| “All my faults perchance thou knowest, All my madness none can know.” |
And the concluding stanza:—
| “Fare thee well! thus disunited, Torn from every nearer tie, Seared in heart, and lone, and blighted, More than this I scarce can die”!! |
The foregoing contains a list and description of some of George Cruikshank’s graphic satires, many of which we have reason to believe will be entirely new to the great majority of our readers. They support the description given of him by Lockhart at the opening of our chapter: “People consider him as a clever, sharp caricaturist, and nothing more—a free-handed, comical young fellow, who will do anything he is paid for, and who is quite content to dine off the proceeds of a ‘George IV.’ to-day, and those of a ‘Hone,’ or a ‘Cobbett,’ to-morrow.” It must be remembered that these represent but a branch of his work; and that while content to design a satire as elaborate and as admirable as any which owe their origin to the hand of Gillray, or to dash off a rough and carelessly executed caricature, he was equally ready to etch the work of an inferior artist, or even of an amateur; to execute a drawing on wood for a ballad, or for one of the numerous political hits of the day, whether on the loyal or the popular side mattered but little to him; to do anything, in fact (to use the words of Lockhart), that “was suggested or thrown in his way.” It is barely possible that the very imperfect series we have given may astonish those who have hitherto regarded George Cruikshank only as an illustrator of books, and supposed that, with the exception of the woodcuts for Hone’s various jeux d’esprits, and the rough work which appears in “The Satirist,” “The Scourge,” and publications of a similar character, he executed but few pictorial satires. A perfect set of impressions from his caricatures probably does not exist; if it did it would command a high price indeed. We have seen a set of about seventy plates advertised by one enterprising bookseller at the price of seventy pounds. The specimens we have cited (exclusive of two from “The Scourge”) 128 in number, were published between the years 1808 and 1825, by G. and H. Humphrey, S. Fairburn, Thomas Tegg, Ackermann, M. Jones, J. Fairburn, J. Dolby, W. Hone, S. W. Fores, A. Bengo, J. Sidebotham, S. Knight, and J. Johnstone. If to the foregoing we add the plates in “Cruikshankiana”—twenty-six in number, thirty in “The Scourge,” six in “Fashion,” nine in “The Satirist,” and eight in the “Loyalists’ Magazine,” we get seventy-nine more, making a sum total of over two hundred in all. How many more have escaped notice—how many have disappeared for ever from public notice without a chance of recovery or revival—it would be, perhaps, impossible to say; for even George himself was sometimes at fault, when the long-forgotten work of his early years was presented to him for recognition or acknowledgment.
[66] Alluding to the “Life in London.”
[67] This certainly was not true; both Gillray and Rowlandson were draughtsmen and artists of exceptionable ability.
[68] The article from which this is quoted is variously assigned to Professor Wilson and Lockhart; it matters little which. Meanwhile, we must have a name, let it be Lockhart’s.
[69] The editor of “The Scourge” was one Jack Mitford. He received a classical education, was originally in the navy, and fought under Hood and Nelson. Besides “The Scourge,” he edited “The Bon Ton” magazine, and “Quizzical Gazette,” and was author of a sea song once popular, “The King is a true British Sailor.” He was an irreclaimable drunkard, thought only of the necessities of the hour, and slept in the fields when his finances would not admit of payment of a twopenny lodging in St. Giles’s. His largest work was “Johnny Newcome in the Navy,” for which the publisher gave him the generous remuneration of a shilling a day till he finished it. He died in St. Giles’s workhouse in 1831.
[70] The reader may remember that Napoleon once contracted a skin disease from taking up a weapon which had been wielded by a dead artilleryman, which gave him trouble at various periods of his life. It may be that this suggested the subject.