146 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GEORGE CltUIKSHANK. 



George's idea as to the consummation of the metropolitan exploits, 

 was not, however, fulfilled, either by Egan or MoncriefT. His plan 

 was not without a moral. He would have closed the career of Tom 

 in a workhouse that of Jerry in a hospital and that of Logic in a 

 ditch. He certainly intended to have inflicted poetical justice on 

 each of his characters but he was thwarted much to his annoy- 

 ance, even up to the present day. 



" Life in , Paris " followed ; but it was not so successful as the 

 Tom and Jerry affair. Soon after, the brothers parted ; and George 

 brought out his brilliant embellishments to Hone's Political Squibs ; 

 than which nothing pictorial ever produced so great an excitement. 

 Soon after the conclusion of Hone's works, Canning came into 

 power, and George was floored. He could not render popular, and, 

 comparatively speaking, liberal ministers although Canning opposed 

 manumission of the slaves, and the repeal of the Test Act pictorially 

 ridiculous ; he loved political liberality, and the same feeling so com- 

 pletely sways him at this moment, that he would not point a pencil 

 against our present monarch or Earl Grey, or Baron Brougham, for 

 the universe. What was the consequence ? Simply that he found 

 himself in possession of ten fingers, a set of teeth, and nothing to do. 

 In this dilemma he proposed to illustrate books : but so little were his 

 stupendous powers at that time appreciated, that previously to obtain- 

 ing a commission, on the Points of Humour, he was requested to 

 furnish specimens ! He condescended to do so : they electrified 

 Baldwin and Co., and, on their publication, amazed the public. 

 Lockhart, in Blackwood's Magazine, occupied several pages in dis- 

 cussing the young artist's merits, and thenceforth he became in 

 requisition. Let us recollect, if we can, a few of the books that he 

 was successively entreated to illustrate ! There was Wight's work of 

 " Mornings at Bow-street/' and a book already quoted, by the same 

 facetious wight, entitled " More mornings at Bow-street ;" " Peter 

 Schlemil;" "Italian Tales;" "Hans of Iceland;" "Life of Lord 

 Byron;" " German Stories;" " Tales of Irish Life;" " Punch and 

 Judy ;" " Tom Thumb ;" " Johnny Gilpin ;" " The Epping Hunt ;" 

 " Three Courses and a Dessert ;" " Greenwich Hospital ;" " Tim 

 Bobbin ;" Punch and Judy ;" " Roscoe's Novelists/' c. &c. All 

 these, and the anecdotes and critiques connected with them jointly 

 and severally ; a consideration of George's occasional failures, and 

 incapacities ; his devout aspirations to quit the ludicrous, which 

 he contemns, for the sublime, which he admires ; his extraordi- 

 nary powers, considering the paucity of his academical acquire- 

 ments; his fancy and invention; his " Scraps and Sketches," in 

 which the full extent of his ability is shown for in them he is 

 neither fettered by the conceptions of authors nor the punctilios of 

 publishers; the history of his attempting to paint in oil, from his 

 earliest efforts ; in fact a full estimate of his genius, humour, and 

 graphic labours his days of toil over faces " no bigger than peas," 

 which to the unconscious public seem to have been hit off " at a mo- 

 ment's notice" his style of execution as a draftsman and an etcher, and 

 all that we have not already narrated about him must be postponed 

 until our next number. We have only just reached his " high and 



