One thief succeeded another, and in 1839 Jack Sheppard was pilfering his way through "Bentley's Miscellany." If he had done nothing else, Cruikshank would have made a deathless reputation for technical skill by the etchings in "Jack Sheppard." Sala, who copied the shop-scene entitled _The name on the beam_, observes of this etching, at once so precise and imaginative, that it is "in its every detail essentially Hogarthian." It is a just saying. One can easily imagine Dr Trusler poring over it and recording his small discoveries with something of the relish he found in his Hogarthian exploration. Appropriately enough, Hogarth's portrait appears in the clever etching which depicts Jack in chains sitting to two artists, the other being Sir James Thornhill. Thackeray has done justice to the high qualities of the etchings entitled _The Storm_ and _The Murder on the Thames_. There are effects in Cruikshank's river scenes poetic enough and near enough to that verity which Impressionists serve better than Ruskinians, to have detained Whistler for a minute that might have regenerated the fame of Cruikshank. [Illustration: JONATHAN WILD SEIZING JACK SHEPPARD AT HIS MOTHER'S GRAVE IN WILLESDEN CHURCHYARD. From "Jack Sheppard," 1839.] [Illustration: From "Jack Sheppard," 1839.] "Jack Sheppard," with its requisition of antiquarian exactness so plausibly met, may well have suggested to Cruikshank a more epic theme than the exploits of a master-thief, revolving about a nobler gaol than Newgate. In a letter which may or may not have been posted (it is to be read at the back of No. 9910 H in the Cruikshank collection at South Kensington), he writes: "The fact is, I am endeavouring to emancipate myself from the thraldom of the Booksellers, whose slave I have been nearly all my life; to effect this object I have published, in conjunction with the author, a work called 'The Tower of London.'" [Illustration: THE DEATH WARRANT. From "The Tower of London," 1840.] Of the acrimonious discussion that Cruikshank started by claiming to have originated Ainsworth's romance, I shall say little. That Cruikshank was the senior partner there is no doubt. It was he who took Ainsworth to the Tower, and he asserted that he "hardly ever read a line" of the text, which must be considered to illustrate his designs. It may be said, however, that Ainsworth's text has been repeatedly devoured without the aid of Cruikshank's designs. He was a public idol. Smiled on once by Sir Walter Scott, he contrived to become the first horror-monger, _viâ_ history, of an age whose favourite realism was the safe realism of torture and decent crime. In the September before his death, which occurred January 3, 1882, he was informed by the Mayor of Manchester that the last twelve months' record of the public free libraries of that town showed that "twenty volumes of his works" were "being perused in Manchester by readers of the free libraries every day all the year through."