Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/191

 all their real deformity," of which he speaks, are a couple of idiots, one Peregrine Wilson, and an attendant mentor, whom we drop at the earliest convenient opportunity. Information combined with morality is all very well. The "History of Sandford and Merton" may have been, as Lord Houghton assures us it was, "the delight of the youth of the first generation of the present century." As one of the youth of the generation referred to, we refuse to admit it, and we are perfectly certain that the youth of the present generation would have nothing whatever to do with it We resign ourselves preferentially to the guidance of Isaac Robert and George Cruikshank, sensible that they at least, while conversant with the scenes they so graphically describe, will not bore us with unnecessary moral reflections. We prefer, if the truth must be told, to "sport a toe among the Corinthians at Almack's" with hooked-nosed Tom and rosy-cheeked Jerry; to visit with these merry and by no means strait-laced persons, Mr. O'Shaunessy's rooms in the Haymarket; the back parlour of the respected Thomas Cribb, ex-champion of England; to take wine with them "in the wood" at the London Docks; to enjoy with them, if they will, "the humours of a masquerade supper at the opera house." The work which Smeeton designed with such indifferent success was subsequently carried out in a far more efficient manner by Mr. James Grant, in his "Sketches in London," and at a later date by Mr. Mayhew, in his well-known "London Labour and the London Poor."

The "Doings in London" owe whatever value they possess to the thirty-nine curious designs on wood of Isaac Robert Cruikshank, engraved by W. C. Bonner, which, on the whole fair examples of his workmanship in this style, strongly remind us of the smaller woodcuts in Hone's "Every-Day Book."

The best specimens, however, of Robert's designs on wood are those which will be found in two small volumes, known indifferently as "Facetiæ" and "Cruikshank's Comic Album," which contain a