George Cruikshank





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GEORGE CRUIKSHANK



The Easter Hunt, we are told, is no more; and as the Quarterly Review recommends the British public to purchase Mr Catlin's pictures, as they form the only record of an interesting race now rapidly passing away, in like manner we should exhort all our friends to purchase Mr Cruikshank's designs of another interesting race, that is run already and for the last time.

Illustration by George Cruikshank

Besides these, we must mention, in the line of our duty, the notable tragedies of ' Tom Thumb,' and ' Bombastes Furioso,' both of which have appeared with many illustrations by Mr Cruikshank. The ' brave army' of Bombastes exhibits a terrific display of brutal force, which must shock the sensibilities of an English radical. And we can well understand the caution of the general, who bids this soldatesque effrenee to begone, and not to kick up such a row.




Such a troop of lawless ruffians let loose upon a populous city would play sad havoc in it; and we fancy the massacres of Birmingham renewed, or at least of Badajoz, which, though not quite so dreadful, if we may believe his Grace the Duke of Wellington, as the former scenes of slaughter, were never- the less severe enough; but we must not venture upon any ill- timed pleasantries in presence of the disturbed King Arthur, and the awful ghost of Gaffer Thumb.



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