. No one knows the origin of
these fairy stories, they come to us from our Danish and Saxon
ancestors, but are interwoven with the literature of every civilized
nation under the sun, and are altogether beyond the sphere of modern
criticism. Their primitive style is singularly adapted to enlist the
sympathies of the little folk to whom they specially address themselves:
their highest aim and object is not to instruct, but to amuse. All this
the artist, in the ardour of his new crusade, lost sight of, and so dead
had he become to the fairy fancies and reveries of his youth, that he
placed sacrilegious hands on these time-honoured and favourite legends
of our childhood, and converted them (with most indifferent literary
ability) into something little better than temperance _tracts_!

But happily not without protest. Charles Dickens, the champion of the
injured fairies, set his lance in rest, and speedily rolled hapless Van
Winkle in the dust. Into the details of this very absurd and very
unequal contest there is no necessity for us to enter. George was at
home with his pencil, his etching needle, or his tubes of water colour;
but put a pen in his hand, and he forthwith would cut the funniest of
capers. He argued (with every appearance of comical gravity and
earnestness), that because Shakespeare might alter an Italian story, or
Sir Walter Scott use history for the purposes of the drama, poetry, or
romance, therefore, "any one might take the liberty of altering a common
fairy story to suit his purpose and convey his opinions." Aye, and so he
might, honest Rip; but he would set about his task in a very different
fashion to Shakespeare or Sir Walter Scott, and I fear too that the
literary results and value would be vastly different. It never seemed to
occur to the mind of the honest but simple casuist that in putting "any
one" on a par with William Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, he was
writing simple nonsense.

It is clear, therefore, that the change which had come over the
literature of fiction during the past quarter of a century, and which
Professor Bates would assign as one of the principal causes of the
sterility which befell the genius of Cruikshank, had really very little
to do with it. This calamity--for a national calamity it undoubtedly
was--did not fall upon him, be it remembered, when he was old, but in
the very acme and pride of artistic success. His fall was distinctly due
to causes which were within his own