Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/192

 series of jeux d'esprits, published between the years 1830 and 1832, and comprising Old Bootey's Ghost and The Man of Intellect, by W. F. Moncrieff; The High-mettled Racer and Monsieur Nongtongpaw, by Charles Dibdin; Margate and Brighton; The Devils Visit; Steamers and Stages; Monsieur Touson; Monsieur Mallet, by H. W. Montague; Mathews Comic Annual (a miserable melange by our friend Pierce Egan); the famous Devil's Walk, by Coleridge and Southey, etc., etc. These little volumes, which are now rare, contain nearly one hundred excellent examples of Robert Chiikshank's workmanship, the woodcuts being executed after the artist's designs by W. C. Bonner and other wood engravers of eminence. We can stay only to describe one, which illustrates one of the many experiences of John Bull in his memorable visit to France. Struck with the appearance of a French lady, "young and gay," the stanza tells us—

Three other books (two of them exceedingly rare) must suffice to complete our survey of Robert's merits as a designer and book illustrator. These are "Colburn's Kalendar of Amusements" (1840), "Job Crithannah's Original Fables" (1834), and Eugene Sue's "Orphan." There is an Irishman sitting on a barrel in one of the woodcuts to the "Kalendar," who quite equals any of the Hibernians of George. The eighty-four designs to the "Fables" are admirable specimens of the artist's best manner, and George himself rarely executed better illustrations than those of the Farmer and the Pointer, at page 110, The Cow and the Farmer, at page 163, and The Old Woman and her Cat, at page 219. This rare and choice book abounds with admirable tailpieces; one of which exhibits a sufferer down in the agonies of gout, the treatment of which subject may even be compared with the more elaborate and admirable design by the brother described by Thackeray. Sue's "Orphan"