138 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 



excellent father. He was a native of Edinburgh, or its neighbour- 

 hood, and at an early age evinced, without the slightest tuition, con- 

 siderable powers as an artist. Some of his sketches, which we have 

 seen (done when he was a boy), possess a force, truth, and effect, 

 which, among the productions of self-taught genius, have rarely 

 been surpassed. He wished to be a painter; and his mother we 

 believe the good woman was a widow eager to second her darling 

 boy's aspirations, placed him, at once, on trial with a friend. Young 

 Cruikshank, however, soon found that his intended master was not 

 the sort of master he wanted ; being, in fact, one of those honest 

 tradesmen, who append to their names, on cards and door-posts, in 

 addition to that of painter, the double designation of ft plumber and 

 glazier." Disdaining putty, the young artist soon returned home 

 in disgust ; and, for some time after, gave himself up fully to the 

 transcendant delights of free, jocund, and boyish amusement. He 

 strolled, climbed, swam, and, once now and then, almost against his 

 will, felt compelled to sketch a fine bold, rugged, rocky outline j to 

 transfer a droll face to paper ; or to perpetuate, so far as his mate- 

 rials would permit, an accidental, but splendid bit of colour in ff the 

 heavens above or the earth beneath." Originally he was an artist ; 

 but the engravers into whose hands his best drawings fell, so 

 butchered them, (we are now speaking of his after-life,) that he lost 

 that ambition which had been the idol of his youth ; and, finding it 

 impossible, on account of the cruel translation his designs suffered, 

 to achieve fame, he contented himself, as his family increased, with 

 making money. Thus was a promising painter spoiled. Little can be 

 said in favour of those plates, at the left hand corner of which 

 he blushed to see his name subscribed ; and yet the elder Cruikshank 

 was in feeling, perception, and taste, AN ARTIST ! On seeing his 

 original design for a plate which was perfectly familiar to us, 

 we have been startled at the deterioration it had endured : the en- 

 graving was weak, annoying, and repulsive ; the design fresh, vigo- 

 rous, and delightful. We rejoiced in the one we detested the other. 

 He had indeed been brutally transferred. All that constitutes feel- 

 ing, poetry, had been, not merely abused, but turned into the vilest 

 caricature. He was not ludicrously, but seriously parodied. In his 

 sketch the story was well told ; in the engraving, it was given in the 

 Billingsgate version of the coppersmith. 



Such was the fate of the elder Cruikshank. But, to return to his 

 boyhood, for the sake of an anecdote, as well as to account for his ap- 

 pearance among the Cockneys : one day, while bathing with a com- 

 panion from the edge of a rock, towards the summit of which 

 the sea at high tide approached, an event occurred that very plea- 

 santly brings out the prudent and persevering characteristics of our 

 northern neighbours. Isaac's friend inherited the name of Ross, and 

 is now, we believe, a veteran on the Times: while dressing, little Ross 

 unfortunately dropped one of his silver shoe-buckles in the sea. 

 Isaac Cruikshank, having no interest in the mishap, put on his clothes 

 and went home. Ross, however, remained ; and, after he had sat 

 for tWo or three hours with his legs dangling over the edge of the 

 rock, a humane gentleman thus accosted him : " My lad, I Ve seen 



