Cuthbert Bede says, having been informed, of course, by the artist, “It is well known that Cruikshank originated the ‘Life in London.’” But this, as the reader will perceive, is a gross error. To the conception of this work, at any rate, the artist made no claim in Egan’s time, nor, it should be remembered, was he even the sole illustrator. He shared the honours with his brother. Besides, the three heroes bear unmistakable marks of the Egan parentage throughout. Perhaps the wildest claim Cruikshank ever entered to an idea was that of having originated the pattern of a military hat worn by the Russian soldiers. Having described his own model, he adds: “The Russian soldiers, I find, wear a hat something of this shape _now_; and no doubt they saw my pattern, and stole my idea.” * * “A Popgun fired off by George Cruikshank.” W. Kent and Co. In “the corrections made in the later editions of the first volume” of his “Life of Dickens,” and published in the second volume (October 1872), Mr. Forster notices Cruikshank’s assumption of the responsibility of Dr. Mackenzie’s statement, and remarks, “The worst part of the foregoing fable, therefore, has not Dr. Mackenzie for its author; and Mr. Cruikshank is to be congratulated on the prudence of his rigid silence respecting it as long as Mr. Dickens lived.” Suppose Cruikshank suggested to Dickens that his subject should be a poor boy thrown upon the skirts of London. It is but the motive, the theme. In all the range of Dickens’s work, there is nothing more essentially his own than “Oliver Twist,” from the name of the hero to the last line of the final chapter. Something like the following scene, which Cuthbert Bede describes, may have taken place between Dickens and Cruikshank. From the bare suggestion that there should be an “awful Jew”--receiver of stolen goods, a Hebrew Blueskin--in the story, to the conception and embodiment of Fagin, there is an immeasurable distance. * * As well might Sir David Wilkie have claimed the authorship of Douglas Jerrold’s drama, “The Rent Day,” because the idea was suggested to the dramatist by the great Scotch painter’s pictures. But Sir David only thanked Douglas Jerrold, and sent him proofs of his “Distraining for Rent” and “The Rent Day,” with expressions of his acknowledgments inscribed upon them.