Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/280

 compliment; and one which I should hardly think they would submit to. In certain other announcements I observe mentioned, in addition to my own name, a 'Cruikshank the Younger.' Who is he? The only Cruikshank the Younger I ever heard of as a designer, is myself. Would it not be supposed that there must be a third Cruikshank, etching, drawing, and 'illustrating,' as his two predecessors have done? Yet there is no such person! There is indeed a nephew of mine, who, as a wood-engraver, and a wood-engraver only, has been employed by Mr. Bentley to engrave 'Crowquill's designs;' just as in my 'Omnibus' he engraved my own drawings upon wood, and still does engrave them in 'Ainsworth's Magazine.' Now, can any one imagine it possible for any respectable publisher, especially 'Her Majesty's Publisher in Ordinary,' to be guilty of so miserable a trick, so wretched an expedient, as that of putting off the engraver of a few of the drawings as the designer himself—as one of the 'illustrators' of the 'Miscellany'? Let Mr. Bentley but produce a single design for the 'Miscellany,' by 'Cruikshank the Younger' (by him so-called), and I will retract this indignant disclaimer and apologise. If Mr. Bentley cannot do this, he stands self-convicted of an attempt to impose upon the public by a mystification, for purposes as apparent as the trick itself."

What this strange declaration of war proposed to effect is not altogether manifest; if its author imagined it would produce the result of releasing him from his engagement, he was signally mistaken, for Mr. Bentley, as might have been expected, held him all the tighter to the letter of his bond. What the artist thought and what he did are told us in the plainest language by the etchings which followed this singular manifesto. They tell us as plainly as could be expressed in words, that George reasoned after the following fashion:—"It is clear that under the terms of my engagement I am bound to supply 'Bentley's Miscellany' with one etching a month; but our agreement says nothing as to the quality of the etchings, nor am I bound to see that they shall be strictly relevant to the subjects which I am called upon to illustrate."