In the plates entitled "Early Coaches," "A Pickpocket in Custody," and "Making a Night of It," Cruikshank has similarly attempted to portray his own lineaments and those of Dickens; he was more successful, however, in the illustration to "Public Dinners," where the presentments of himself and the novelist, as stewards carrying official wands, are more life-like. There exist, by the way, several seriously-attempted portraits of Dickens by Cruikshank, concerning the earliest of which it is related that author and artist were members of a club of literary men known during its brief existence as "The Hook and Eye Club," and that at one of their nightly meetings Dickens was seated in an arm-chair conversing, when Cruikshank exclaimed, "Sit still, Charley, while I take your portrait!" This impromptu sketch, now the property of Colonel Hamilton, has been etched by F. W. Pailthorpe, and a similar drawing is included in the Cruikshank Collection at South Kensington. Among other contemporary portrait-studies (executed in pencil and slightly tinted in colour) is one bearing the following inscription in the artist's autograph: "Charles Dickens, Author of Sketches by Boz, the Pickwick Papers, &c., &c., &c.,"--an admission that seems to dispose of Cruikshank's subsequent claim to the authorship of "Pickwick." PLATE IV "THE FOUR MISS WILLISES" _Facsimile_ of an Unused Design for "Sketches by Boz" by GEORGE CRUIKSHANK [Illustration] It has been remarked that Cruikshank was so accurate in the rendering of details that future antiquaries will rely upon his plates as authoritative in matters of architecture, costume, &c. For example, in the etching of "The Last Cab-Driver," he has depicted an obsolete form of cabriolet, the driver being seated over the right wheel; and in that of "The Parish Engine" we may discover what kind of public fire-extinguisher was then in use--a very primitive implement in comparison with the modern "steamer." In the latter plate, by the way, we behold the typical beadle of the period, who afterwards figured as Bumble in "Oliver Twist." _Apropos_ of this etching, Mr. Frederick Wedmore points out (in _Temple Bar_, April 1878) that it is "an excellent example of Cruikshank's eye for picturesque line and texture in some of the commonest objects that met him in his walks: the brickwork of the house, for instance, prettily indicated, the woodwork of the outside shutters, and the window, on which various lights are pleasantly broken. I know no artist," he continues, "so alive as Cruikshank to the pretty sedateness of Georgian architecture. Then, too, there is the girl with basket on arm, a figure not quite ungraceful in line and gesture. She might have been much better if Cruikshank had ever made himself that accurate draughtsman of the figure which he hardly essayed to be, and she and all her fellows--it is only fair to remember--might have been better, again, had the artist who designed her