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

TEE 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, the Illustrated Lon-
don News. But without the aid of any such pre-
liminary announcement it would be difficult for a
disceraing 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 reviewer notifies to the world his complete ;ip-
preciation of the fun and frolic 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 collaborate IGI'S of our merry little old
r uncti. 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 w ear silk stockings
nor Well-made clothes "—adding, with delicious
comicality—" the little dorsal irregularity in his
figure is almost an ornament now, so t.xcellent a
tailor has he !" From which reforenco 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 of this
pink and pattern of fine gentlemen—Mr. Charivari
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 Michae
Angelo Titmarsh : to wit.—

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

- - -
However 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
and tailorised into au ornament. Yet more, as
Mr. Thackeray tells us delectably through the
grave old pages of 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 eut 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 Punch,
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 Lech, 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 pic-
torial—now a Bunbury, and now a Pierce Egan_
passing in fantastic sequence under review—Gill-
ay,Woodward, and Rowlandson, and so on
tor and
Lrown time, through the days when Planous
(transparently enough, George IV., when Prince
Regent) had thafasces 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, tke old pictorial satirists, we
have mentioned the same of one humorous designer, who
is still alive and at work. Did we not see, by his own
hand, his own portrait of his own famous face and whis-
kers in the Illustrated London News the other day ? There
was a print in that paper of an assemblage of Teetotalers
in Sadler's-wells Theatre, and we straightway rezognised
the old Roman hand—the old Roman's of the time of
Plancus—George Cruikshank's. There were the old bon-
nets and droll faces and shoes, and short trousers and
figures of MO, sure enough. And there was George (who
has taken to the water-doctrine, as all the world knows)
handin some Teetetalleress over a plank to the table where
the pledge was being administered. How often has
George drawn that picture of Cruikshank ! Where
haven't we '.een it? Hum fine it was facing the effigy of
Mr. Ainsworth, iu Ainswortle's Magazine, when George
illustrated that periodical. How grand and severe be
stands in that deign in G. C.'s Omnibus, where he repi e-
cents himself tonged like St. Dunstan, and tweaking A
wretch of a publisher by the nose ! The collectors of
Geore's etchings—O, the charming etchings ; 0, the dear
old German popular tales !—the capital ' Points of Hu-
mour,' the delightful phrenology and scrap-books of the
good times, our times, Plancus's in fact !—the collectors
of
the Georgian etchings, we say, have at least a hundred
pictures of the arti4. Why, we remember him in his
favourite Hessian boots in Tom and Jerry' itself ; and in
woodcuts as far back as the Queen's trial. He has rather
deserted satire and comedy of late years, having turned

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-
sent, didactic George. May respect and length of days and
comfortable repose attend the brave, honest, kindly, pure-
minded artist, humourist, moralist. It was he who first
broUght English pictorial humour and children acquainted.
Our young people and their fathers and mothers owe bim
many a pleasant hour and harmless laugh. Is there no
way in which the country could acknowledge the long
services and brave career of such a friend and- bene-
factor ?"
How many thousands will not echo that last in-
quiry in the core of the hearts, whether old or
young, which our glorious George has so often
sunned with a sweet, and wise, and innocent
laughter ! Another quotation we must give, not-
withstanding the length to which our remarks upon
this wonderfully entertaining paper from the mas-
ter hand of Mr. Thackeray have already almost un-
consciously extended—a quotation honourable both
to the artist and to the writer therein mentioned,.
the artist Mr. Doyle, the writer Mr. Thackeray.
The Paragraph will be found to be at once a tribute
and a revelation—a tribute to Mr. Doyle and a
revelation on the part of Mr. Thackeray. Listen !
Speaking of the John Bullish prejudices for which
Mr. Punch with all his liberality is yet so fre-
quently remarkable, the reviewer continues :
" Against lawyers, beadles, bishops and clergy, and an.
thorities, Mr. Punch is still rather bitter. At the time of
the Papal Aggression he was prodigiously angry ; and one
of the chief misfortunes which happened to him at that
period was that, through the violent opinions which he
expressed regarding the Roman catholic hierarchy, he
lost the invaluable services, the graceful pen, the harmless
wit, the charming fancy of Mr. Doyle. Another member
of Mr. Punch's cabinet, the biographer of Jeames,' the
author of the ' Snob Papers,' resigned his functions on
account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present Emperor
of the French nation, whose anger Jeames thought it was
unpatriotic to arouse. Mr. 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,
and sold just as many numbers after these events as be-
fore."

Enough, however, both in the way of comment and
quotation 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
Leech and a bee in the bonnet of each among his
more coarse and even at moments revolting and
licentious predecessors in a now happily bygone age
of social and political caricaturists. Our comments
upon this brief but remarkable paper from the pen
of Mr. Thackeray have been so far lengthened, in
spite of all our efforts at coneiseness, that we
have left ours elves only room to speak of the
other articles in the current number of the Quar-
terly in a manner the most curt, succinct, and pro.
vokingly 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 tie "Conduct of the War," there to " The
Campaign in the Crimea"— the last-mentioned
with particular allusion to the glorious days of
Alma, Balaklava, and Inkorman.