“Mr. Cruikshank’s next important public appearance,” says Mr. Thackeray, “was with his ‘Points of Humour’ * (1822 and 1824), after ‘Life in London and Paris’—some twenty copper-plates selected from Various works.”
* In a note to his essay on George Cruikshank in
Blackwood, Professor Wilson says:—“The ‘Points of Humour’
are to appear in occasional numbers. No. I. contains about a
dozen etchings, and fifty pages of very well written
letterpress. The work is published by C. Baldwyn, Newgate
Street, London, and the price per number is only eight
shillings, which is dog-cheap, as things go.”
“The collector of humorous designs,” Mr. Thackeray remarks, “cannot fail to have them in his portfolio, for they contain some of the very best efforts of Mr. Cruikshank’s genius; and though not quite so highly laboured as some of his later productions, are none the worse, in our opinion, for their comparative want of finish. All the effects are perfectly given, and the expression as good as it could be in the most delicate engraving upon steel. The artist’s style, too, was then completely formed; and, for our part, we should say that we preferred his manner of 1825 to any which he has adopted since. The first picture, which is called ‘The Point of Honour,’ illustrates the old story of the officer who, on being accused of cowardice for refusing to fight a duel, came among his brother officers, and flung a lighted grenade down upon the floor, before which his comrades fled ignominiously. This design is capital, and the outward rush of heroes, walking, trampling, twisting, scuffling at the door, is in the best style of the grotesque. You see but the back of most of these gentlemen, into which, nevertheless, the artist has managed to throw an expression of ludicrous agony that one could scarcely have expected to find in such a part of the human figure. The next plate is not less good. It represents a couple who, having been found one night tipsy, and lying in the same gutter, were, by a charitable though misguided gentleman, supposed to be man and wife, and put comfortably to bed together. The morning came: fancy the surprise of this interesting pair when they awoke and discovered their situation. Fancy the manner, too, in which Cruikshank has depicted them, to which words cannot do justice. It is needless to state that this fortuitous and temporary union was followed by one more lasting and sentimental, and that these two worthy persons were married, and lived happily ever after.
“We should like to go through every one of these prints. There is the jolly miller, who, returning home at night, calls upon his wife to get him a supper, and falls to upon rashers of bacon and ale. How he gormandises, that jolly miller! rasher after rasher,—how they pass away frizzling and smoking from the gridiron down that immense grinning gulf of a mouth. Poor wife! how she pines and frets at that untimely hour of midnight to be obliged to fry, fry, fry perpetually, and minister to the monster’s appetite. And yonder in the clock, what agonised face is that we see? By heavens, it is the squire of the parish! What business has he there? Let us not ask. Suffice it to say, that he has, in the hurry of the moment, left upstairs his brs—— his—psha! a part of his dress, in short, with a number of bank-notes in the pockets. Look in the next page, and you will see the ferocious, bacon-devouring ruffian of a miller is actually causing this garment to be carried through the village, and cried by the town-crier. And we blush to be obliged to say that the demoralised miller never offered to return the bank-notes, although he was so mighty scrupulous in endeavouring to find an owner for the corduroy portfolio in which he had found them.
“Passing from this painful subject, we come, we regret to state, to a series representing personages not a whit more moral. Burns’s famous ‘Jolly Beggars’ have all had their portraits drawn by Cruikshank.”
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George Cruikshank’s “Phrenological Illustrations” (1826), “Illustrations of Time” (1827), and “Scraps and Sketches” (1828), in which the celebrated scene “What is Taxes, Thomas?” will be found all published by the artist himself, may be said to have furnished the pictorial material for the first attempt at illustrated journalism. Mr. J. C. Rogers, a friend of Cruikshank’s, describes the transaction as he had it from the wronged artist. *