Horrors of Indigestion,’ But here the superiority of Cruikshank over Gillray in this particular quality is at once apparent. Gillray’s is a finished copper-plate engraving, Cruikshank’s a light woodcut, but there is not a line that does not tell its story. Down to the very tips of his fingers the unhappy debauchee is ‘fuddled.’ The exact stage of drunkenness is marked and noted down in the corners of the mouth and eyes, and the impotent elevation of the eyebrow.” Cruikshank was a very young man when Gillray gave way to drunkenness, and sank under it. His last work appeared in 1811.* * “Gillray’s character affords a sad example of the reckless imprudence that too frequently accompanies talent and genius. For many years he resided in the house of his publisher, Mr. Humphrey, by whom he was most liberally supplied with every indulgence; during this time he produced nearly all his most celebrated works, which were bought up with unparalleled eagerness, and circulated not only over all England, but most parts of Europe. Though under a positive engagement not to work for any other publisher, yet so great was his insatiable desire for strong liquors, that he often etched plates for unscrupulous persons, cleverly disguising his style and handling.”--Robert Chambers’ Book of Days, vol. i., p. 724. Mr. Ruskin, in his Appendix to his Modern Painters on “Modern Grotesque,” insists that “all the real masters of caricature deserve honour in this respect, that their gift is peculiarly their own--innate and incommunicable. [Illustration: 042] No teaching, no hard study, will ever enable other people to equal, in their several ways, the works of Leech or Cruikshank; whereas the power of pure drawing is communicable, within certain limits, to every one who has good sight and industry. I do not, indeed, know how far, by devoting the attention to points of character, caricaturist skill may be laboriously attained; but certainly the power is, in the masters of the school, innate from their childhood. “Further. It is evident that many subjects of thought may be dealt with by this kind of art, which are inapproachable by any other, and that its influence over the popular mind must always be great; hence it may often happen that men of strong purpose may rather express themselves in this way (and continue to make such expression a matter of earnest study), than turn to any less influential, though more dignified, or even more intrinsically meritorious, branch of art. And when the powers of quaint fancy are associated (as is frequently the case) with stem understanding of the nature of evil, and tender human sympathy, there results a bitter or pathetic spirit of grotesque, to which mankind at the present day owe more thorough moral teaching than to any branch of art whatsoever.