Mr. Charles Wylie notes * that--“Of the nineteen volumes of which that admirable series of books, Roscoe’s Novelists’ Library, consists, seventeen were illustrated by George Cruikshank. The two in which he was not concerned have illustrations on India-paper by Strutt and others.... There can be no doubt that Defoe’s story was the first published, as an advertisement in the duplicated No. I. volume refers to it as already out. ‘Humphrey Clinker’ (the second No. I. volume) was illustrated by George Cruikshank, as were all the subsequent issues. As a matter of fact, therefore, George Cruikshank never discontinued his connection with the work, but two volumes were published before he commenced it. It would appear that the publishers made a change in their original plan, for the advertisement prefixed to ‘Robinson Crusoe’ states that the Novelists’ Library, edited by Thomas Roscoe, will be illustrated ‘from designs, original or selected,’ by ‘Jacob George Strutt,’ who, as I have already said, was concerned in the first two volumes. The advertisement to ‘Humphrey Clinker’ is identically the same as that to ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ except that the name of George Cruikshank appears in place of J. G. Strutt; and a paragraph is added stating that he, G. Cruikshank, ‘is engaged to illustrate the whole series of the Novelists’ Library, which, with the exception mentioned, he did.... The volumes appeared monthly, the first issue being in May 1831.” * Notes and Queries, 4th series, vol. vi., Nov. 12,1870. The fact was that Mr. Roscoe began with Strutt, found him a failure, and then started _de novo_ with George Cruikshank, whose genius carried him triumphantly through seventeen volumes. How strangely various were Cruikshank’s creations! The eminent surgeon, the late Mr. Pettigrew, * was, it will be remembered, his intimate friend; and for him he executed a series of carefully drawn plates for his “History of Egyptian Mummies” (1833). ** Even now he was not quite quit of political caricatures and headings to popular songs. He satirized quack qill vendors. In 1831, he lent a hand to the Reform movement--albeit he was a very moderate Liberal, even in his youth, if we are to judge by the way in which his pencil was employed against Cobbett. The Reform Bill drew from him “Sweeping Measures; or, Making a Clean House”--an etching in which Lord John Russell appears with an immense “Reform” broom, sweeping the Opposition out of the House of Commons--the Opposition consisting of owls, spiders, and vermin. The Chancellor, almost buried under petitions, cries, “Aye, I thought this rotten rubbish would make a fine dust.” Then he put upon stone (1832) a squib called “Cholera Consultation,” in which “the Central Board of Health” are represented at a sumptuous dinner, drinking toasts to their own prosperity.