accurate definition of that which is
+ridiculous in these objects, but his instinct has told him that
+fun lurks in them, and cold must be the heart that can pass by the
+pantaloons of his charity boys, the Hessian boots of his dandies, and
+the fan-tail hats of his dustmen, without respectful wonder.
+
+He has made a complete little gallery of dustmen. There is, in the
+first place, the professional dustman, who, having in the enthusiastic
+exercise of his delightful trade, laid hands upon property not strictly
+his own, is pursued, we presume, by the right owner, from whom he flies
+as fast as his crooked shanks will carry him.
+
+What a curious picture it is--the horrid rickety houses in some dingy
+suburb of London, the grinning cobbler, the smothered butcher, the very
+trees which are covered with dust--it is fine to look at the different
+expressions of the two interesting fugitives. The fiery charioteer who
+belabors the poor donkey has still a glance for his brother on foot, on
+whom punishment is about to descend. And not a little curious is it to
+think of the creative power of the man who has arranged this little tale
+of low life. How logically it is conducted, how cleverly each one of
+the accessories is made to contribute to the effect of the whole. What
+a deal of thought and humor has the artist expended on this little block
+of wood; a large picture might have been painted out of the very same
+materials, which Mr. Cruikshank, out of his wondrous fund of merriment
+and observation, can afford to throw away upon a drawing not two inches
+long. From the practical dustmen we pass to those purely poetical. There
+are three of them who rise on clouds of their own raising, the very
+genii of the sack and shovel.
+
+Is there no one to write a sonnet to these?--and yet a whole poem was
+written about Peter Bell the wagoner, a character by no means so poetic.
+
+And lastly, we have the dustman in love: the honest fellow having seen a
+young beauty stepping out of a gin-shop on a Sunday morning, is pressing
+eagerly his suit.
+
+Gin has furnished many subjects to Mr. Cruikshank, who labors in his own
+sound and hearty way to teach his countrymen the dangers of that drink.
+In the "Sketch-Book" is a plate upon the subject, remarkable for fancy
+and beauty of design; it is called the "Gin Juggernaut," and represents
+a hideous moving palace, with a reeking still at the roof and vast
+gin-barrels for wheels, under which unhappy millions are crushed to
+death. An immense black cloud of desolation covers over the country
+through which the gin monster has passed, dimly looming through the
+darkness whereof you see an agreeable prospect of gibbets with men
+dangling, burnt houses, &c. The vast cloud comes sweeping on in the
+wake of this horrible body-crusher; and you see, by way of contrast, a
+distant, smiling, sunshiny tract of old English country, where gin as
+yet is not known. The allegory is as good, as earnest, and as fanciful
+as one of John Bunyan's, and we have often fancied there was a
+similarity between the men.
+
+The render will examine the work called "My Sketch-Book" with not a
+little amusement, and may gather from it, as we fancy, a good deal
+of information regarding the character of the individual man, George
+Cruikshank: what points strike his eye as a painter; what move his
+anger or admiration as a moralist; what classes he seems most especially
+disposed to observe, and what to ridicule. There are quacks of all
+kinds, to whom he has a mortal hatred; quack dandies, who assume
+under his pencil, perhaps in his eye, the most grotesque appearance
+possible--their hats grow larger, their legs infinitely more crooked and
+lean; the tassels of their canes swell out to a most preposterous size;
+the tails of their coats dwindle away, and finish where coat-tails
+generally begin. Let us lay a wager that Cruikshank, a man of the people
+if ever there was one, heartily hates and despises these supercilious,
+swaggering young gentlemen; and his contempt is not a whit the less
+laudable because there may be tant soit peu of prejudice in it. It is
+right and wholesome to scorn dandies, as Nelson said it was to hate
+Frenchmen; in which sentiment (as we have before said) George Cruikshank
+undoubtedly shares. In the "Sunday in London,"* Monsieur the Chef is
+instructing a kitchen-maid how to compound some rascally French kickshaw
+or the other--a pretty scoundrel truly! with what an air he wears that
+nightcap of his, and shrugs his lank shoulders, and chatters, and ogles,
+and grins: they are all the same, these mounseers; there are other two
+fellows--morbleu! one is putting his dirty fingers into the saucepan;
+there are frogs cooking in it, no doubt; and just over some other dish
+of abomination, another dirty rascal is taking snuff! Never mind,
+the sauce won't be hurt by a few ingredients more or less. Three such
+fellows as these are not worth one Englishman, that's clear. There is
+one in the very midst of them, the great burly fellow with the beef: he
+could beat all three in five minutes. We cannot be certain that such was
+the process going on in Mr. Cruikshank's mind when he made the design;
+but some feelings of the sort were no doubt entertained by him.
+
+     * The following lines--ever fresh--by the author of
+     "Headlong Hall," published years ago in the Globe and
+     Traveller, are an excellent comment on several of the cuts
+     from the "Sunday in London:"--
+
+                        I.
+
+         "The poor man's sins are glaring;
+          In the face of ghostly warning
+            He is caught in the fact
+            Of an overt act,
+          Buying greens on Sunday morning.
+
+                       II.
+
+         "The rich man's sins are hidden
+          In the pomp of wealth and station,
+            And escape the sight
+            Of the children of light,
+          Who are wise in their generation.
+
+                      III.
+
+         "The rich man has a kitchen,
+          And cooks to dress his dinner;
+            The poor who would roast,
+            To the baker's must post,
+          And thus becomes a sinner.
+
+                       IV.
+
+         "The rich man's painted windows
+          Hide the concerts of the quality;
+            The poor can but share
+            A crack'd fiddle in the air,
+          Which offends all sound morality.
+
+                        V.
+
+         "The rich man has a cellar,
+          And a ready butler by him;
+            The poor must steer
+            For his pint of beer
+          Where the saint can't choose but spy him.
+
+                       VI.
+
+         "This rich man is invisible
+          In the crowd of his gay society;
+            But the poor man's delight
+            Is a sore in the sight
+          And a stench in the nose of piety."
