We have now to consider Cruikshank as a supernaturalist. Perhaps there
is no rôle in which he is more sincerely esteemed. His simple egoism and
self-conceit protected him from an apprehension of the nothingness of
matter in the eye of a being who is uncontrolled by the world-idea. He
could not conceive that a mind can impose the idea of a form upon an
inferior mind, or a mind in sympathy with it: hence his egregious
"discovery concerning ghosts." His world of supernature was a playground
of fancy where powers are denoted by the same symbols which inform us
that this animal can run, and that animal can fly, and the other animal
can think. It is a world of which the major part is peopled with forms
so lively, gracious and fanciful that Mr Frederick Wedmore's violent
preference of Keene to Cruikshank seems, in view of it, a kind of
aggressive rationalism. This world, however, contains the Devil, and on
this colliery monster we will bestow a few glances.
[Illustration: LEGEND OF ST MEDARD. The Saint has slit the bag in which
the fiend is carrying children. From "The Ingoldsby Legends," 1842.]
Cruikshank's best idea of the Devil is comedy of tail. In one of the
"Twelve Sketches illustrative of Sir Walter Scott's Demonology and
Witchcraft" (1830) he shows the archfiend seated on the back of a
smiling elf who poses as a quadruped to provide a stool. The fiend is
"dighting" an arrow by the light of the flaming hair of an elf who wears
an extinguisher on his tail, and a cat enthusiastically plays with the
forked appendage of the illustrious artisan. The dignity of labour is
here inimitably manifest. Lovably ludicrous, too, is the Devil whom
Cruikshank presents in _The De'il cam fiddling thro' the Town_
("Illustrations of Popular Works," 1830). "Auld Mahoun's" forked tail
has caught the exciseman by the cravat. In "Scraps and Sketches" (1832).
Cruikshank has another Devil who plays on a gridiron as if it were a
guitar, to soothe a man who has been lassoed by his tail. "And if my
tail should make you sad I'll strike my light guitar." In "A Discovery
concerning Ghosts" (1863) Cruikshank depicts the Devil as lifting a
table with his tail and one hoof. One of the Devils offered to my
readers--he whom St Medard thwarted--is an example of good work in a bad
setting; the machine-ruled sky and "scandalously slurred distance" must
be viewed as symptoms of Cruikshank's dislike for Bentley, the publisher
of "The Ingoldsby Legends." The cuts from "The True Legend of St Dunstan
and the Devil" (1848) replace the perverted Pan--Pan as perverted for
the abolition of his prestige--with a plaintive ruffian whose horns and
hoofs disgrace a very obvious humanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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