George Cruikshank | Page 6

almanacs of some young gentlemen who are employed in administering
to a schoolfellow the correction of the pump, which is as graceful and
elegant as a drawing of Stothard. Dull books about children George
Cruikshank makes bright with illustrations--there is one published by
the ingenious and opulent Mr. Tegg. It is entitled "Mirth and Morality,"
the mirth being, for the most part, on the side of the designer--the
morality, unexceptionable certainly, the author's capital. Here are then,
to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied by George
Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a
common! Such a light, brisk, airy, gentleman-like drawing was never
made upon such a theme. Who, cries the author--
"Who has not chased the butterfly, And crushed its slender legs and
wings, And heaved a moralizing sigh: Alas! how frail are human
things!"
A very unexceptionable morality truly; but it would have puzzled
another than George Cruikshank to make mirth out of it as he has done.
Away, surely not on the wings of these verses, Cruikshank's
imagination begins to soar; and he makes us three darling little men on
a green common, backed by old farmhouses, somewhere about May. A
great mixture of blue and clouds in the air, a strong fresh breeze stirring,
Tom's jacket flapping in the same, in order to bring down the insect
queen or king of spring that is fluttering above him,--he renders all this
with a few strokes on a little block of wood not two inches square,
upon which one may gaze for hours, so merry and lifelike a scene does
it present. What a charming creative power is this, what a privilege--to
be a god, and create little worlds upon paper, and whole generations of
smiling, jovial men, women, and children half inch high, whose
portraits are carried abroad, and have the faculty of making us monsters
of six feet curious and happy in our turn. Now, who would imagine that
an artist could make anything of such a subject as this? The writer
begins by stating,--
"I love to go back to the days of my youth, And to reckon my joys to
the letter, And to count o'er the friends that I have in the world, Ay, and
those who are gone to a better."
This brings him to the consideration of his uncle. "Of all the men I have
ever known," says he, "my uncle united the greatest degree of

cheerfulness with the sobriety of manhood. Though a man when I was a
boy, he was yet one of the most agreeable companions I ever
possessed. . . . He embarked for America, and nearly twenty years
passed by before he came back again; . . . but oh, how altered!--he was
in every sense of the word an old man, his body and mind were
enfeebled, and second childishness had come upon him. How often
have I bent over him, vainly endeavoring to recall to his memory the
scenes we had shared together: and how frequently, with an aching
heart, have I gazed on his vacant and lustreless eye, while he has
amused himself in clapping his hands and singing with a quavering
voice a verse of a psalm." Alas! such are the consequences of long
residences in America, and of old age even in uncles! Well, the point of
this morality is, that the uncle one day in the morning of life vowed that
he would catch his two nephews and tie them together, ay, and actually
did so, for all the efforts the rogues made to run away from him; but he
was so fatigued that he declared he never would make the attempt again,
whereupon the nephew remarks,--"Often since then, when engaged in
enterprises beyond my strength, have I called to mind the determination
of my uncle."
Does it not seem impossible to make a picture out of this? And yet
George Cruikshank has produced a charming design, in which the
uncles and nephews are so prettily portrayed that one is reconciled to
their existence, with all their moralities. Many more of the mirths in
this little book are excellent, especially a great figure of a parson
entering church on horseback,--an enormous parson truly, calm,
unconscious, unwieldy. As Zeuxis had a bevy of virgins in order to
make his famous picture--his express virgin--a clerical host must have
passed under Cruikshank's eyes before he sketched this little, enormous
parson of parsons.
Being on the subject of children's books, how shall we enough praise
the delightful German nursery-tales, and Cruikshank's illustrations of
them? We coupled his name with pantomime awhile since, and sure
never pantomimes were more charming than these. Of all the artists
that ever drew, from Michael Angelo upwards and downwards,
Cruikshank was the man to illustrate these tales,