+
+Against dandy footmen he is particularly severe. He hates idlers,
+pretenders, boasters, and punishes these fellows as best he may. Who
+does not recollect the famous picture, "What IS taxes, Thomas?" What
+is taxes indeed; well may that vast, over-fed, lounging flunky ask the
+question of his associate Thomas: and yet not well, for all that Thomas
+says in reply is, "I DON'T KNOW." "O beati PLUSHICOLAE," what a charming
+state of ignorance is yours! In the "Sketch-Book" many footmen make
+their appearance: one is a huge fat Hercules of a Portman Square porter,
+who calmly surveys another poor fellow, a porter likewise, but out of
+livery, who comes staggering forward with a box that Hercules might lift
+with his little finger. Will Hercules do so? not he. The giant can carry
+nothing heavier than a cocked-hat note on a silver tray, and his labors
+are to walk from his sentry-box to the door, and from the door back to
+his sentry-box, and to read the Sunday paper, and to poke the hall
+fire twice or thrice, and to make five meals a day. Such a fellow does
+Cruikshank hate and scorn worse even than a Frenchman.
+
+The man's master, too, comes in for no small share of our artist's
+wrath. There is a company of them at church, who humbly designate
+themselves "miserable sinners!" Miserable sinners indeed! Oh, what
+floods of turtle-soup, what tons of turbot and lobster-sauce must have
+been sacrificed to make those sinners properly miserable. My lady with
+the ermine tippet and draggling feather, can we not see that she lives
+in Portland Place, and is the wife of an East India Director? She has
+been to the Opera over-night (indeed her husband, on her right, with
+his fat hand dangling over the pew-door, is at this minute thinking of
+Mademoiselle Leocadie, whom he saw behind the scenes)--she has been
+at the Opera over-night, which with a trifle of supper afterwards--a
+white-and-brown soup, a lobster-salad, some woodcocks, and a little
+champagne--sent her to bed quite comfortable. At half-past eight her
+maid brings her chocolate in bed, at ten she has fresh eggs and muffins,
+with, perhaps, a half-hundred of prawns for breakfast, and so can get
+over the day and the sermon till lunch-time pretty well. What an odor of
+musk and bergamot exhales from the pew!--how it is wadded, and stuffed,
+and spangled over with brass nails! what hassocks are there for those
+who are not too fat to kneel! what a flustering and flapping of gilt
+prayer-books; and what a pious whirring of bible leaves one hears
+all over the church, as the doctor blandly gives out the text! To be
+miserable at this rate you must, at the very least, have four thousand a
+year: and many persons are there so enamored of grief and sin, that they
+would willingly take the risk of the misery to have a life-interest in
+the consols that accompany it, quite careless about consequences, and
+sceptical as to the notion that a day is at hand when you must fulfil
+YOUR SHARE OF THE BARGAIN.
+
+Our artist loves to joke at a soldier; in whose livery there appears
+to him to be something almost as ridiculous as in the uniform of
+the gentleman of the shoulder-knot. Tall life-guardsmen and fierce
+grenadiers figure in many of his designs, and almost always in a
+ridiculous way. Here again we have the honest popular English feeling
+which jeers at pomp or pretension of all kinds, and is especially
+jealous of all display of military authority. "Raw Recruit," "ditto
+dressed," ditto "served up," as we see them in the "Sketch-Book," are so
+many satires upon the army: Hodge with his ribbons flaunting in his
+hat, or with red coat and musket, drilled stiff and pompous, or at
+last, minus leg and arm, tottering about on crutches, does not fill our
+English artist with the enthusiasm that follows the soldier in every
+other part of Europe. Jeanjean, the conscript in France, is laughed at
+to be sure, but then it is because he is a bad soldier: when he comes to
+have a huge pair of mustachios and the croix-d'honneur to briller on his
+poitrine cicatrisee, Jeanjean becomes a member of a class that is more
+respected than any other in the French nation. The veteran soldier
+inspires our people with no such awe--we hold that democratic weapon the
+fist in much more honor than the sabre and bayonet, and laugh at a man
+tricked out in scarlet and pipe-clay.
+
+That regiment of heroes is "marching to divine service," to the tune
+of the "British Grenadiers." There they march in state, and a pretty
+contempt our artist shows for all their gimcracks and trumpery. He has
+drawn a perfectly English scene--the little blackguard boys are playing
+pranks round about the men, and shouting, "Heads up, soldier," "Eyes
+right, lobster," as little British urchins will do. Did one ever hear
+the like sentiments expressed in France? Shade of Napoleon, we insult
+you by asking the question. In England, however, see how different the
+case is: and designedly or undesignedly, the artist has opened to us a
+piece of his mind. In the crowd the only person who admires the soldiers
+is the poor idiot, whose pocket a rogue is picking. There is another
+picture, in which the sentiment is much the same, only, as in the former
+drawing we see Englishmen laughing at the troops of the line, here are
+Irishmen giggling at the militia.
+
+We have said that our artist has a great love for the drolleries of
+the Green Island. Would any one doubt what was the country of the merry
+fellows depicted in his group of Paddies?
+
+         "Place me amid O'Rourkes, O'Tooles,
+            The ragged royal race of Tara;
+          Or place me where Dick Martin rules
+            The pathless wilds of Connemara."
+
+We know not if Mr. Cruikshank has ever had any such good luck as to see
+the Irish in Ireland itself, but he certainly has obtained a knowledge
+of their looks, as if the country had been all his life familiar to him.
+Could Mr. O'Connell himself desire anything more national than the scene
+of a drunken row, or could Father Mathew have a better text to preach
+upon? There is not a broken nose in the room that is not thoroughly
+Irish.
+
+We have then a couple of compositions treated in a graver manner, as
+characteristic too as the other. We call attention to the comical look
+of poor Teague, who has been pursued and beaten by the witch's stick,
+in order to point out also the singular neatness of the workmanship,
+and the pretty, fanciful little glimpse of landscape that the artist
+has introduced in the background. Mr. Cruikshank has a fine eye for such
+homely landscapes, and renders them with great delicacy and taste.
+Old villages, farm-yards, groups of stacks, queer chimneys, churches,
+gable-ended cottages, Elizabethan mansion-houses, and other old English
+scenes, he depicts with evident enthusiasm.
+
+Famous books in their day were Cruikshank's "John Gilpin" and
+"Epping Hunt;" for though our artist does not draw horses very
+scientifically,--to use a phrase of the atelier,--he FEELS them very
+keenly; and his queer animals, after one is used to them, answer quite
+as well as better. Neither is he very happy in trees, and such rustical
+produce; or, rather, we should say, he is very original, his trees being
+decidedly of his own make and composition, not imitated from any master.
