The Sun.
London, England, 1855-01-29 00:00:00

THE QUARTERLIES.

The. Quarterly Review. No. CXCI.
The pleasantest article imaginable has been con-
tributed to the new number of the old Quarterly
by Mr. Thackeray. The fact of: the authorship
was first intimated in that agreeable column of
literary gossip Which appears week after week in
our intelligent contemporary) th ;Illustrated Lon-
don .News. But without the aid of any such pre-
liminary announcement it would be difficult for a
discerning reader to mistake 'the hand from which
the paper referred to, as the charm of. the current
number of the Quarterly, has emanated. It is from
first to last altogether delightful. Genial, graceful,
quaint, cordial, wise, and humorous. Through it
the resiewer notifies to the world his complete sp-
preciation of the fun and frolio stored up as abun-
dantly as plums in a Christmas pudding—slice
upon slice—in John Leech's Pictures of Life and
Character." The whole criticism, or rather pane-
gyric, constitutes a splendid and eminently well-
deserved tribute to the artist—facile princeps
among the collaborateurs of our merry little old
" Lexdon Chariiari," Mr. Punch. A gentleman
(Mr. Punch we mean of course, not Mr. Leech)
whilom as " raffish" as latterly he has become
well-to-do and reputable—one in regard to whose
transformation of late years from squalidness to
respectability the analyst of Snobbism here ob-
serves—" Time was, if we remember Mr. P.'s his-
tory rightly, that he did not wear silk stockings
nor _well-made clothes"--adding, with- rlelirinns
comicality—" the little dorsal irregularity in his
figure is almost an ornament now, so excellent a
tailor has he !" From which reference to the
dorsal irregularity now become an ornament we
might almost be induced for a moment to conjec-
ture that (wonderful to relate) the tailors .f this
pink and pattern of fine gentlemen—Mr. Chariyari
Punch—are no other after all than Messrs. E.
Moses and Son, of Minories reputation. Conjec-
turing thus much at least from the only-couplet we
can acknowledge to have ever derived amusement
from out of these abominable brochurettes slapped
in the face of her Majesty's lieges through cab win-,
dows at any hour, on any day, when emerging
from the gateway of any railway terminus in the
metropolis—the poetic spawn and literary fry
issuing perpetually from the garrets of Seven Dials
among effusions' to be afterwards vended across the
counters of Holywell-street. Perhaps the chinking
rhyme of this same couplet may, as with us, have
once upon a time caught the eye, and afterwards
unconsciously lurked in the memory of Michael
Angelo Titmarsh : to wit—'

"Our fit is such that if you ha►e a hump
Your dress-coat will conceal the ugly bump."

Howaver this may be, the biographer of Jeames is
strictly in the right—" the little dorsal irregu-
larity" in the figure of Mr. Punch has long since,
according to his own showing, become beautified
mad tailorised hat° an ornament. Yet more, as
Mr. Thackeray tells us delectably through the
grave old pages pf the usually sedate and sometimes
(as those can best relate who have smarted most
severely under the leaded lash of its ponderous and
inexorable criticism) the grim, old, buff-faced Tory
Quarterly :

"He (Mr. Punch) is combed, washed, neatly clothed,
and perfectly presentable. He goes into the very best
company ; he keeps a stud at Melton ' • he has a moor in
Scotland ; he rides in the park ; has his stall in the opera ;
is constantly dining out at clubs and in private society,
and goes every night in the season to balls and parties,
where you see the most beautiful women possible. He is
welcomed among his new friends the great, though, like the
good old English gentleman of the song, he does not for-
get the small ; he pats the heads of street boys and girls ;
relishes the jokes of Jack the costermonger and Bob the
dustman ; good-naturedly spies out Molly the cook flirting
with policeman X, or Mary the nursemaid as she listens to
the fascinating guardsman."

Beyond all this, he, the said Mr. Satirist Panel',
has his well-selected gallery of pictures, " Pictures
of Life and Character," the Will Hogarth contri-
buting to which gallery is none other than the
inimitable John Leech, whose astonishing deftness
of pencil has been at length becomingly celebrated
through an organ no less important than the Quar-
terly Review, by a critic no less distinguished than
the Harry Fielding, and something better than the
Harry Fielding of . his day—William, Makepeace
Thackeray. In this most charming commentary
on the " Pictures of Life and Character," selected
from Mr. Punch's diversified collection, how exqui-
sitely does Mr. Thackeray discourse with,the very
driest, and yet, at the same time, the most refresh-
ing humour imaginable, upon the mere eminent
among the motley race of our genuine English
caricaturists., Caricaturists; both "literary and pie-
torialnow a Iluibury, and now a Pierce'Egan—
passing in farikaitic' sequeroe under review—Gill-
ray,,and Woodwa, andi Rovaaridson, and so on
to our own time, through the days when Planeus
.George IV., when, Prince
(transparently enough,
Regent) lia,d tbefasces born before him! In testimony
of the general tone in which all this is penned by Mr.
Thackeray, .we cannot refrain from gratifying both
ourselves'and our readers by transferring into the
columns of The Sun the subjoined tribute to our
dear old friend George Cruikshank

