Those who will may compare the Smollett of Rowlandson with that of Cruikshank. The comparison may determine whether a dog is funnier while being trodden on or immediately after, and shows the indifference of Rowlandson to his artistic reputation. Cruikshank's attempts to illustrate Goldsmith are few and, as a series, unsuccessful. The reproduced specimen is a fair example of his realistic method. It exhibits the blackguard's sense of absurdity in the Christian altruism which paralyses the nerves of the pocket--sensitive usually as the nerves of sex--and which tyrannises over the nerves of pride. [Illustration: THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD PREACHING TO THE PRISONERS. From "Illustrations of Popular Works," 1830.] Fisher, Son, & Co., the publishers of Cruikshank's illustrations of the "Waverley" novels (1836-7-8), assumed "the merit of having been the first to illustrate the scenes of mirth, of merriment, of humour, that often sparkle" in these works. In "Landscape Historical Illustrations of Scotland and the Waverley Novels" he supplied the comic plates; his _Bailie Macwheeble rejoicing before Waverley_, for chapter lxvi. of "Waverley," was the first etching done by him on steel. His "Waverley" etchings are characteristic works, sometimes brilliant in pattern or composition, occasionally ministering to a love of physiognomical ugliness which the small nurses of the dolls called "golliwoggs" can better explain than I. His predilection for the curious and uncanny is shown in some striking plates, including that in which he depicts the terror of Dougal and Hutcheon as they mistake the ape squatting on Redgauntlet's coffin for "the foul fiend in his ain shape." Cruikshank's illustrations for "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron" (1824-5) are cuts which include such deplorable effects of bathos (_e.g. Haidee saving Don Juan from her Father's wrath_) that one has no heart to praise the rough vigour of _Juan opposing the Entrance to the Spirit Room_. A Byron illustrated by protected aborigines seems realisable after seeing these pictures. If anybody paid the artist for them it should have been Wordsworth; that they did not weigh on Cruikshank's conscience, we may infer from the fact that in 1833 he cheerfully caricatured Byron for "Rejected Addresses" as a gentleman in an easy-chair kicking the terrestrial globe. We have already discussed the fruit of Cruikshank's association with Dickens. We have not, however, paid tribute to Cruikshank's capital etchings for "Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi," edited by Boz (1838). The portrait of the famous clown holding in his arms a hissing goose and a squeaking pig, while voluble ducks protrude their heads from his pockets and a basket of carrots and turnips afflicts his back, is extraordinarily funny.