+
+But what then? Can a man be supposed to imitate everything? We know what
+the noblest study of mankind is, and to this Mr. Cruikshank has confined
+himself. That postilion with the people in the broken-down chaise
+roaring after him is as deaf as the post by which he passes. Suppose
+all the accessories were away, could not one swear that the man was
+stone-deaf, beyond the reach of trumpet? What is the peculiar character
+in a deaf man's physiognomy?--can any person define it satisfactorily in
+words?--not in pages; and Mr. Cruikshank has expressed it on a piece
+of paper not so big as the tenth part of your thumb-nail. The horses
+of John Gilpin are much more of the equestrian order; and as here the
+artist has only his favorite suburban buildings to draw, not a word is
+to be said against his design. The inn and old buildings are charmingly
+designed, and nothing can be more prettily or playfully touched.
+
+         "At Edmonton his loving wife
+            From the balcony spied
+          Her tender husband, wond'ring much
+            To see how he did ride.
+
+         "'Stop, stop, John Gilpin!  Here's the house!'
+            They all at once did cry;
+          'The dinner waits, and we are tired--'
+            Said Gilpin--'So am I!'
+
+         "Six gentlemen upon the road
+            Thus seeing Gilpin fly,
+          With post-boy scamp'ring in the rear,
+            They raised the hue and cry:--
+
+         "'Stop thief! stop thief!--a highwayman!'
+            Not one of them was mute;
+          And all and each that passed that way
+            Did join in the pursuit.
+
+         "And now the turnpike gates again
+            Flew open in short space;
+          The toll-men thinking, as before,
+            That Gilpin rode a race."
+
+The rush, and shouting, and clatter are excellently depicted by the
+artist; and we, who have been scoffing at his manner of designing
+animals, must here make a special exception in favor of the hens and
+chickens; each has a different action, and is curiously natural.
+
+Happy are children of all ages who have such a ballad and such pictures
+as this in store for them! It is a comfort to think that woodcuts never
+wear out, and that the book still may be had for a shilling, for those
+who can command that sum of money.
+
+In the "Epping Hunt," which we owe to the facetious pen of Mr. Hood, our
+artist has not been so successful. There is here too much horsemanship
+and not enough incident for him; but the portrait of Roundings the
+huntsman is an excellent sketch, and a couple of the designs contain
+great humor. The first represents the Cockney hero, who, "like a bird,
+was singing out while sitting on a tree."
+
+And in the second the natural order is reversed. The stag having
+taken heart, is hunting the huntsman, and the Cheapside Nimrod is most
+ignominiously running away.
+
+The Easter Hunt, we are told, is no more; and as the Quarterly Review
+recommends the British public to purchase Mr. Catlin's pictures, as they
+form the only record of an interesting race now rapidly passing away,
+in like manner we should exhort all our friends to purchase Mr.
+Cruikshank's designs of ANOTHER interesting race, that is run already
+and for the last time.
+
+Besides these, we must mention, in the line of our duty, the notable
+tragedies of "Tom Thumb" and "Bombastes Furioso," both of which have
+appeared with many illustrations by Mr. Cruikshank. The "brave army" of
+Bombastes exhibits a terrific display of brutal force, which must shock
+the sensibilities of an English radical. And we can well understand the
+caution of the general, who bids this soldatesque effrenee to begone,
+and not to kick up a row.
+
+Such a troop of lawless ruffians let loose upon a populous city would
+play sad havoc in it; and we fancy the massacres of Birmingham renewed,
+or at least of Badajoz, which, though not quite so dreadful, if we
+may believe his Grace the Duke of Wellington, as the former scenes of
+slaughter, were nevertheless severe enough: but we must not venture upon
+any ill-timed pleasantries in presence of the disturbed King Arthur and
+the awful ghost of Gaffer Thumb.
+
+We are thus carried at once into the supernatural, and here we find
+Cruikshank reigning supreme. He has invented in his time a little comic
+pandemonium, peopled with the most droll, good-natured fiends possible.
+We have before us Chamisso's "Peter Schlemihl," with Cruikshank's
+designs translated into German, and gaining nothing by the change.
+The "Kinder und Hans-Maerchen" of Grimm are likewise ornamented with a
+frontispiece copied from that one which appeared to the amusing version
+of the English work. The books on Phrenology and Time have been imitated
+by the same nation; and even in France, whither reputation travels
+slower than to any country except China, we have seen copies of the
+works of George Cruikshank.
+
+He in return has complimented the French by illustrating a couple of
+Lives of Napoleon, and the "Life in Paris" before mentioned. He has also
+made designs for Victor Hugo's "Hans of Iceland." Strange, wild etchings
+were those, on a strange, mad subject; not so good in our notion as the
+designs for the German books, the peculiar humor of which latter seemed
+to suit the artist exactly. There is a mixture of the awful and the
+ridiculous in these, which perpetually excites and keeps awake the
+reader's attention; the German writer and the English artist seem to
+have an entire faith in their subject. The reader, no doubt, remembers
+the awful passage in "Peter Schlemihl," where the little gentleman
+purchases the shadow of that hero--"Have the kindness, noble sir, to
+examine and try this bag." "He put his hand into his pocket, and drew
+thence a tolerably large bag of Cordovan leather, to which a couple of
+thongs were fixed. I took it from him, and immediately counted out ten
+gold pieces, and ten more, and ten more, and still other ten, whereupon
+I held out my hand to him. Done, said I, it is a bargain; you shall have
+my shadow for your bag. The bargain was concluded; he knelt down before
+me, and I saw him with a wonderful neatness take my shadow from head to
+foot, lightly lift it up from the grass, roll and fold it up neatly, and
+at last pocket it. He then rose up, bowed to me once more, and walked
+away again, disappearing behind the rose bushes. I don't know, but I
+thought I heard him laughing a little. I, however, kept fast hold of the
+bag. Everything around me was bright in the sun, and as yet I gave no
+thought to what I had done."
+
+This marvellous event, narrated by Peter with such a faithful,
+circumstantial detail, is painted by Cruikshank in the most wonderful
+poetic way, with that happy mixture of the real and supernatural that
+makes the narrative so curious, and like truth. The sun is shining with
+the utmost brilliancy in a great quiet park or garden; there is a palace
+in the background, and a statue basking in the sun quite lonely and
+melancholy; there is a sun-dial, on which is a deep shadow, and in the
+front stands Peter Schlemihl, bag in hand: the old gentleman is down on
+his knees to him, and has just lifted off the ground the SHADOW OF ONE
+LEG; he is going to fold it back neatly, as one does the tails of a
+coat, and will stow it, without any creases or crumples, along with the
+other black garments that lie in that immense pocket of his. Cruikshank
+has designed all this as if he had a very serious belief in the story;
+he laughs, to be sure, but one fancies that he is a little frightened in
+his heart, in spite of all his fun and joking.
