e. The
result was almost a foregone conclusion. A newspaper is a sufficiently
hazardous speculation, but a theatre in the hands of an inexperienced
manager is one of the most risky of all possible experiments; and the
result in this case was so unfortunate, that A Beckett in the end had to
seek the uncomfortable protection of the insolvent court. He was
considerably indebted to Seymour for the illustrations to "Figaro," half
of the debt thus incurred being money actually paid away by the artist
to the engraver who executed the cuts from his drawings on the wood.
Finding that A Beckett was in no position to discharge this debt or to
remunerate him for his future services, Seymour did--what every man of
business must have done who, like the artist, was dependent on his
pencil for _bread_, refused any longer to continue his assistance. Apart
from the bad paper and bad impressions of which he complained, and above
all the bad taste displayed in fulsome adulation of his own merits,
supremely distasteful to a man of real ability, Seymour appears hitherto
to have entertained no bad feeling towards A Beckett personally.

The result however was a feud. A Beckett was not unnaturally angry, and
an angry man in his passion is apt to lose both his head and his memory.
Forgetting the manner in which he had shortly before acknowledged the
services and talent of the artist, he now attacked him and his abilities
with a malice which would be unintelligible if we had not seen something
of his nature and disposition. In his favourite "Notices to
Correspondents" in the number of 13th September, 1834, he professes to
account for the employment of Isaac Robert Cruikshank after the
following disingenuous fashion: "Mr. Seymour, our ex-artist, is much to
be pitied for his extreme anguish at our having come to terms with the
celebrated Robert Cruikshank in the supplying the designs of the
caricatures in 'Figaro.' Seymour has been venting his rage in a manner
as pointless as it is splenetic, and we are sorry for him. He ought,
however, to feel, that notwithstanding our friendly wish to bring him
forward, which we have done in an eminent degree, we must engage
_first-rate_ ability when public patronage is bestowed so liberally, as
it now is upon this periodical. He ought therefore not to be nettled at
our having obtained a superior artist." The public, however, were not to
be _gulled_; they perfectly well knew that Isaac Robert Cruikshank was
an in