The deaf postilion is a masterpiece of acute observation. There is, to begin with, the suggestion of a pleasant landscape. The story is complete. The body of the chariot, with the runaway couple in it, broken away from the shafts and fore-wheels; the excited swain stretching out of the window, and bawling his hardest to the postilion, who, deaf as a door-post (never was deafness more forcibly expressed in a human countenance), is jogging on with the fore-wheels, unconscious that any _contretemps_ has happened; and the startled cow, gazing wildly over the hedge, make up one of Cruikshank’s completest triumphs as a humorous illustrator. How closely, how searchingly had he read men and things! How thoroughly had he become a master of expression! In this illustration to Clarke’s whimsical poem, in Hood’s style, “The Dos-a-Dos Tête-à-Tête,” you can almost hear the man snoring, and yet it is a mere outline of a face. Says the lady:-- “When I had in some cordials so rich, With letters all labelled quite handy, Says you, ‘I’ll inquire, you old witch, If O.D.V. doesn’t mean brandy!’ Whenever I sink to repose, You rouse me, you wretch, with a sneeze; And lastly, if I _doze-a-doze,_ To _wex_ me, you just _wheeze-a-wheeze_.” Then we have an Irish scene! The drunken piper; the pigs who have upset a basket of live crabs, the excited group looking in through the door, the dog barking at the man in bed, the crab pinching the little porker’s tail. What life is here! and all true to the main incident of the scene. You don’t want the letterpress to read the story. The pigs have got into the room to attack the basket of crabs. Pompey, who has been tied to his master’s toe to wake him in case of danger, is tugging away in mortal fear of the old sow, who is scratching the good man’s foot with her bristles. The noise has set Corney Carolum, only half sober and half away, droning upon his pipes. The clatter has brought the children from their beds to the door. The fowls in the rafters are clucking and crowing. “All this noise,” says the author, “couldn’t go for nothing; the whole place was in arms. Mick Maguire fired off his gun through a hole in the thatch, and Bat Boroo, flourishing his big stick, took Mick under his command, for he thought the French was landed, at the least; and no blame to him.” Cruikshank’s illustrations to William Clarke’s book, and his twelve etchings to Walter Scott’s “Demon-ology” (there are no finer examples of his imaginative and executive powers), both issued in 1830, were the starting-points of his career as an illustrator of books; that is, of his career at the maturity of his power. [Illustration: 235]