+
+The German tales we have mentioned before. "The Prince riding on the
+Fox," "Hans in Luck," "The Fiddler and his Goose," "Heads off," are all
+drawings which, albeit not before us now, nor seen for ten years, remain
+indelibly fixed on the memory. "Heisst du etwa Rumpelstilzchen?" There
+sits the Queen on her throne, surrounded by grinning beef-eaters, and
+little Rumpelstiltskin stamps his foot through the floor in the excess
+of his tremendous despair. In one of these German tales, if we remember
+rightly, there is an account of a little orphan who is carried away by
+a pitying fairy for a term of seven years, and passing that period of
+sweet apprenticeship among the imps and sprites of fairy-land. Has our
+artist been among the same company, and brought back their portraits in
+his sketch-book? He is the only designer fairy-land has had. Callot's
+imps, for all their strangeness, are only of the earth earthy. Fuseli's
+fairies belong to the infernal regions; they are monstrous, lurid, and
+hideously melancholy. Mr. Cruikshank alone has had a true insight into
+the character of the "little people." They are something like men and
+women, and yet not flesh and blood; they are laughing and mischievous,
+but why we know not. Mr. Cruikshank, however, has had some dream or
+the other, or else a natural mysterious instinct (as the Seherinn of
+Prevorst had for beholding ghosts), or else some preternatural fairy
+revelation, which has made him acquainted with the looks and ways of the
+fantastical subjects of Oberon and Titania.
+
+We have, unfortunately, no fairy portraits; but, on the other hand,
+can descend lower than fairy-land, and have seen some fine specimens
+of devils. One has already been raised, and the reader has seen him
+tempting a fat Dutch burgomaster, in an ancient gloomy market-place,
+such as George Cruikshank can draw as well as Mr. Prout, Mr. Nash,
+or any man living. There is our friend once more; our friend the
+burgomaster, in a highly excited state, and running as hard as his great
+legs will carry him, with our mutual enemy at his tail.
+
+What are the bets; will that long-legged bondholder of a devil come up
+with the honest Dutchman? It serves him right: why did he put his name
+to stamped paper? And yet we should not wonder if some lucky chance
+should turn up in the burgomaster's favor, and his infernal creditor
+lose his labor; for one so proverbially cunning as yonder tall
+individual with the saucer eyes, it must be confessed that he has been
+very often outwitted.
+
+There is, for instance, the case of "The Gentleman in Black," which has
+been illustrated by our artist. A young French gentleman, by name M.
+Desonge, who, having expended his patrimony in a variety of taverns and
+gaming-houses, was one day pondering upon the exhausted state of his
+finances, and utterly at a loss to think how he should provide means for
+future support, exclaimed, very naturally, "What the devil shall I do?"
+He had no sooner spoken than a GENTLEMAN IN BLACK made his appearance,
+whose authentic portrait Mr. Cruikshank has had the honor to paint.
+This gentleman produced a black-edged book out of a black bag, some
+black-edged papers tied up with black crape, and sitting down familiarly
+opposite M. Desonge, began conversing with him on the state of his
+affairs.
+
+It is needless to state what was the result of the interview. M. Desonge
+was induced by the gentleman to sign his name to one of the black-edged
+papers, and found himself at the close of the conversation to be
+possessed of an unlimited command of capital. This arrangement
+completed, the Gentleman in Black posted (in an extraordinarily rapid
+manner) from Paris to London, there found a young English merchant in
+exactly the same situation in which M. Desonge had been, and concluded a
+bargain with the Briton of exactly the same nature.
+
+The book goes on to relate how these young men spent the money so
+miraculously handed over to them, and how both, when the period drew
+near that was to witness the performance of THEIR part of the bargain,
+grew melancholy, wretched, nay, so absolutely dishonorable as to seek
+for every means of breaking through their agreement. The Englishman
+living in a country where the lawyers are more astute than any other
+lawyers in the world, took the advice of a Mr. Bagsby, of Lyon's Inn;
+whose name, as we cannot find it in the "Law List," we presume to be
+fictitious. Who could it be that was a match for the devil? Lord ----
+very likely; we shall not give his name, but let every reader of this
+Review fill up the blank according to his own fancy, and on comparing it
+with the copy purchased by his neighbors, he will find that fifteen out
+of twenty have written down the same honored name.
+
+Well, the Gentleman in Black was anxious for the fulfilment of his bond.
+The parties met at Mr. Bagsby's chambers to consult, the Black Gentleman
+foolishly thinking that he could act as his own counsel, and fearing no
+attorney alive. But mark the superiority of British law, and see how the
+black pettifogger was defeated.
+
+Mr. Bagsby simply stated that he would take the case into Chancery, and
+his antagonist, utterly humiliated and defeated, refused to move a step
+farther in the matter.
+
+And now the French gentleman, M. Desonge, hearing of his friend's
+escape, became anxious to be free from his own rash engagements.
+He employed the same counsel who had been successful in the former
+instance, but the Gentleman in Black was a great deal wiser by this
+time, and whether M. Desonge escaped, or whether he is now in that
+extensive place which is paved with good intentions, we shall not say.
+Those who are anxious to know had better purchase the book wherein
+all these interesting matters are duly set down. There is one more
+diabolical picture in our budget, engraved by Mr. Thompson, the same
+dexterous artist who has rendered the former diableries so well.
