“To be sure, we have never heard so much from Mr. Cruikshank’s own lips, but any man who will examine these odd drawings, which first made him famous, will see what an honest, hearty hatred the champion of woman has for all who abuse her, and will admire the energy with which he flings his wood-blocks at all who side against her.” * * Westminster Review, 1840. Thackeray dwells lovingly on Cruikshank’s success as a delineator of children and the humours of childhood; and particularly on his inimitable illustrations to children’s books. This is Cruikshank’s own king dom, by a right of genius which none can dispute. “How,” exclaims Thackeray, “shall we enough praise the delightful German nursery tales, and Cruik-shank’s illustrations of them? We coupled his name with pantomime awhile since, and sure never pantomimes were more charming than these. Of all the artists that ever drew, from Michael Angelo upwards and downwards, Cruikshank was the man to illustrate these tales, and give them just the proper admixture of the grotesque, the wonderful, and the graceful.” And further on the author of “Vanity Fair” exclaims: “Look at one of Mr. Cruikshank’s works, and we pronounce him an excellent humourist. Look at all, his reputation is increased by a kind of geometrical progression, as a whole diamond is a hundred times more valuable than the hundred splinters into which it might be broken would be. A fine rough English diamond is this about which we have been writing.” And so Thackeray concludes a paper on his friend, whom he had not forgotten many years after when he exhibited the “Triumph of Bacchus.”