During the years 1831–39 there appeared in _The New Sporting Magazine_, edited by R. Surtees, a series of sporting sketches of which “Mr. John Jorrocks” was the hero. These papers were collected and published in 1838 under the alliterative title of _Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities_, illustrated by “Phiz.” This volume was brought to the notice of Lockhart, who thereupon advised Surtees to try his hand at a sporting novel. The immediate result was _Handley Cross_. In 1843 a third edition of _Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities_ appeared, with sixteen coloured plates after Henry Alken. The novels in the meantime were being issued with illustrations by Leech and “Phiz.” That the former has at this distance of time lost nothing of its popularity (rather, of course, on account of the illustrations than for the letterpress, which reads poorly enough now) is evidenced by {159} the fact that only the other day a copy fetched at public auction the remarkable sum of £20. One wonders what the bidding would have reached had the book been extra-illustrated with the unused illustration of which it is here my purpose to treat. Now we must be careful, in considering any work signed “Alken,” to bear in mind the fact mentioned by Mr. R. E. Graves in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, that although the fertility of Alken’s pencil was amazing, the idea of it might be fictitiously enhanced if the fact were not grasped that he left two or three sons—one of whom was also named Henry—all artists and all sporting artists, who have, since their father’s time, been incessantly painting, lithographing, aquatinting and etching for the sporting publishers and for private patrons of the turf. But the original Henry Alken did his work between 1816 and 1831; hence it is clear that the illustrations to _Jorrocks_ were the work of Henry the younger. And this is a point which should be emphasised for the guidance of the bibliomaniac, for it is the practice of many second-hand booksellers to lump all work by “Alken” under one head, from {160} ignorance possibly—in some cases I fear from unworthy motives. For it is the work of Henry Alken, the founder of the line, which is of greatest rarity and greatest merit, and to palm off work done by a namesake as work done by him is plain cheating. We remember the parallel case of George Cruikshank, who exposed a certain publisher, in a somewhat intemperate pamphlet afterwards suppressed, entitled _A Popgun fired off by George Cruikshank, etc., etc._ In that case the publisher had been guilty of the more than questionable proceeding of advertising certain “story-books” as “illustrated by Cruikshank,” which were in reality the work of George’s nephew, Percy, who, I fancy, would have been the last to concur in what was an undoubted attempt to mislead the public.[28]