Among the veterans, the old pictorial' satirists,. Nye
have Mentioned the name of one' humorous designer; who
is still alive and at work. Did we not see, by his•own
hand, his own portrait of his awn faurons face and whis-
kers in the Illustrated London,News the other day ? There.
was a print in that paper of an assemblage of Teetotallers
in Sadler's-wells Theatre, and wo straightway recognised
the old Roman hand—the old Roman's of the time of
Plancus—Qeorge Cruikshank's. There were the old. bon-
nets and droll fades and shoed, and short trousers and
figures of MO, Sure enough. And there was George (who
has taken to the Rater-doctrine, as all the world knows)
handing some Teetotalleress over a plank to the table where
the pledge was being administered. How often has
George, drawn that • picture of Cruikshank ! Where
haven't Ave Been it? - How fine it was facing the effigy of
Mr. Ainsworth, in. Ainsworth's ,Alagazine, when George
illustrated that periodical. How grantl and severe he
stands in that design in G. C.'s Omnibus, where he repie-
cents himself tonged like St. Dunstan, and tweaking a
wretch of a publisher by the nose ! The collectors of
George's etchings—O, the charming etchings ; 0, the dear
old German popular files !--4116 capital ' Points of Hu-
mour,' the delightfurphronelOgy and scrap-books of the
good times, our times; Plancus's in fact !—the collectors of
the Gear„ an etchings, ws say, have at least a hundred
the zuti,t. Why. we remember hint in
favourite itessiau boots in ' Tom and Jerry ; and in
woodcuts as fax back as the Queen's trial. Jci
1 deserted satire and comedy of late years, haying"
e.haa zatalAr

his attention to the serious, and warlike, and sublime,
Having confessed our age and prejudices, we prefer the
'comic and fanciful to the, historic, romantic, and, at pre-
oat, didactic George. May respect and length .of days and.
Onafortable repose attend tbefbrave, honcot; kindly, pure-
niinded artist, humourist, moralist: --It was he who Ent.
brought English pictorial humour and children acquainted.
Our young people and their fathers and mothers owe hint
rotary a pleasant hour and harmless laugh. Is there no,
way in which the country could acknowledge the long
agrvices and bravo career of such a friend and bene-
factor?"

low many thousands will not echo that. last'in:-
quiry in the core of the hearts, whether Old or
arung, which 'our glorious George has so often
sunned with a sweet; and wise, and innocent
lauhter ! Another quotation we must give,
not-
withstanding the length to which our remarks upon
this wonderfully entertaining paper- from the mas..-
ter baud of Mr. Thackeray have already almost un-
consciously extended—a quotation honourable both
to the artist and to. the writer therein mentionea,
the artist Mr. Doyle the writer Mr. Tha.ekeraY-
The paragraph will be found: to be ae once a tfibute
and a revelation—a tribute to Mr. Doyle and a
revelation on.the'part of Mr. Thackeray.' 'Listeinl
Speaking of the John Bullish prejudices for which'
Mr. Punch with all his liberality is yet so fee-
quently remarkable, the reviewer conticues ;..:7
• " Against lawyers, beadles, bishops and clergy, and au-
thorities . Mr. Punch is still rather bitter. At the time of
the Papal Aggressioa he was prodigiously angry ; and'One
of the chief misfortunes which happened to him at that
period was that, through the violent opinions which ho
expressed regarding the Roman CathOlic' Hierarchy'', he
lost the invaluable services, the graceful pen,lhe harmlesswit, the charming fancy oil Tr. Doyle. - Another member-
of Mr. Pnnch's cabinet, the biographer of ,`Jea.mes, the
author of the ' Snob Papers,' resigned his functions on•
Account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present
.inperor -
of the drench nation, whose anger Jeamee thought it was
unpatriotic to arouse. Idr. Punch. parted with these Con-
tributors; he filled their places with others as good. The
boys at the railroad station cried Punch just as cheerily,
' nd sold just as many numbers after theSe events as be-.
ore."'
hough, however, both in the way of. coniin'ent ona.
uetation in reference to a masterpiece of comic
criticism which all should read in the original for.
themselves a masterpiece constituting at -one
.and the same time a feather in the; cap of John
iLeech and-a bee in the bonnet of -each among his:
imore coarse and even at- moments 'revolting and
licentious predecessors in a now happily bygone 'age
of social and politicalcaricaturists. Our'comments
upon this brief but remarkable paper from the pen
of Mr.: Thackeray have been so farrlongthened, in
spite of all our efforts at conciseness, that 'we
have left ourselves only room to speak nf thd
Other articles in the current number of the Quar-
terly in a manner the most,curt, succinct, and pro-.
Yokingly generalised. • These remaining contribu-
tions are in number nine—and in merit some of
them not, easily calculable. - As, for example, the
essay on " Clerical Economics" and-the treatise on
" Atomic Chemistry"—yet more, perhaps, the two
laborious disquisitions one on "Fire Assurance,"
the other on " Provident Institutions"—but most
of all the very masterly contributions referring
here to the "Conduct of the War;" there to "The
Campaign in the Crimea"— the laSt-mentioned
with particular alluon to the glorious days of
Alma, Balaklava, andlnkerman. , .