Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/259

 opprobrium. ‘The Political House that Jack Built,’ 1819; the ‘Man in the Moon,’ 1820; the ‘Queen's Matrimonial Ladder’ (with its inimitable picture of the ‘first gentleman in Europe’ recovering from a debauch, and its curious ‘step scenes’ so dear to collectors), 1820; ‘Non mi ricordo,’ 1820; the ‘Political Showman,’ 1821; a ‘Slap at Slop, and the Bridge Street Gang,’ 1822, are some of the other names of these famous squibs. In 1827 Hone reissued them under the general title of ‘Facetiæ and Miscellanies,’ in a volume the vignette of which contained portraits of himself and Cruikshank in consultation. ‘Doll Tearsheet, alias the Countess “Je ne me rappelle pas,”’ was another of the artist's contributions to the popular topic of 1820. He also supplied two engravings to Nightingale's ‘Memoirs of the Queen’ [see ], 1820, and ten coloured plates to the ‘Loyalist's Magazine, or Anti-Radical,’ 1821, a record of the ‘rise, reign, and fall of the Caroline contest.’

In Hone's volume, however, is included a plate which deserves more than a cursory notice. Cruikshank himself regarded it as the ‘great event of his artistic life,’ and referred to it on all occasions with much pardonable complacency. This was the so-called ‘Bank Restriction Note’ of 1818. Seeing on his way home in this year several women dangling from the gallows opposite Newgate Prison, for uttering forged one-pound notes, he was so impressed by the horror of the sight that he forthwith designed, with lavish decoration of fetters and figures pendant, a ‘Bank-note—not to be Imitated,’ a notion so happy in its instant reception by the public that Hone's shop in Ludgate Hill was besieged for copies, and the artist had to sit up all one night to etch another plate. ‘Mr. Hone,’ he says, ‘realised above 700l., and I had the satisfaction of knowing that no man or woman was ever hung after this for passing one-pound forged notes.’ ‘The issue of my “Bank-note not to be Imitated,”’ he says, in another account, ‘not only put a stop to the issue of any more Bank of England one pound notes, but also put a stop to the punishment of death for such an offence—not only for that but likewise for forgery—and then the late Sir Robert Peel revised the penal code; so that the final effect of my note was to stop the hanging for all minor offences, and has thus been the means of saving thousands of men and women from being hanged.’ It is probable that in this, as Mr. Jerrold says laconically, Cruikshank ‘assumed much,’ and he obviously makes too little of the efforts of the philanthropists who had long been advocating a milder code. But of the value of his à propos contribution to the cause of humanity there can be no doubt.

From 1820 to 1825 Cruikshank continued to throw off social and political caricatures, in which George IV and his amours, Frenchmen, and the eccentricities of fashionable costume and manners were freely ridiculed. But at the same time he was gradually turning his attention to book illustration. In 1819–21 he produced a series of coloured etchings to the ‘Humourist,’ a collection of entertaining tales, &c., in four volumes, ‘his first remarkable separate work.’ To this followed ‘Life in London,’ 1821, of which only part of the illustrations were his [see ]. A subsequent volume of a similar kind, David Carey's ‘Life in Paris,’ 1822, belongs, however, entirely to Cruikshank, and it is the more remarkable in that his opportunities for studying Gallic idiosyncrasies were even more limited than those of Hogarth, who did indeed make some stay at Calais, whereas, according to Jerrold, ‘a day at Boulogne comprehended all Cruikshank's continental experiences,’ and his pictures of the Boulevards and the Palais Royal were mere elaborations from the sketches of others. Previous to the ‘Life in Paris’ had appeared ‘The Progress of a Midshipman, exemplified in the Career of Master Blockhead,’ 1821, and in 1823 he supplied two coloured etchings to the ‘Ancient Mysteries Described’ of his friend Hone. But his chief achievement in the latter year was what may perhaps be styled his first thoroughly individual work, part i. of the ‘Points of Humour,’ a series of admirable etchings, illustrating comic passages from various authors and anecdotes or legends from different sources. Four of these, one of which represents Burns's ballad-singer ‘between his twa Deborahs,’ are from ‘The Jolly Beggars.’ A second part followed in 1824. In 1823 also came out a set of designs to the ‘shadowless man’ of Chamisso (‘Peter Schlemihl’), the grotesque diablerie of which is excellently caught. Passing over some illustrations to Ireland's ‘Life of Napoleon’ (1823–8), ‘Tales of Irish Life’ (1824), ‘Italian Tales’ (1824), and a set of woodcuts to the ‘Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron’ (1824–5), the next, and, as it is ranked by many, the master-work of the artist, was the two volumes of etchings for Grimm's ‘Popular Stories’ (‘Kinder-und Haus-Märchen’), 1824–6, still faintly appreciable, to those who cannot obtain the original issue, in Hotten's reprint of 1868. These little-laboured compositions, dear alike to Ruskin and Thackeray, are full of Cruikshank's drollest and most whimsical spirit. Nothing could be more tricksy than