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George Cruikshank. W. H. Chesson
Magazine," "Windsor Castle") 137 1844. The Marquis de Guiscard attempting to assassinate Harley (from "Ainsworth's Magazine," "Saint James's") 91 1845. The Lion of the Party (from "George Cruikshank's Table-Book") 185 1845. Details from Heads of the Table (from "George Cruikshank's Table-Book") 177 1847. Amaranth carried by the Bee's Monster Steed(from "The Good Genius that Turned Everything into Gold") 149 1847. "The Cat Did It! (from "The Greatest Plague in Life") 221 1848. Shoeing the Devil (from "The True Legend of St. Dunstan") 122 1848. The Devil about to Sign (from "The True Legend of St. Dunstan ") 123 1849. Miss Eske carried away during her Trance (from "Clement Lorimer") 109 1853. The Glass of Whiskey after the Goose (from "The Glass and the New Crystal Palace") 62 1853. The Goose after the Whiskey (from "The Glass and the New Crystal Palace") 63 1854. When the Elephant stands upon his Head (from "George Cruikshank's Magazine") 217 1854. The Pumpkin, etc., being changed into a Coach, etc., (from "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library," "Cinderella") 153 1864. The Ogre in the form of a Lion (from "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library," "Puss in Boots") 157 1875. Monk Reading (from "Peeps at Life") 249 N.D. Eliza Cruikshank (from a painting) 113
[1]Date of vol., 1832.
**** The dates in the footlines and in this list are those of the first appearance of the works to which they refer. In certain cases the reproductions have been made from good impressions which are not the earliest of the plates in question.
I
The life of George Cruikshank extended from September 27, 1792, to February 1, 1878, and the known work of his hand dates from 1799 to 1875. In 1840 Thackeray wrote of him as of a hero of his boyhood, asking jocundly, "Did we not forego tarts in order to buy his Breaking-up or his Fashionable Monstrosities of the year eighteen hundred and something?" In 1863, the year of Thackeray's death, Cruikshank was asked, by the committee who exhibited his Worship of Bacchus, to associate with that work some of his early drawings in order to prove that he was not his own grandfather.
For years before he reached the great but unsensational age at which he died, a sort of cult was vested in his longevity. Dated plates—that entitled "The Rose and the Lily" (1875) offers the last example—imply that his art figured to him finally as a kind of athleticism.
It was as if, in using his burin or needles, he was doing a "turn" before sightseers, with a hired Time innocuously scything on the platform beside him to show him off.
Now that his mortality has been proven for a quarter of a century, we can coldly ask: why did he seem so old to himself and the world? Others greater than he—Titian, Watts—have laboured with genius under a heavier crown of snow than he; and the public has applauded their vigour without a doubt of their identity. The reason is that they have not been the journalists of their age. They have not, like Cruikshank, reflected in their works inventions and fashions, wars and scandals, jokes and politics, whence the world has emerged unrecognisably the same.
It is said that when Cruikshank was eighty-three, he executed a sword-dance before an old officer who had mentally buried him. It was an action characteristic of a nature that was scarcely more