The Life of George Cruikshank in Two Epochs, Vol. 1. (of 2)

“If ever you happen to meet with two volumes of Grimm’s ‘German Stories, which were illustrated by Cruikshank long ago, pounce upon them instantly; the etchings in them are the finest things, next to Rembrandt’s, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was invented.”—Ruskin. “All British people, even publicans and distillers, we should hope, have a kindly feeling for George Cruikshank.”—W. M. Rossetti. “Am I stilted or turgid when I paraphrase that which Johnson said of Homer and Milton, in re the Iliad and the Paradise Lost, and say of Hogarth and Cruikshank that George is not the greatest pictorial humourist our country has seen, only because he is not the first?”—Sala’s “Life of William Hogarth.”
CONTENTS

My dear Doré,
When some five-and-twenty years ago we were waiting together, at Boulogne, for the arrival of the Queen, who was on her way to Paris, we spent an evening at the hotel with the late Herbert Ingram, for whom we had undertaken—you to illustrate, and I to describe—the pageant for the “Illustrated London News” It was a pleasant evening, closed by a long moonlight ramble on the sands. While we talked, you, filled a vast sheet of paper with a medley of fancies, squibs, caricatures, and satires, in which public events were jumbled with private jokes; while the great folk, of whose doings we were the chroniclers, were marshalled in procession with our humble selves. I remember the astonishment expressed on Ingram’s face when, as we were leaving for our walk and cigar, he glanced over your shoulder at the hosts with which you had peopled the broad page before you. It was a prodigious tour de force,—so curious and complete an emanation of the humorous and satirical part of your genius, that I pardon Ingram for having decamped with it on the morrow morning before we were up.
It is the remembrance of all that sheet contained which has led me to dedicate this record of our friend George Cruikshanks life and work to you. Poring over his etchings and wood drawings, my mind has constantly reverted to your work of the Rabelais, Wandering Jew, and Contes Drôlatiques period; and I have perceived a strong affinity between one aspect of your genius and that of “the inimitable George.”