As I have said in an earlier chapter, it is not my {74} intention to make this treatise in any way a devil’s directory for those in search of salacious curiosities. I shall therefore not dwell upon the suppressed woodcut, which is rather coarse than loose, of “The Dead Rider” in the _Italian Tales_ of 1823. I merely mention it for the sake of those who may be collating the book, and would find themselves misled by Reid’s note on the subject. He speaks of the “Elopement” woodcut being “wanting in two or three copies consulted of the first edition,” as though this were a matter for surprise. He fails to draw the very obvious conclusion that “The Elopement” was substituted for “The Dead Rider,” so that the number of illustrations might continue to tally with the announcement on the title-page, “Sixteen illustrative drawings by George Cruikshank.” He has apparently been confused by the fact, which I notice confuses a good many secondhand booksellers, that every copy has _a_ woodcut entitled “The Dead Rider,” but that it is only the first issue that has _two_ woodcuts with the same title. And, whilst touching on the subject of Cruikshank’s early indiscretions, it will, I think, be only {75} fair to repeat a story of pretty and spontaneous atonement which I have told elsewhere, and which deals with another suppressed broadside. No. 887 in Reid’s catalogue is “Accidents in High Life, or Royal Hobbys broke down, Dedicated to the Society for the Suppression of Vice.” Its companion picture is “Royal Hobbys of the Hertfordshire Cock Horse,” which was suppressed as being too suggestive even for so latitudinarian an age as that of the Regency. In the former the artist portrays the discomfiture of the Prince and the Marchioness of Hertford through the pole of the hobby-horse, upon which they have been riding, breaking and throwing both of them to the ground. The lady is cursing her folly in trusting herself to “such an old stick,” while her admirer is exclaiming that he shall try the Richmond Road in the future, the Hertford one being so unsatisfactory. The Duke of York is suffering from a similar disaster, and congratulating himself upon the softness of the cushion by which his fall has been broken, in allusion to his income of £10,000 for having charge of his father.