nius had made him an artist and not a temperance
orator,--of one who had rendered that cause yeoman's service long before
he joined the total abstainers, in designing _The Gin Juggernaut_, _The
Gin Trap_, and work of a kindred nature. The cause, too, so far as mere
verbal advocacy was concerned, was better served by men of vastly
inferior mark and ability. Before this fatal plunge was taken his genius
had roamed in an absolutely uncontrolled range of freedom. He had
travelled into the land of chivalry and romance, into the realms of
fairy fancy, magic, and diablery; he had brought back with him pictures
of the wondrous people, lands, and scenes which his fancy had visited.
All this was at an end; this wonderful genius was now forced into a
narrow groove, where it could no longer have the freedom of action which
was essential to its very existence. From the moment that George
Cruikshank turned temperance _orator_, the world of English art lost one
of its brightest ornaments, and he himself both fame and fortune; for,
as Mr. Bates observes, "some of his earliest friends were alienated, and
remunerative work that might have been his was diverted, from sheer
prejudice, into other hands." His style, too, as Mr. Bates further
remarks, "suffered by the contraction of his ideas and sympathies, and
his art became associated with that vulgarity and want of aestheticism
which perhaps necessarily characterizes the movement." _The Bottle_ and
_The Drunkard's Children_, although successful in a pecuniary point of
view--compared with what had gone before,--can scarcely be called _art_
at all; in these too he unconsciously put himself in competition with
Hogarth, and as a matter of necessity failed.

He had been a king among designers and etchers; he had been and was
still an admirable water-colour artist, but knew comparatively little of
the manipulation or management of oils. A new crusade had however to be
preached, to be preached by means of an oil painting; and for this
purpose George was to be inspired off hand (so to speak) with a new art,
and to paint a picture in oils. We know the result--the lamentable
result--in that most preposterous _Worship of Bacchus_. His motive was
good, his ideas were vast, but the _genius_ which in his unregenerate
days had enabled him to design _The Gin Trap_ and the _The Gin
Juggernaut_, was no longer there. Unhappy Rip! There is more
poetry--more fancy--more romance--more art--fire--genius in one o