ook if Charles Dickens had left it alone. The artist did as he was
requested, with anger at his heart; and as a consequence, Rose Maylie
will go down to posterity as the ugliest of George Cruikshank's very
ugly women, in an outrageous bonnet, with her hand resting on the
shoulder of a youth wearing the singular coatee or boy's jacket of forty
years ago. Differing altogether from the admirable designs which
preceded it, there is an incongruity about the etching which cannot fail
to impress the observer. The unfortunate letter and still more
unfortunate result occasioned a coolness between the men which was never
wholly removed. From that time forth George Cruikshank executed no more
designs for Charles Dickens, and the illustrations to the long series of
novels which afterwards followed from the pen of the talented but
distinctly autocratic author were entrusted to other hands. However much
this result must be deplored so far as the artist himself is concerned,
the coolness between Charles Dickens and George Cruikshank is scarcely
to be viewed in the light of a misfortune for English illustrative art.
Only consider for one moment what might have followed had the artist
executed the designs to the rest of Dickens's novels! Dick Swiveller
would have suited him, and so would Quilp, or Sampson Brass, the
Yorkshire schoolmaster, Newman Noggs, Lord Frederick Verisopht, Captain
Bunsby, or even Mr. Pecksniff himself; but only fancy, on the other
hand, the _horrors_ which would have been made of Dolly Varden, of Edith
Dombey, of "Little Em'ly," of dear, gentle, loving little Nell! Happily
for the fame of George Cruikshank, his imagination was not called into
requisition for any one of these creations, and like the
"annunciations," the "beatifications," and the "apotheoses" of Lockhart,
they remain (we are thankful to say it) still unrealized!

THE FEUD WITH BENTLEY.

The quarrel with Dickens was followed by a very bitter and very singular
feud between the artist and Bentley. Into the causes of that quarrel we
need not enter; suffice it to say that to the misunderstanding we owe
some of the very worst etchings which Cruikshank ever designed, the
series of illustrations to Harrison Ainsworth's novel of "Guy Fawkes."
The worst of all is the _Vision of Guy Fawkes at Saint Winifred's Well_,
and a very singular "vision" it is. The saint has all the appearance,
with all the grace, expression, and symmetry of a Dutch doll arrayed in