[Illustration: (_b_) THE GOOSE AFTER THE WHISKEY. From "The Glass and the New Crystal Palace," 1853.] About four years after his abandonment of alcohol, Cruikshank began to figure as a pamphleteer. In 1851 appeared his "Stop Thief"--containing hints for the prevention of housebreaking, hallmarked by teetotalism: it has a drawing of a burglar retiring because his companion discloses a board containing the words, "No Admittance Except On Business." In 1852 came the "Betting Book," against both drink and betting; this has a drawing of two wonderfully knowing fox-faced bipeds contemplating a row of geese absorbed in the perusal of the betting lists. Followed "The Glass and the New Crystal Palace" (1853), in which, after confessing that he "clung to that contemptible, stupid and dirty habit" of smoking three years after he had "left off wine and beer," he adds, "at last I laid down my meerschaum pipe and said, 'Lie you there! and I will never take you up again,'" The drawings of anserine flight and intoxication here reproduced compel us to admit that the cerebral compartment containing Cruikshank's sense of humour was watertight. In 1854 came "George Cruikshank's Magazine." It lived long enough for him to inveigh against tobacco through the medium of a rather lifeless etching entitled _Tobacco Leaves No. 1_; and he died before he could publish in it certain drawings, included, I believe, in a series given to the world in 1895 by Sir B. W. Richardson, which ridicule the "hideous, abominable, and most dangerous custom" of sucking the handles of sticks and umbrellas. To the didactic excesses of his "Fairy Library" I need not further refer, but in 1856 came a quasi-temperance pamphlet, "The Bands in the Parks," where the devil plays the violin with his tail; in 1857, "A Slice of Bread and Butter" (re-issued with prefatory "Remarks" in 1870), a good-humoured satire on conflicting views of charity towards waifs; in 1860, "A Pop-Gun ... in Defence of the British Volunteers of 1803"; in 1863, "A Discovery concerning Ghosts," in which he claimed to be the only one who ever thought "of the gross absurdity ... of there being such things as ghosts of wearing apparel, iron armour, walking sticks, and shovels;" and here we have a mild and pleasant hint of the inspissated egoism which dictated "The Artist and the Author" (1872), the work in which Cruikshank asserted himself to be the originator of "Oliver Twist," "The Miser's Daughter" and "The Tower of London." This unfortunate but characteristic pamphlet is the last of the series that seems to have been called into existence by the _insanabile scribendi cacoëthes_ induced by his fame as a teetotaler. I said characteristic, because a jealous dislike of seeing his individuality merged into, overshadowed by, or confounded with any other is apparent not only in 1872, but in 1834, when he carefully named in "My Sketch Book" his brother Robert's works, and pictured himself as lifting off the ground,