LIFE AND GENIUS OF GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 135 



It may be gratifying to the public, perhaps, to learn that George 

 is about our own age ; that he resembles us in having a remarkably 

 pleasant little wife one who makes most poetical and accurate tea 

 eschewing the urn and concocting the delectable infusion, with water, 

 from a bright, parlour-grate adorning kettle, just as the liquid has 

 been irritated, for thejirst time, by the caloric material beneath it, to 

 the boiling point. Although she does not personally superintend the 

 toast it is properly browned and buttered on both sides, under her 

 auspices of course, therefore we respect and love her. To carry the 

 parallel one point further ; since we entered the matrimonial ring, 

 neither we nor George have ever been able to make out what this 

 means : 



By-the-bye, George has committed a species of blunder in the above 

 sketch of which he rarely is guilty: the right hand Cupid, judging 

 from his position, is evidently left-handed : perhaps the idea was put 

 on wood shortly after the fight between Turner (a left-handed man) 

 and the great little Jack Randall ; but this is of little consequence. 



The biographers of eminent men generally begin their narratives 

 with the name of William the Conqueror. We are not so happy. 

 Prior to the famous " forty-five," the name of Cruikshank, or as it used 

 to be spelt by its Scotch proprietors, Crookshank, appears to have 

 been recorded only in the Highland fogs. The mother of George 

 was a Mac Naghten. The Crookshanks and the Mac Naghtens 

 were both Charlie Stewart's men. Many of them were killed and 

 more of them wounded at Preston Pans, and Culloden. After the 

 fatal encounter which settled the fortunes of the young chevalier, the 

 Mac Naghtens were among his most faithful friends. The rebels who 

 bore the name of Crookshank were equally disloyal to the dynasty of 

 the Guelphs : and, as we have often heard from an old man of this 

 family, men of the two races frequently held meetings for the 

 discussion of political questions, which, as they were all of the same 

 opinion, invariably ended in an enthusiastic conflagration of their 

 joint and several wigs. 



Had George Cruikshank lived in the " famous forty-five," the re- 

 sult of Charlie Stewart's speculation might have been different. 

 His progenitors were doubtless " stout and stalwart ;" but what 

 were their cuts at Preston Pans, and Falkirk, compared with his in 

 Hone's political facetiae ? How immeasurably more formidable is his 

 sixpenny pencil, than were their claymores ! It is a question if a 

 sketch of George the Second, " done after the life," with the same 

 truth and felicity as the following specimen of George the Fourth 



