Chapter II: Preface

In the following pages I have endeavoured to present George Cruikshank to the reader--not only as he lived and moved and worked, but also in the light in which he was held by his many friends and his distinguished critics. The artist has been warned by the poet that he should “rest in art.” Cruikshank was not of those who needed the warning. He remained heart and soul in his creative work throughout a long career, content to live modestly, and to rest his claim to the respect of the world upon his labours. If his indefatigable industry failed to bring him the fortune which fashion now lavishes upon his inferiors, he was consoled by the fervid admiration of such critics as Thackeray and Ruskin, and other distinguished contemporaries, whose opinions on his genius I have freely given, as the best aids to a thorough estimate of him as an artist.

These volumes should be accepted as _mémoires pour servir_, as material towards a just judgment of the artist and the man. I am indebted to George Cruikshank’s friends for many personal anecdotes, and to my own recollections of him, ranging from my boyhood to his death, for the general outline of the “dear old George,” whose humour and eccentricity delighted Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, Thackeray, and their friends for many years. I am indebted to the late Charles Landseer, to Mr. Frederick Locker, the late Mr. W. H. Wills (co-editor with Dickens of _Household Words_ and _All the Year Round_), Mr. Percival Leigh, the only survivor of the original contributors to _Punch_, Mr. George Augustus Sala, Dr. B. W. Richardson, the late Mr. Gruneison, Mr. Percy Cruikshank, Cuthbert Bede, and many others, including the gentleman with whom Cruikshank’s temperance campaign brought him in contact towards the close of his life.

As a tribute to the genius of Cruikshank, Gustave Doré has contributed a drawing, called by him The Gin-Fiend, which will remind the hosts of English admirers of the illustrious French painter, sculptor, and illustrator, of the time when he produced the _Contes Drolatiques_ and the _Wandering Jew_.

THE LIFE OF GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. EPOCH I. 1794--1847.