“I was cradled in caricature,” said Cruikshank to Cuthbert Bede, who adds, “He told me that it was not because he despised academical instruction that he had never availed himself of its salutary discipline, but simply because the pressure put upon him in his early years was so great that he had no leisure for the lectures or work of an art student.” * * I think he told me that he had submitted to Fuseli some drawings from “the round,” with a view to secure his entrance into the schools of the Academy; but, any way, I remember that he mimicked Fuseli’s voice and manner--which Cruikshank’s histrionic talent enabled him to do very cleverly--when the Professor of Painting told him that “if he wished to attend his lectures he would have to fight for a place.” As Fuseli’s “Lectures on Painting” were delivered and published in 1804, this anecdote would probably refer to that period, when the young artist was twelve years of age, and was already an illustrator of children’s books, before he had got into his “teens.” This was the preparation for his early work in the Scourge and the Meteor, and the prelude to those famous political hits in Hone’s pamphlets, that brought the artist great fame, but little money; for the publishers only gave him half a guinea for a drawing that produced upwards of fifty pounds for Hone’s pocket.-- _Cuthbert Bede’s “Personal Recollections of George Cruikshank_.” Thrown early into the midst of the hard life of London, as we have seen, and made to feel in early boyhood “the bewildering care” of bread-earning, George Cruikshank, with his brother Isaac Robert, had no time save for school culture. He rose from his cradle, and went straight into the bitter fight. For a time he worked by his father’s side, and caught very early from his practised hand the cunning tricks of his craft. How the life into which he was thrown quickened and forced the growth of his genius, without impairing its vigour, the long list of his extraordinarily various works bears witness--ranging as it does from his sheet of children’s pictures published by Mr. Belch, Newington Butts, in 1803, to his exquisite etching of Fairy Connoisseurs inspecting Mr. Frederick Locker’s collection of drawings, which forms the frontispiece to Mr. George William Reid’s descriptive catalogue of his works, which is dated 1868. Referring to George Cruikshank’s early work, Mr. Reid observes: “It is to no recent period that the greater part of Cruikshank’s work recalls us. In times which to the younger generation are now historic, before the present century was ten years old, he had already commenced the long career which has been spent so industriously in amusing and instructing the public.