d
paraded in the newspapers, but a living, a substantial, perhaps even an
illustrious, English name. Let him, in one word, proceed, and, as he
proceeds, let him think of Hogarth."[68]

Now, although amused (and surely he cannot fail to be amused) at the
curious incapacity of an art critic so strangely ignorant of his subject
as to conceive _George Cruikshank_ an artist capable of designing
_annunciations_, _beatifications_, _apotheoses_, and subjects so
completely out of the range of his sympathies and abilities, the reader
will, at the same time, be struck with the prescience of the intelligent
writer who discerned in him the possession of true genius, and predicted
for him, even at this early period of his career, the reputation--"living,
substantial," and "illustrious"--which he afterwards so justly achieved
for himself.

In everything save the power to realize an annunciation, a
beatification, or an apotheosis, George Cruikshank was, at the time this
article was penned, exactly what Mr. Lockhart describes him. The most
able and accomplished of the caricaturists of his time, he was
nevertheless willing to etch the works of an amateur or of an artist
inferior to himself, to whose work he has frequently imparted a vitality
of which it would have been destitute but for the interposition of his
hand. He was ready, moreover, to execute woodcuts for a song-book or the
political skits of any scribbler of his time, whether on the ministerial
or the popular side mattered little to him. It was therefore not
unnatural that doing "just what was suggested or thrown in his way,"
Lockhart should come to the erroneous conclusion that the artist had "no
plan," "no ambition," and "not much industry." The assertion that he had
"no ambition" has been amply disproved by his subsequent life, whilst so
far from having "no plan," the sequel shows that all this time,
unsuspected by the critic, he had been gradually developing the style of
illustration by which he made his mark and reputation,--a style first
displayed in the celebrated "Points of Humour," the publication of which
served as the occasion for Lockhart's criticism.

On this account, if for no other reason, the caricatures of George
Cruikshank possess so remarkable an interest, that it is singular that
this field of artistic labour has been left almost unexplored by the
essayists, many of whom, with a somewhat imperfect knowledge of their
subject, have essayed to give us inform