THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD PREACHING TO THE PRISONERS. From "Illustrations of Popular Works," 1830.
Fisher, Son, & Co., the publishers of Cruikshank's illustrations of the "Waverley" novels (1836-7-8), assumed "the merit of having been the first to illustrate the scenes of mirth, of merriment, of humour, that often sparkle" in these works. In "Landscape Historical Illustrations of Scotland and the Waverley Novels" he supplied the comic plates; his Bailie Macwheeble rejoicing before Waverley, for chapter lxvi. of "Waverley," was the first etching done by him on steel. His "Waverley" etchings are characteristic works, sometimes brilliant in pattern or composition, occasionally ministering to a love of physiognomical ugliness which the small nurses of the dolls called "golliwoggs" can better explain than I. His predilection for the curious and uncanny is shown in some striking plates, including that in which he depicts the terror of Dougal and Hutcheon as they mistake the ape squatting on Redgauntlet's coffin for "the foul fiend in his ain shape."
Cruikshank's illustrations for "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron" (1824-5) are cuts which include such deplorable effects of bathos (e.g. Haidee saving Don Juan from her Father's wrath) that one has no heart to praise the rough vigour of Juan opposing the Entrance to the Spirit Room. A Byron illustrated by protected aborigines seems realisable after seeing these pictures. If anybody paid the artist for them it should have been Wordsworth; that they did not weigh on Cruikshank's conscience, we may infer from the fact that in 1833 he cheerfully caricatured Byron for "Rejected Addresses" as a gentleman in an easy-chair kicking the terrestrial globe.
We have already discussed the fruit of Cruikshank's association with Dickens. We have not, however, paid tribute to Cruikshank's capital etchings for "Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi," edited by Boz (1838). The portrait of the famous clown holding in his arms a hissing goose and a squeaking pig, while voluble ducks protrude their heads from his pockets and a basket of carrots and turnips afflicts his back, is extraordinarily funny.
Though Cruikshank's relations with Thackeray were far happier than with Dickens, they resulted in nothing important to his reputation. His etchings illustrating Thackeray's contributions to "The Comic Almanack" (1839-40) weary one with plain or uninteresting faces, though that which exhibits the expressive blubber-face of Stubbs, horsed for the birching earned by his usury, provokes an irrational smile which serves for praise. His illustrations to "A Legend of the Rhine" (Thackeray's contribution to "George Cruikshank's Table-Book," 1845) are not equal to Thackeray's drawings for "The Rose and the Ring" (1855).
PRO-DI-GI-OUS! (Dominie Sampson in "Guy Mannering"), "Landscape-Historical Illustrations of Scotland and the Waverley Novels," 1836.
In the world of humour one does not descend in moving from Thackeray to Charles James Lever. With Lever's own portrait of his hero to guide him, Cruikshank illustrated "Arthur O'Leary" (1844). Among his ten etchings in this novel is an amusing exhibition of Corpulence submitting to identification by measurement; it surpasses the scene by Du Maurier in which the tailor promises to be round in a minute if his customer will press one end of the tape-measure to his waist.