One thief succeeded another, and in 1839 Jack Sheppard was pilfering his way through "Bentley's Miscellany." If he had done nothing else, Cruikshank would have made a deathless reputation for technical skill by the etchings in "Jack Sheppard." Sala, who copied the shop-scene entitled The name on the beam, observes of this etching, at once so precise and imaginative, that it is "in its every detail essentially Hogarthian." It is a just saying. One can easily imagine Dr Trusler poring over it and recording his small discoveries with something of the relish he found in his Hogarthian exploration. Appropriately enough, Hogarth's portrait appears in the clever etching which depicts Jack in chains sitting to two artists, the other being Sir James Thornhill. Thackeray has done justice to the high qualities of the etchings entitled The Storm and The Murder on the Thames. There are effects in Cruikshank's river scenes poetic enough and near enough to that verity which Impressionists serve better than Ruskinians, to have detained Whistler for a minute that might have regenerated the fame of Cruikshank.
JONATHAN WILD SEIZING JACK SHEPPARD AT HIS MOTHER'S GRAVE IN WILLESDEN CHURCHYARD. From "Jack Sheppard," 1839.
From "Jack Sheppard," 1839.
"Jack Sheppard," with its requisition of antiquarian exactness so plausibly met, may well have suggested to Cruikshank a more epic theme than the exploits of a master-thief, revolving about a nobler gaol than Newgate. In a letter which may or may not have been posted (it is to be read at the back of No. 9910 H in the Cruikshank collection at South Kensington), he writes: "The fact is, I am endeavouring to emancipate myself from the thraldom of the Booksellers, whose slave I have been nearly all my life; to effect this object I have published, in conjunction with the author, a work called 'The Tower of London.'"
