stablishment of a monthly magazine
entitled "George Cruikshank's Omnibus." Of this he was the sole
illustrator. The literary editor was Laman Blanchard; and in the
"Omnibus," William Makepeace Thackeray, then a gaunt young man, not much
over thirty, and quite unknown to fame,--although he had published
"Yellowplush" in "Fraser,"--wrote his quaint and touching ballad of "The
King of Brentford's Testament." The "Omnibus" did not run long, nor was
its running very prosperous. George Cruikshank seemed for a while
wearied with the calling of a caricaturist; and the large etchings on
steel, with which between '40 and '45 he illustrated Ainsworth's gory
romances, indicated a power of grouping, a knowledge of composition, a
familiarity with mediaeval costume, and a command over chiaroscuro, which
astonished and delighted those who had been accustomed to regard him
only as a funny fellow,--one of infinite whim, to be sure, but still a
jester of jests, and nothing more. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the
case might be,--for the rumor ran that George intended to abandon
caricaturing altogether, and to set up in earnest as an historical
painter,--there came from beyond the sea, to assist in illustrating
"Windsor Castle," a Frenchman named Tony Johannot. Who but he, in fact,
was the famous master of the grotesque who illustrated "Don Quixote" and
the "Diable Boiteux" of Le Sage? To his dismay, George Cruikshank found
a competitor as eccentric as himself, as skilful a manipulator _rem
acu_, the etching-point, and who drew incomparably better than he,
George Cruikshank, did. He gave up the mediaeval in disgust; but he must
have hugged himself with the thought that he had already illustrated
Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist," and that the Frenchman, powerful as he
was, could never hope to come near him in that terrific etching of
"Fagin in the Condemned Cell."

Again nearly twenty years have passed, and George Cruikshank still waves
his Ithuriel's spear of well-ground steel, and still dabbles in
aquafortis. An old, old man, he is still strong and hale. If you ask him
a reason for his thus rivalling Fontenelle in his patriarchal greenness,
for his being able at threescore and ten to paint pictures, (witness
that colossal oil-painting of the "Triumph of Bacchus,") to make
speeches, and to march at the head of his company as a captain of
volunteers, he will give you at once the why and because. He is the most
zealous, the most conscient