+
+We may mention Mr. Thompson's name as among the first of the engravers
+to whom Cruikshank's designs have been entrusted; and next to him (if
+we may be allowed to make such arbitrary distinctions) we may place
+Mr. Williams; and the reader is not possibly aware of the immense
+difficulties to be overcome in the rendering of these little sketches,
+which, traced by the designer in a few hours, require weeks' labor
+from the engraver. Mr. Cruikshank has not been educated in the regular
+schools of drawing (very luckily for him, as we think), and consequently
+has had to make a manner for himself, which is quite unlike that of any
+other draftsman. There is nothing in the least mechanical about it; to
+produce his particular effects he uses his own particular lines, which
+are queer, free, fantastical, and must be followed in all their infinite
+twists and vagaries by the careful tool of the engraver. Those three
+lovely heads, for instance, imagined out of the rinds of lemons, are
+worth examining, not so much for the jovial humor and wonderful variety
+of feature exhibited in these darling countenances as for the engraver's
+part of the work. See the infinite delicate cross-lines and hatchings
+which he is obliged to render; let him go, not a hair's breadth, but
+the hundredth part of a hair's breadth, beyond the given line, and the
+FEELING of it is ruined. He receives these little dots and specks, and
+fantastical quirks of the pencil, and cuts away with a little knife
+round each, not too much nor too little. Antonio's pound of flesh did
+not puzzle the Jew so much; and so well does the engraver succeed at
+last, that we never remember to have met with a single artist who did
+not vow that the wood-cutter had utterly ruined his design.
+
+Of Messrs. Thompson and Williams we have spoken as the first engravers
+in point of rank; however, the regulations of professional precedence
+are certainly very difficult, and the rest of their brethren we shall
+not endeavor to class. Why should the artists who executed the cuts of
+the admirable "Three Courses" yield the pas to any one?
+
+There, for instance, is an engraving by Mr. Landells, nearly as good
+in our opinion as the very best woodcut that ever was made after
+Cruikshank, and curiously happy in rendering the artist's peculiar
+manner: this cut does not come from the facetious publications which we
+have consulted; but is a contribution by Mr. Cruikshank to an elaborate
+and splendid botanical work upon the Orchidaceae of Mexico, by Mr.
+Bateman. Mr. Bateman despatched some extremely choice roots of this
+valuable plant to a friend in England, who, on the arrival of the case,
+consigned it to his gardener to unpack. A great deal of anxiety with
+regard to the contents was manifested by all concerned, but on the
+lid of the box being removed, there issued from it three or four fine
+specimens of the enormous Blatta beetle that had been preying upon the
+plants during the voyage; against these the gardeners, the grooms, the
+porters, and the porters' children, issued forth in arms, and this scene
+the artist has immortalized.
+
+We have spoken of the admirable way in which Mr. Cruikshank has depicted
+Irish character and Cockney character; English country character is
+quite as faithfully delineated in the person of the stout porteress and
+her children, and of the "Chawbacon" with the shovel, on whose face is
+written "Zummerzetsheer." Chawbacon appears in another plate, or else
+Chawbacon's brother. He has come up to Lunnan, and is looking about him
+at raaces.
+
+How distinct are these rustics from those whom we have just been
+examining! They hang about the purlieus of the metropolis: Brook Green,
+Epsom, Greenwich, Ascot, Goodwood, are their haunts. They visit London
+professionally once a year, and that is at the time of Bartholomew
+fair. How one may speculate upon the different degrees of rascality,
+as exhibited in each face of the thimblerigging trio, and form little
+histories for these worthies, charming Newgate romances, such as have
+been of late the fashion! Is any man so blind that he cannot see the
+exact face that is writhing under the thhnblerigged hero's hat? Like
+Timanthes of old, our artist expresses great passions without the aid
+of the human countenance. There is another specimen--a street row of
+inebriated bottles. Is there any need of having a face after this? "Come
+on!" says Claret-bottle, a dashing, genteel fellow, with his hat on one
+ear--"Come on! has any man a mind to tap me?" Claret-bottle is a little
+screwed (as one may see by his legs), but full of gayety and courage;
+not so that stout, apoplectic Bottle-of-rum, who has staggered against
+the wall, and has his hand upon his liver: the fellow hurts himself
+with smoking, that is clear, and is as sick as sick can be. See, Port
+is making away from the storm, and Double X is as flat as ditch-water.
+Against these, awful in their white robes, the sober watchmen come.
+
+Our artist then can cover up faces, and yet show them quite clearly, as
+in the thimblerig group; or he can do without faces altogether; or he
+can, at a pinch, provide a countenance for a gentleman out of any
+given object--a beautiful Irish physiognomy being moulded upon a keg of
+whiskey; and a jolly English countenance frothing out of a pot of ale
+(the spirit of brave Toby Philpot come back to reanimate his clay);
+while in a fungus may be recognized the physiognomy of a mushroom peer.
+Finally, if he is at a loss, he can make a living head, body, and legs
+out of steel or tortoise-shell, as in the case of the vivacious pair of
+spectacles that are jockeying the nose of Caddy Cuddle.
+
+Of late years Mr. Cruikshank has busied himself very much with steel
+engraving, and the consequences of that lucky invention have been, that
+his plates are now sold by thousands, where they could only be produced
+by hundreds before. He has made many a bookseller's and author's fortune
+(we trust that in so doing he may not have neglected his own). Twelve
+admirable plates, furnished yearly to that facetious little publication,
+the Comic Almanac, have gained for it a sale, as we hear, of nearly
+twenty thousand copies. The idea of the work was novel; there was,
+in the first number especially, a great deal of comic power, and
+Cruikshank's designs were so admirable that the Almanac at once became a
+vast favorite with the public, and has so remained ever since.
+
+Besides the twelve plates, this almanac contains a prophetic woodcut,
+accompanying an awful Blarneyhum Astrologicum that appears in this and
+other almanacs. There is one that hints in pretty clear terms that with
+the Reform of Municipal Corporations the ruin of the great Lord Mayor of
+London is at hand. His lordship is meekly going to dine at an eightpenny
+ordinary, his giants in pawn, his men in armor dwindled to "one poor
+knight," his carriage to be sold, his stalwart aldermen vanished, his
+sheriffs, alas! and alas! in gaol! Another design shows that Rigdum, if
+a true, is also a moral and instructive prophet. John Bull is asleep, or
+rather in a vision; the cunning demon, Speculation, blowing a thousand
+bright bubbles about him. Meanwhile the rooks are busy at his fob, a
+knave has cut a cruel hole in his pocket, a rattlesnake has coiled safe
+round his feet, and will in a trice swallow Bull, chair, money and all;
+the rats are at his corn-bags (as if, poor devil, he had corn to spare);
+his faithful dog is bolting his leg-of-mutton--nay, a thief has gotten
+hold of his very candle, and there, by way of moral, is his ale-pot,
+which looks and winks in his face, and seems to say, O Bull, all this is
+froth, and a cruel satirical picture of a certain rustic who had a
+goose that laid certain golden eggs, which goose the rustic slew in
+expectation of finding all the eggs at once. This is goose and sage too,
+to borrow the pun of "learned Doctor Gill;" but we shrewdly suspect that
+Mr. Cruikshank is becoming a little conservative in his notions.
