George Cruikshank | Page 9

must have given striking descriptions of life in some part or
other of London, for all London read it, and went to see it in its
dramatic shape. The artist, it is said, wished to close the career of the
three heroes by bringing them all to ruin, but the writer, or publishers,
would not allow any such melancholy subjects to dash the merriment of
the public, and we believe Tom, Jerry, and Logic, were married off at
the end of the tale, as if they had been the most moral personages in the
world. There is some goodness in this pity, which authors and the
public are disposed to show towards certain agreeable, disreputable
characters of romance. Who would mar the prospects of honest
Roderick Random, or Charles Surface, or Tom Jones? only a very stern
moralist indeed. And in regard of Jerry Hawthorn and that hero without
a surname, Corinthian Tom, Mr. Cruikshank, we make little doubt, was
glad in his heart that he was not allowed to have his own way.
Soon after the "Tom and Jerry" and the "Life in Paris," Mr. Cruikshank

produced a much more elaborate set of prints, in a work which was
called "Points of Humor." These "Points" were selected from various
comic works, and did not, we believe, extend beyond a couple of
numbers, containing about a score of copper-plates. The collector of
humorous designs cannot fail to have them in his portfolio, for they
contain some of the very best efforts of Mr. Cruikshank's genius, and
though not quite so highly labored as some of his later productions, are
none the worse, in our opinion, for their comparative want of finish. All
the effects are perfectly given, and the expression is as good as it could
be in the most delicate engraving upon steel. The artist's style, too, was
then completely formed; and, for our parts, we should say that we
preferred his manner of 1825 to any other which he has adopted since.
The first picture, which is called "The Point of Honor," illustrates the
old story of the officer who, on being accused of cowardice for refusing
to fight a duel, came among his brother officers and flung a lighted
grenade down upon the floor, before which his comrades fled
ignominiously. This design is capital, and the outward rush of heroes,
walking, trampling, twisting, scuffling at the door, is in the best style of
the grotesque. You see but the back of most of these gentlemen; into
which, nevertheless, the artist has managed to throw an expression of
ludicrous agony that one could scarcely have expected to find in such a
part of the human figure. The next plate is not less good. It represents a
couple who, having been found one night tipsy, and lying in the same
gutter, were, by a charitable though misguided gentleman, supposed to
be man and wife, and put comfortably to bed together. The morning
came; fancy the surprise of this interesting pair when they awoke and
discovered their situation. Fancy the manner, too, in which Cruikshank
has depicted them, to which words cannot do justice. It is needless to
state that this fortuitous and temporary union was followed by one
more lasting and sentimental, and that these two worthy persons were
married, and lived happily ever after.
We should like to go through every one of these prints. There is the
jolly miller, who, returning home at night, calls upon his wife to get
him a supper, and falls to upon rashers of bacon and ale. How he
gormandizes, that jolly miller! rasher after rasher, how they pass away
frizzling and, smoking from the gridiron down that immense grinning
gulf of a mouth. Poor wife! how she pines and frets, at that untimely

hour of midnight to be obliged to fry, fry, fry perpetually, and minister
to the monster's appetite. And yonder in the clock: what agonized face
is that we see? By heavens, it is the squire of the parish. What business
has he there? Let us not ask. Suffice it to say, that he has, in the hurry
of the moment, left up stairs his br----; his--psha! a part of his dress, in
short, with a number of bank-notes in the pockets. Look in the next
page, and you will see the ferocious, bacon-devouring ruffian of a
miller is actually causing this garment to be carried through the village
and cried by the town-crier. And we blush to be obliged to say that the
demoralized miller never offered to return the banknotes, although he
was so mighty scrupulous in endeavoring to find an owner for the
corduroy portfolio in which he had found them.
Passing from this painful subject, we come, we regret to state, to a
series of prints representing