aptain being Sir Robert Peel). The fifth volume contains eight of his
illustrations, six being cartoons; among them, _The Irish Frankenstein_
(badly imagined and atrociously drawn), _The Water Drop_ and the _Gin
Drop_ are characterized by much poverty of invention, but the former is
the best of the two. _The Battle of the Alphabet_ (cartoon) is a better
specimen of his work, although the legs and arms look as usual, as if
drawn with a ruler. The sixth volume contains three of his cartoons,
while the almanack of the year (1844) has several of his illustrations.
To the seventh volume he contributed no less than thirty-one
illustrations, some very good, one of the best being that of the two
legal dogs quarrelling over a bone of litigation. _Punch_ at the outset
of his career had considerable difficulty in the selection of a graphic
satirist, and one of his "right hand men" in those early days was a Mr.
Henning, by whose side Kenny Meadows figures as an absolute genius.
After his seventh volume, however, he met with artists better fitted to
interpret his political and social views, and no trace of Meadows'
useful hand appears in succeeding volumes.

In stating that the merits of Kenny Meadows as an illustrator of books
are unequal, and in denying to him the possession of genius, we must not
be held to imply that he was deficient of talent. An excellent example
of the inequality of which we speak will be found in his Shakespeare
(Robert Tyas, 1843), a work selected by us for the reason that it was
considered by himself and his two favourable friends as his masterpiece.
Although we cannot stay to notice all the strange conceptions with which
he has enriched this book, we may be permitted to wonder whence he
derived his preposterous ideas of Caliban, of Malvolio, of Shylock, of
Juliet's nurse, of Launce's unhappy dog, of the Egpytian[ Sphynx in
"Antony and Cleopatra." The model of Shylock was evidently some "old
clo'" dealer in Petticoat Lane. The figure of Armado ("Love's Labour's
Lost") is so wonderfully put together that his anatomy must sooner or
later fall to pieces; the ghost of Hamlet's father is the ghost of some
colossal statue, certainly not the shade of one who had worn the guise
of ordinary humanity. The head of the gentle Juliet might derive benefit
from the application of a bottle of invigorating hair wash. The figure
of the monk in "Romeo and Juliet" literally cut out of wood, carries as
much expression in its fa