The fact was that Mr. Roscoe began with Strutt, found him a failure, and then started de novo with George Cruikshank, whose genius carried him triumphantly through seventeen volumes.
How strangely various were Cruikshank’s creations! The eminent surgeon, the late Mr. Pettigrew, * was, it will be remembered, his intimate friend; and for him he executed a series of carefully drawn plates for his “History of Egyptian Mummies” (1833). ** Even now he was not quite quit of political caricatures and headings to popular songs. He satirized quack qill vendors. In 1831, he lent a hand to the Reform movement—albeit he was a very moderate Liberal, even in his youth, if we are to judge by the way in which his pencil was employed against Cobbett. The Reform Bill drew from him “Sweeping Measures; or, Making a Clean House”—an etching in which Lord John Russell appears with an immense “Reform” broom, sweeping the Opposition out of the House of Commons—the Opposition consisting of owls, spiders, and vermin. The Chancellor, almost buried under petitions, cries, “Aye, I thought this rotten rubbish would make a fine dust.” Then he put upon stone (1832) a squib called “Cholera Consultation,” in which “the Central Board of Health” are represented at a sumptuous dinner, drinking toasts to their own prosperity.
* Doctor Pettigrew, the family doctor of Cruikshank’s
family, was among the few who exercised a little authority
over the turbulent and self-willed George. When his fortunes
grew, and he became assistant surgeon to the Duchess of
Kent, then librarian to the Duke of Sussex, and afterwards
Mummy Pettigrew and a personage of his time, Cruikshank was
a constant guest at his table, as well as an artist at his
service.
** “Reading lately a very appreciative lecture just
republished in pamphlet form by Mr. Walter Hamilton on the
genius and art-work of George Cruikshank, I found mention
made of a fact hitherto unknown to me; to wit, that George
executed, many years ago, a series of very careful
anatomical drawings for a work on Egyptian mummies, written
by the late eminent surgeon, Mr. Pettigrew. G. C. an
anatomist! For the moment I was puzzled. Yet how strangely
do things come together! I happened to be turning over a
ragged little old folio, of the date of 1825, entitled
‘Anatomy of the Bones and Muscles, for the use of Artists
and Members of the Artists’ Anatomical Society,’ by George
Simpson, surgeon; and in the list of subscribers attached to
the work I found the name of ‘George Cruickshank, Esq.’
(they would spell his surname with two c’s), Myddelton
Terrace, Pentonville. ‘Eureka!’ I cried. It was at the feet
of George Simpson, surgeon, then, that George studied
osteology and myology.”—“Echoes of the Week,” by G. A.
Sala: Illustrated London News.
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On looking over all this scattering of the sparks of great genius through wide fields; at the woful waste of much of the light and heat; at the hard and stern necessity which compelled the most thoughtful, suggestive, observant, and imaginative artist of his day to illustrate doggerel, furnish frontispieces to poor dramas, and to put the sketches of others upon wood, in the interval of such congenial labour of a noble kind as we find scattered through Roscoe s series, in the “Demonology,” and in his own separate albums of wit, humour, and human wisdom, it is impossible not to marvel.