Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/175

 and bearing no initials, I have no hesitation in assigning to Robert Cruikshank.

I am unable to indicate the dates of the following: Football, very clever, and probably earlier than any of those already mentioned; Waltzing, "dedicated with propriety to the lord chamberlain," a very coarse and severe satire upon the immoralities of the Prince Regent. Besides those we have already mentioned, we have others with which the volume miscalled "Cruikshankiana" (so often re-published) has made the general public probably more familiar, such as the Monstrosities of 1827; A Dandy Fainting, or an Exquisite in Fits; The Broom Sold (Lord Brougham); Household Troops (a skit on domestic servants); and A Tea-party, or English Manners and French Politeness, all of which may be dismissed with the remark that they are the worst specimens of Robert's work which could probably have been selected.

With the year 1825, our record of Isaac Robert Cruikshank's caricature work somewhat abruptly terminates. We cannot assert that after that date it wholly ceased, but, inasmuch as we have selected those we have named from a mass of some of the rarest pictorial satires published between the years 1800 and 1830, I think we are fairly justified in assuming that after this period his contributions to this branch of comic art became fewer. If this be the fact, it confirms the conclusion at which we have arrived, that at this time caricature had begun its somewhat hasty decline. Those I have named comprise over seventy examples; and their value, which is great on account of their scarcity, will be increased by the possibility that in the conception and execution of some of them the mind and band of Robert might have been assisted by those of the more celebrated brother. "When my dear brother Robert," says George in writing to the compiler of the famous catalogue of his own works, "when my dear brother Robert (who in his latter days omitted the Isaac) left off portrait painting, and took almost entirely to designing and etching, I assisted him at first to a great extent in some of his drawings on wood and his etchings." If this be the case, it is at least possible that he lent the assistance of his cunning hand and