+
+We love these pictures so that it is hard to part us, and we still
+fondly endeavor to hold on, but this wild word, farewell, must be spoken
+by the best friends at last, and so good-by, brave woodcuts: we feel
+quite a sadness in coming to the last of our collection.
+
+In the earlier numbers of the Comic Almanac all the manners and customs
+of Londoners that would afford food for fun were noted down; and if
+during the last two years the mysterious personage who, under the title
+of "Rigdum Funnidos," compiles this ephemeris, has been compelled to
+resort to romantic tales, we must suppose that he did so because the
+great metropolis was exhausted, and it was necessary to discover new
+worlds in the cloud-land of fancy. The character of Mr. Stubbs, who
+made his appearance in the Almanac for 1839, had, we think, great merit,
+although his adventures were somewhat of too tragical a description to
+provoke pure laughter.
+
+We should be glad to devote a few pages to the "Illustrations of Time,"
+the "Scraps and Sketches," and the "Illustrations of Phrenology," which
+are among the most famous of our artist's publications; but it is very
+difficult to find new terms of praise, as find them one must, when
+reviewing Mr. Cruikshank's publications, and more difficult still (as
+the reader of this notice will no doubt have perceived for himself long
+since) to translate his design into words, and go to the printer's box
+for a description of all that fun and humor which the artist can
+produce by a few skilful turns of his needle. A famous article upon the
+"Illustrations of Time" appeared some dozen years since in Blackwood's
+Magazine, of which the conductors have always been great admirers of our
+artist, as became men of honor and genius. To these grand qualities
+do not let it be supposed that we are laying claim, but, thank heaven,
+Cruikshank's humor is so good and benevolent that any man must love it,
+and on this score we may speak as well as another.
+
+Then there are the "Greenwich Hospital" designs, which must not be
+passed over. "Greenwich Hospital" is a hearty, good-natured book, in the
+Tom Dibdin school, treating of the virtues of British tars, in approved
+nautical language. They maul Frenchmen and Spaniards, they go out
+in brigs and take frigates, they relieve women in distress, and are
+yard-arm and yard-arming, athwart-hawsing, marlinspiking, binnacling,
+and helm's-a-leeing, as honest seamen invariably do, in novels, on the
+stage, and doubtless on board ship. This we cannot take upon us to say,
+but the artist, like a true Englishman, as he is, loves dearly these
+brave guardians of Old England, and chronicles their rare or fanciful
+exploits with the greatest good-will. Let any one look at the noble head
+of Nelson in the "Family Library," and they will, we are sure, think
+with us that the designer must have felt and loved what he drew. There
+are to this abridgment of Southey's admirable book many more cuts after
+Cruikshank; and about a dozen pieces by the same hand will be found in
+a work equally popular, Lockhart's excellent "Life of Napoleon." Among
+these the retreat from Moscow is very fine; the Mamlouks most vigorous,
+furious, and barbarous, as they should be. At the end of these three
+volumes Mr. Cruikshank's contributions to the "Family Library" seem
+suddenly to have ceased.
+
+We are not at all disposed to undervalue the works and genius of Mr.
+Dickens, and we are sure that he would admit as readily as any man the
+wonderful assistance that he has derived from the artist who has given
+us the portraits of his ideal personages, and made them familiar to
+all the world. Once seen, these figures remain impressed on the memory,
+which otherwise would have had no hold upon them, and the heroes and
+heroines of Boz become personal acquaintances with each of us. Oh, that
+Hogarth could have illustrated Fielding in the same way! and fixed down
+on paper those grand figures of Parson Adams, and Squire Allworthy, and
+the great Jonathan Wild.
+
+With regard to the modern romance of "Jack Sheppard," in which the
+latter personage makes a second appearance, it seems to us that Mr.
+Cruikshank really created the tale, and that Mr. Ainsworth, as it were,
+only put words to it. Let any reader of the novel think over it for
+a while, now that it is some months since he has perused and laid it
+down--let him think, and tell us what he remembers of the tale? George
+Cruikshank's pictures--always George Cruikshank's pictures. The storm in
+the Thames, for instance: all the author's labored description of that
+event has passed clean away--we have only before the mind's eye the fine
+plates of Cruikshank: the poor wretch cowering under the bridge arch, as
+the waves come rushing in, and the boats are whirling away in the drift
+of the great swollen black waters. And let any man look at that second
+plate of the murder on the Thames, and he must acknowledge how much more
+brilliant the artist's description is than the writer's, and what a real
+genius for the terrible as well as for the ridiculous the former has;
+how awful is the gloom of the old bridge, a few lights glimmering from
+the houses here and there, but not so as to be reflected on the water at
+all, which is too turbid and raging: a great heavy rack of clouds goes
+sweeping over the bridge, and men with flaring torches, the murderers,
+are borne away with the stream.
+
+The author requires many pages to describe the fury of the storm, which
+Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, he has to prepare you with
+the something inexpressibly melancholy in sailing on a dark night upon
+the Thames: "the ripple of the water," "the darkling current," "the
+indistinctively seen craft," "the solemn shadows" and other phenomena
+visible on rivers at night are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric)
+in order to bring the reader into a proper frame of mind for the deeper
+gloom and horror which is to ensue. Then follow pages of description.
+"As Rowland sprang to the helm, and gave the signal for pursuit, a war
+like a volley of ordnance was heard aloft, and the wind again burst its
+bondage. A moment before the surface of the stream was as black as ink.
+It was now whitening, hissing, and seething, like an enormous caldron.
+The blast once more swept over the agitated river, whirled off the
+sheets of foam, scattered them far and wide in rain-drops, and left the
+raging torrent blacker than before. Destruction everywhere marked the
+course of the gale. Steeples toppled and towers reeled beneath its fury.
+All was darkness, horror, confusion, ruin. Men fled from their tottering
+habitations and returned to them, scared by greater danger. The end
+of the world seemed at hand. . . . The hurricane had now reached its
+climax. The blast shrieked, as if exulting in its wrathful mission.
