The Sun.
London, England, 1858-05-24 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

raistaff. Part X. By George Cruikshank.
Longman and Company.
The glorious Fat Knight's biography is now corns
pleted, the vet acious and redoubtable Life and Ad-
ventures of Sir John Falstaff—illustrated resplen-
dently by the etching needle of George Cruikshank.
The work makes a goodly tome of nearly, 200
octavo pages, embellished with " twenty", admirable
and beautiful engravings. Altogether the book is
the result of one of the happiest thoughts yet hit
upon by our immortal George—and what happy
thoughts he has had before now don't we all re-
member ? From his sketch of the drummer whose
hair was tied so tight that he could'nt shut his
eyes—to that of the little dog whose tail was curled
upwards so stiffly that it lifted him off his hind
legs I From those excruciating glimpses he has
given us of the agonies of the Toothache, to the
ever memorable drolleries illustrative of two de-
lightful ballads—the ballad of John Gilpin and the
ballad of Lord Bateman. It was not very long
ago that in the course of a charming paper
in the Quarterly, Mr. Thackeray reminded us
of how vividly Cruikshank's pencil takes us back
in a twinkling to the days of the short-wsiisted
ladies and of the high-collared and swallow-tailed
gentlemen. His career as a pictorial humorist be-
ginning in those days—at the turn of the century
—when he himself was yet in his boyhood. During
this long artistic career of his, how largely we are
all of us indebted to him for innocent and joyous
laughter. Throughout this long lapse of half-as
century, how fruitful his mind has been of the
ludicrous. His political caricatures alone form a
grand connecting link between the days of Gillray
and those of H. B. His wonderfully facile pencil,
while embellishing current literature abundantly,
has adorned the reprints of many of our classic
masterpieces. While, for example, he has been
illustrating tba magazine fun of comicessayists like
M. A. Titmarsh and Laman Blanchard, of minor
novelists like Angus Reich and Frank Fairlegb, of
grotesque miscellanies like his own Omnibus,
and later still, his own short-lived but promising
magazine--be has been giving visible form to the
vivid imaginings of Boz in Oliver Twist, and to the
wierd and fantastic dreamings of Ainsworth in his-
torical romances like Windsor Castle and the
Tower of London—at the same time that he has
touched into lifs, with that magic etching needle
of his the ever delectanle masterpieces of our great
elder hurneurists, Henry Fielding, and Tobias
Smellett. Wonderful to tell among all the mani-
fold reprints of late years no publisher has dreamt
of adverturing upon a reprint of the great and im-
mortal novels of Richardson—novels in their time
the rage of the reading public—and novels we are
very certain that would be bought eagerly nowa-
days, if only from very curiosity and for the :pur-
pose of placing them upon private bookshelves—
supposing them to be republished in a cheap
and popular form, and supposing them to
be illustrated by the pencil of an artist-bus
inourist like George Vruikehank. How dearly we
should like to see his Sir Cnarles Grandison I With
what a zest would he give us the perfect present-
ment of Miss Clarissa Harlowe ! Fancy his limn-
ing of the old beau, Soames—of the handsome
rattle Lovelace ! Imagine his etching of the scenes
in the silk-mercers, or of the grim family conclaves
—of the bawd's deathbed—or, last scene of all in
that eventful tragedy, the scene where Lovelace
rages against himself like one distracted ! Is it
idle, we wonder, ever to lripe for such a cheap,
modern, popular illustrated edition of the works of
Richardson ? We put is to the most speculative of
our publishers. Perhaps, if the great houses of
old might nst entertain the notion—Longman and
Murrsy, for example—it might be taken in hand
by such inn ortant firms as Messrs. Chapman and
Hall, or Messrs. Smith and Eider, or by daring
eh,lesale e-xporters like the Messrs. Routledge.
It would be a benefaction to the reading public, and
if judiciously arranged, we warrant it, the project
would amply reply the adventurous speculation.
All this of course arising out of one's recollection
of what in a like way has already teen accomplished
by the ingenious fancy and the skilful hand of
G orge Ciuikshank.
Falst,tiF, we repeat, is among the happiest of his
producti xis. The letterprets, we grieve to note,
has teen penned almost uniuteriuptedly through
severe bodily suffering by Robert Brough, a comic
writer who has elsewhere often delighted us by his
whimsical fun, prose and poetical, dramatic and
didactic. Corlially let us hope at least that the
close of the present work may have been contempo-
raneous with the terrn:na`iou of the author's bodily
ailmsnts. As for the artist's share in the work, it
is past prase—it is admirable. Falstaff everywhere
in these trully beautiful engravings is the true Fal-
staff of Sbakspere. Not the least strikingly in the
two last etchings here bringing the score to its
conclusion—one the discovery by Sir John of his
haviug been tricked at Herne's Oak ; the other his
famous deathbed scene, where he is fumbling with
the sheets and smiling upon his fingers' ends, lying
there with a nose as sharp as a pen, a-babbling o'
green fields.