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Again the artist moulds an Irish physiognomy upon a keg of whisky, or gives us a mushroom aristocrat,—or imparts a venerable human aspect to a mug of ale.
The mushroom is a triumph. “You’d think,” says the story, “that Purcell’s pride might be brought down a little by what had befallen him; but no,—he strutted out of the cabin without condescending to say be baw, or a civil word to any one, and rode off to The Beg—mushroom as he was—with his nose in the air, as though the ground wasn’t good enough for him to look on.” Only Cruikshank could have turned this veritable mushroom into so proud a man, and left the mushroom obviously the fungus of which catsup is made. Cruikshank was never tired of making still life quick life.
The deaf postilion is a masterpiece of acute observation. There is, to begin with, the suggestion of a pleasant landscape. The story is complete. The body of the chariot, with the runaway couple in it, broken away from the shafts and fore-wheels; the excited swain stretching out of the window, and bawling his hardest to the postilion, who, deaf as a door-post (never was deafness more forcibly expressed in a human countenance), is jogging on with the fore-wheels, unconscious that any contretemps has happened; and the startled cow, gazing wildly over the hedge, make up one of Cruikshank’s completest triumphs as a humorous illustrator. How closely, how searchingly had he read men and things! How thoroughly had he become a master of expression! In this illustration to Clarke’s whimsical poem, in Hood’s style, “The Dos-a-Dos Tête-à-Tête,” you can almost hear the man snoring, and yet it is a mere outline of a face.
Says the lady:—
“When I had in some cordials so rich,
With letters all labelled quite handy,
Says you, ‘I’ll inquire, you old witch,
If O.D.V. doesn’t mean brandy!’
Whenever I sink to repose,
You rouse me, you wretch, with a sneeze;
And lastly, if I doze-a-doze,To wex me, you just wheeze-a-wheeze.”
Then we have an Irish scene! The drunken piper; the pigs who have upset a basket of live crabs, the excited group looking in through the door, the dog barking at the man in bed, the crab pinching the little porker’s tail. What life is here! and all true to the main incident of the scene. You don’t want the letterpress to read the story. The pigs have got into the room to attack the basket of crabs. Pompey, who has been tied to his master’s toe to wake him in case of danger, is tugging away in mortal fear of the old sow, who is scratching the good man’s foot with her bristles. The noise has set Corney Carolum, only half sober and half away, droning upon his pipes. The clatter has brought the children from their beds to the door. The fowls in the rafters are clucking and crowing. “All this noise,” says the author, “couldn’t go for nothing; the whole place was in arms. Mick Maguire fired off his gun through a hole in the thatch, and Bat Boroo, flourishing his big stick, took Mick under his command, for he thought the French was landed, at the least; and no blame to him.”