+Stunning and continuous, the din seemed almost to take away the power of
+hearing. He who had faced the gale WOULD HAVE BEEN INSTANTLY STIFLED,"
+&c. &c. See with what a tremendous war of words (and good loud words
+too; Mr. Ainsworth's description is a good and spirited one) the author
+is obliged to pour in upon the reader before he can effect his purpose
+upon the latter, and inspire him with a proper terror. The painter does
+it at a glance, and old Wood's dilemma in the midst of that tremendous
+storm, with the little infant at his bosom, is remembered afterwards,
+not from the words, but from the visible image of them that the artist
+has left us.
+
+It would not, perhaps, be out of place to glance through the whole of
+the "Jack Sheppard" plates, which are among the most finished and the
+most successful of Mr. Cruikshank's performances, and say a word or two
+concerning them. Let us begin with finding fault with No. 1, "Mr. Wood
+offers to adopt little Jack Sheppard." A poor print, on a poor subject;
+the figure of the woman not as carefully designed as it might be, and
+the expression of the eyes (not an uncommon fault with our artist) much
+caricatured. The print is cut up, to use the artist's phrase, by the
+number of accessories which the engraver has thought proper, after the
+author's elaborate description, elaborately to reproduce. The plate of
+"Wild discovering Darrell in the loft" is admirable--ghastly, terrible,
+and the treatment of it extraordinarily skilful, minute, and bold. The
+intricacies of the tile-work, and the mysterious twinkling of light
+among the beams, are excellently felt and rendered; and one sees here,
+as in the two next plates of the storm and murder, what a fine eye the
+artist has, what a skilful hand, and what a sympathy for the wild and
+dreadful. As a mere imitation of nature, the clouds and the bridge
+in the murder picture may be examined by painters who make far higher
+pretensions than Mr. Cruikshank. In point of workmanship they are
+equally good, the manner quite unaffected, the effect produced without
+any violent contrast, the whole scene evidently well and philosophically
+arranged in the artist's brain, before he began to put it upon copper.
+
+The famous drawing of "Jack carving the name on the beam," which has
+been transferred to half the play-bills in town, is overloaded with
+accessories, as the first plate; but they are much better arranged
+than in the last-named engraving, and do not injure the effect of the
+principal figure. Remark, too, the conscientiousness of the artist,
+and that shrewd pervading idea of FORM which is one of his principal
+characteristics. Jack is surrounded by all sorts of implements of his
+profession; he stands on a regular carpenter's table: away in the shadow
+under it lie shavings and a couple of carpenter's hampers. The glue-pot,
+the mallet, the chisel-handle, the planes, the saws, the hone with
+its cover, and the other paraphernalia are all represented with
+extraordinary accuracy and forethought. The man's mind has retained
+the exact DRAWING of all these minute objects (unconsciously perhaps
+to himself), but we can see with what keen eyes he must go through the
+world, and what a fund of facts (as such a knowledge of the shape of
+objects is in his profession) this keen student of nature has stored
+away in his brain. In the next plate, where Jack is escaping from his
+mistress, the figure of that lady, one of the deepest of the [Greek text
+omitted], strikes us as disagreeable and unrefined; that of Winifred is,
+on the contrary, very pretty and graceful; and Jack's puzzled, slinking
+look must not be forgotten. All the accessories are good, and the
+apartment has a snug, cosy air; which is not remarkable, except that
+it shows how faithfully the designer has performed his work, and how
+curiously he has entered into all the particulars of the subject.
+
+Master Thames Darrell, the handsome young man of the book, is, in Mr.
+Cruikshank's portraits of him, no favorite of ours. The lad seems to
+wish to make up for the natural insignificance of his face by frowning
+on all occasions most portentously. This figure, borrowed from the
+compositor's desk, will give a notion of what we mean. Wild's face
+is too violent for the great man of history (if we may call Fielding
+history), but this is in consonance with the ranting, frowning,
+braggadocio character that Mr. Ainsworth has given him.
+
+The "Interior of Willesden Church" is excellent as a composition, and a
+piece of artistical workmanship; the groups are well arranged; and the
+figure of Mrs. Sheppard looking round alarmed, as her son is robbing
+the dandy Kneebone, is charming, simple, and unaffected. Not so "Mrs.
+Sheppard ill in bed," whose face is screwed up to an expression vastly
+too tragic. The little glimpse of the church seen through the open door
+of the room is very beautiful and poetical: it is in such small hints
+that an artist especially excels; they are the morals which he loves
+to append to his stories, and are always appropriate and welcome.
+The boozing ken is not to our liking; Mrs. Sheppard is there with her
+horrified eyebrows again. Why this exaggeration--is it necessary for
+the public? We think not, or if they require such excitement, let our
+artist, like a true painter as he is, teach them better things.*
+
+     * A gentleman (whose wit is so celebrated that one should be
+     very cautious in repeating his stories) gave the writer a
+     good illustration of the philosophy of exaggeration.  Mr. --
+     -- was once behind the scenes at the Opera when the scene-
+     shifters were preparing for the ballet.  Flora was to sleep
+     under a bush, whereon were growing a number of roses, and
+     amidst which was fluttering a gay covey of butterflies.  In
+     size the roses exceeded the most expansive sunflowers, and
+     the butterflies were as large as cocked hats;--the scene
+     -shifter explained to Mr. ----, who asked the reason why
+     everything was so magnified, that the galleries could never
+     see the objects unless they were enormously exaggerated.
+     How many of our writers and designers work for the
+     galleries?
+
+     The "Escape from Willesden Cage" is excellent; the "Burglary
+     in Wood's house" has not less merit; "Mrs. Sheppard in
+     Bedlam," a ghastly picture indeed, is finely conceived, but
+     not, as we fancy, so carefully executed; it would be better
+     for a little more careful drawing in the female figure.
+
+     "Jack sitting for his picture" is a very pleasing group, and
+     savors of the manner of Hogarth, who is introduced in the
+     company.  The "Murder of Trenchard" must be noticed too as
+     remarkable for the effect and terrible vigor which the
+     artist has given to the scene. The "Willesden Churchyard"
+     has great merit too, but the gems of the book are the little
+     vignettes illustrating the escape from Newgate. Here, too,
+     much anatomical care of drawing is not required; the figures
+     are so small that the outline and attitude need only to be
+     indicated, and the designer has produced a series of figures
+     quite remarkable for reality and poetry too.  There are no
+     less than ten of Jack's feats so described by Mr.
