“I lay no claim to anything that has _originated_ from the mind of Mr. Ainsworth, or any other man; but where the original idea has emanated from my own mind, that I feel I have a right to claim, and by that right I will stand firm; and I trust that at no distant date I may be able to publish what I have already stated, to show the world how these ideas originated in my mind, and why I wished to place them before the public.” Cruikshank added that many friends, already passed ‘away,’ would have vouched for the accuracy of the foregoing. He cited two, however, on whose testimony in his favour _I know_ he would not have relied; namely, Douglas Jerrold and Laman Blanchard. These had never heard of Cruikhsank’s claim as originator of “Oliver Twist,” or any of Ainsworth’s novels, for the good reason that they had died before he put it forth. Blanchard, indeed, had experience akin to that of Ainsworth. An old friend of his and mine, returned lately from a twenty years’ sojourn at the antipodes. I asked him if he remembered any incidents of the time when Laman Blanchard was editing the _Omnibus_. At first he could recall nothing, but after a long pause he said: “All I remember is something very like a quarrel, one night, when Cruikshank was spending the evening at Blanchard’s house. A friend praised a little poem that had appeared in the last number. Whereupon Cruikshank remarked that it was his idea as well as his illustration. “I don’t call to mind another occasion,” said the traveller, “when I saw Blanchard give way to a violent passion; but on this he did. The idea and the poem were one of his bright and graceful fancies; and he rose and denied that Cruikshank had had the least share in it with a fierceness that confounded him.” [Illustration: 316] CHAPTER X. THE OMNIBUS. It was in 1841 that George Cruikshank, when at variance with Mr. Bentley, started a periodical on his own account His friend Laman Blanchard, who was then one of the most popular essayists and political writers of the day, undertook the editorship. The magazine opened in a thoroughly Cruikshankian style. There was a wondrously etched microcosm of the globe, which is accepted not only as one of the artist’s technical triumphs, but as one of his happiest conceptions. The human race is epitomised within this circle, not much wider than a billiard ball. The sphere teems with many-sided life, etched with the “simple frankness” which Mr. P. G. Hamerton has described as the perfection of the art * Let me here note that the famous Jack O’Lantern. His light and humorous wood drawings scattered through the volume are full of fancy and wit. He drew dainty bits to Blanchard’s graceful lyrics--“Love Seeking a Lodging,”