[ CHAPTER VIII. SKETCHES BY BOZ, OLIVER TWIST, AND THE LIFE OF GRIMALDI. ]
[ CHAPTER IX. ILLUSTRATIONS TO HARRISON AINSWORTH’S ROMANCES. ]
DEDICATION.
TO GUSTAVE DORÉ.
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.”