George Cruikshank's Omnibus. George Cruikshank

      I shall mention, en passant, that there are no Irish coal-heavers: I may mention, too, that the statement of the author adverted to is not to be depended on; were he living, I should show why. And now to the scene of my so-called "first studies." There was, in the neighbourhood in which I resided, a low public-house; it has since degenerated into a gin-palace. It was frequented by coal-heavers only, and it stood in Wilderness-lane, (I like to be particular,) between Primrose-hill and Dorset-street, Salisbury-square, Fleet-street. To this house of inelegant resort, (the sign was startling, the "Lion in the Wood,") which I regularly passed in my way to and from the Temple, my attention was one night especially attracted, by the sounds of a fiddle, together with other indications of festivity; when, glancing towards the tap-room window, I could plainly discern a small bust of Shakspeare placed over the chimney-piece, with a short pipe stuck in its mouth, thus—

      This was not clothing the palpable and the familiar with golden exhalations from the dawn, but it was reducing the glorious and immortal beauty of Apollo himself to a level with the common-place and the vulgar. Yet there was something not to be quarrelled with in the association of ideas to which that object led. It struck me to be the perfection of the human picturesque. It was a palpable meeting of the Sublime and the Ridiculous; the world of Intellect and Poetry seemed thrown open to the meanest capacity; extremes had met; the highest and the lowest had united in harmonious fellowship. I thought of what the great poet had himself been, of the parts that he had played, and the wonders he had wrought, within a stone's-throw of that very spot; and feeling that even he might have well wished to be there, the pleased spectator of that lower world, it was impossible not to recognise the fitness of the pipe. It was the only pipe that would have become the mouth of a poet in that extraordinary scene; and without it, he himself would have wanted majesty and the right to be present. I fancied that Sir Walter Raleigh might have filled it for him. And what a scene was that to preside over and to contemplate[1]! What a picture of life was there! It was as though Death were dead! It was all life. In simpler words, I saw, on approaching the window and peeping between the short red curtains, a swarm of jolly coal-heavers! Coal-heavers all—save a few of the fairer and softer sex—the wives of some of them—all enjoying the hour with an intensity not to be disputed, and in a manner singularly characteristic of the tastes and propensities of aristocratic and fashionable society;—that is to say, they were "dancing and taking refreshments." They only did what "their betters" were doing elsewhere. The living Shakspeare, had he been, indeed, in the presence, would but have seen a common humanity working out its objects, and have felt that the omega, though the last in the alphabet, has an astonishing sympathy with the alpha that stands first.

      This incident, may I be permitted to say, led me to study the characters of that particular class of society, and laid the foundation of scenes afterwards published. The locality and the characters were different, the spirit was the same. Was I, therefore, what the statement I have quoted would lead anybody to infer I was, the companion of dustmen, hodmen, coal-heavers, and scavengers? I leave out the "and so forth" as superfluous. It would be just as fair to assume that Morland was the companion of pigs, that Liston was the associate of louts and footmen, or that Fielding lived in fraternal intimacy with Jonathan Wild.

      (4.) "With Mr. Hone" (afterwards designated "the most noted infidel of his day") "he had long been on terms not only of intimacy, but of warm friendship."

      A very select class of associates to be assigned to an inoffensive artist by a friendly biographer; coal-heavers, hodmen, dustmen, and scavengers for my companions, and the most noted infidel of his day for my intimate friend! What Mr. Hone's religious creed may have been at that time, I am far from being able to decide; I was too young to know more than that he seemed deeply read in theological questions, and, although unsettled in his opinions, always professed to be a Christian. I knew also that his conduct was regulated by the strictest morality. He had been brought up to detest the Church of Rome, and to look upon the "Church of England" service as little better than popish ceremonies; and with this feeling, he parodied some portions of the Church service for purposes of political satire. But with these publications I had nothing whatever to do; and the instant I heard of their appearance, I entreated him to withdraw them. That I was his friend, is true; and it is true, also, that among his friends were many persons, not more admired for their literary genius, than esteemed for their zeal in behalf of religion and morals.

      (5.) "Not only is George a decided liberal, but his liberalism has with him all the authority of a moral law."

      I have already said, that I never quarrel with names, but with things; yet as so many and such opposite interpretations of the terms quoted are afloat, and as some of them are not very intelligible, I wish explicitly to enter my protest against every reading of the word "liberal," as applicable to me, save that which I find attributed to it in an old and seemingly forgotten dictionary—"Becoming a gentleman, generous, not mean."

      (6.) "Even on any terms his genius could not, for some time past, be said to have been marketable, Mr. Bentley the bookseller having contrived to monopolise his professional labours for publications with which he is connected."

      This assertion was to a certain extent true, while I was illustrating Oliver Twist and Jack Sheppard, works to which I devoted my best exertions; but so far from effecting a monopoly of my labours, the publisher in question has not for a twelvemonth past had from me more than a single plate for his monthly Miscellany; nor will he ever have more than that single plate per month; nor shall I ever illustrate any other work that he may publish.

      (7.) "He sometimes sits at his window to see the patrons of 'Vite Condick Ouse' on their way to that well-known locality on Sundays," &c.

      As my "extraordinary memory" is afterwards defined to be "something resembling a supernatural gift," it ought to enable me to recollect this habit of mine; yet I should have deemed myself as innocent of such a mode of spending the Sabbath as Sir Andrew Agnew himself, but for this extraordinary discovery. I am said to have "the most vivid remembrance of anything droll or ludicrous;" and yet I cannot remember sitting at the window "on a Sunday" to survey the motley multitude strolling towards "Vite Condick Ouse." I wish the invisible girl would sell me her secret.

      (8.) "He is a very singular, and, in some respects, eccentric man, considered, as what he himself would call, a 'social being.' The ludicrous and extraordinary fancies with which his mind is constantly teeming often impart a sort of wildness to his look, and peculiarity to his manner,