+     Cruikshank.  (Let us say a word here in praise of the
+     excellent manner in which the author has carried us through
+     the adventure.)  Here is Jack clattering up the chimney, now
+     peering into the lonely red room, now opening "the door
+     between the red room and the chapel."  What a wild, fierce,
+     scared look he has, the young ruffian, as cautiously he
+     steps in, holding light his bar of iron.  You can see by his
+     face how his heart is beating!  If any one were there! but
+     no!  And this is a very fine characteristic of the prints,
+     the extreme LONELINESS of them all. Not a soul is there to
+     disturb him--woe to him who should--and Jack drives in the
+     chapel gate, and shatters down the passage door, and there
+     you have him on the leads.  Up he goes! it is but a spring
+     of a few feet from the blanket, and he is gone--abiit,
+     evasit, erupit! Mr. Wild must catch him again if he can.
+
+     We must not forget to mention "Oliver Twist," and Mr.
+     Cruikshank's famous designs to that work.*  The sausage
+     scene at Fagin's, Nancy seizing the boy; that capital piece
+     of humor, Mr. Bumble's courtship, which is even better in
+     Cruikshank's version than in Boz's exquisite account of the
+     interview; Sykes's farewell to the dog; and the Jew,--the
+     dreadful Jew--that Cruikshank drew!  What a fine touching
+     picture of melancholy desolation is that of Sykes and the
+     dog!  The poor cur is not too well drawn, the landscape is
+     stiff and formal; but in this case the faults, if faults
+     they be, of execution rather add to than diminish the effect
+     of the picture: it has a strange, wild, dreary, broken
+     -hearted look; we fancy we see the landscape as it must have
+     appeared to Sykes, when ghastly and with bloodshot eyes he
+     looked at it.  As for the Jew in the dungeon, let us say
+     nothing of it--what can we say to describe it?  What a fine
+     homely poet is the man who can produce this little world of
+     mirth or woe for us!  Does he elaborate his effects by slow
+     process of thought, or do they come to him by instinct?
+     Does the painter ever arrange in his brain an image so
+     complete, that he afterwards can copy it exactly on the
+     canvas, or does the hand work in spite of him?
+
+
+             * Or his new work, "The Tower of London," which promises
+             even to surpass Mr. Cruikshank's former productions.
+
+A great deal of this random work of course every artist has done in his
+time; many men produce effects of which they never dreamed, and strike
+off excellences, haphazard, which gain for them reputation; but a fine
+quality in Mr. Cruikshank, the quality of his success, as we have said
+before, is the extraordinary earnestness and good faith with which
+he executes all he attempts--the ludicrous, the polite, the low, the
+terrible. In the second of these he often, in our fancy, fails, his
+figures lacking elegance and descending to caricature; but there is
+something fine in this too: it is good that he SHOULD fail, that he
+should have these honest naive notions regarding the beau monde, the
+characteristics of which a namby-pamby tea-party painter could hit
+off far better than he. He is a great deal too downright and manly to
+appreciate the flimsy delicacies of small society--you cannot expect a
+lion to roar you like any sucking dove, or frisk about a drawing-room
+like a lady's little spaniel.
+
+If then, in the course of his life and business, he has been
+occasionally obliged to imitate the ways of such small animals, he has
+done so, let us say it at once, clumsily, and like as a lion should.
+Many artists, we hear, hold his works rather cheap; they prate about bad
+drawing, want of scientific knowledge:--they would have something vastly
+more neat, regular, anatomical.
+
+Not one of the whole band most likely but can paint an Academy figure
+better than himself; nay, or a portrait of an alderman's lady and family
+of children. But look down the list of the painters and tell us who
+are they? How many among these men are POETS (makers), possessing the
+faculty to create, the greatest among the gifts with which Providence
+has endowed the mind of man? Say how many there are, count up what they
+have done, and see what in the course of some nine-and-twenty years has
+been done by this indefatigable man.
+
+What amazing energetic fecundity do we find in him! As a boy he began to
+fight for bread, has been hungry (twice a day we trust) ever since, and
+has been obliged to sell his wit for his bread week by week. And
+his wit, sterling gold as it is, will find no such purchasers as the
+fashionable painter's thin pinchbeck, who can live comfortably for
+six weeks, when paid for and painting a portrait, and fancies his mind
+prodigiously occupied all the while. There was an artist in Paris, an
+artist hairdresser, who used to be fatigued and take restoratives after
+inventing a new coiffure. By no such gentle operation of head-dressing
+has Cruikshank lived: time was (we are told so in print) when for a
+picture with thirty heads in it he was paid three guineas--a poor week's
+pittance truly, and a dire week's labor. We make no doubt that the same
+labor would at present bring him twenty times the sum; but whether it
+be ill paid or well, what labor has Mr. Cruikshank's been! Week by week,
+for thirty years, to produce something new; some smiling offspring of
+painful labor, quite independent and distinct from its ten thousand
+jovial brethren; in what hours of sorrow and ill-health to be told by
+the world, "Make us laugh or you starve--Give us fresh fun; we have
+eaten up the old and are hungry." And all this has he been obliged to
+do--to wring laughter day by day, sometimes, perhaps, out of want, often
+certainly from ill-health or depression--to keep the fire of his brain
+perpetually alight: for the greedy public will give it no leisure to
+cool. This he has done and done well. He has told a thousand truths in
+as many strange and fascinating ways; he has given a thousand new and
+pleasant thoughts to millions of people; he has never used his wit
+dishonestly; he has never, in all the exuberance of his frolicsome
+humor, caused a single painful or guilty blush: how little do we think
+of the extraordinary power of this man, and how ungrateful we are to
+him!
+
+Here, as we are come round to the charge of ingratitude, the
+starting-post from which we set out, perhaps we had better conclude. The
+reader will perhaps wonder at the high-flown tone in which we speak of
+the services and merits of an individual, whom he considers a humble
+scraper on steel, that is wonderfully popular already. But none of us
+remember all the benefits we owe him; they have come one by one, one
+driving out the memory of the other: it is only when we come to examine
+them all together, as the writer has done, who has a pile of books
+on the table before him--a heap of personal kindnesses from George
+Cruikshank (not presents, if you please, for we bought, borrowed, or
+stole every one of them)--that we feel what we owe him. Look at one of
+Mr. Cruikshank's works, and we pronounce him an excellent humorist.
+Look at all: his reputation is increased by a kind of geometrical
+progression; as a whole diamond is a hundred times more valuable than
+the hundred splinters into which it might be broken would be. A fine
+rough English diamond is this about which we have been writing.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's George Cruikshank, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
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