Never has a single figure enacted by mortal artist been so talked and written about as Fagin. * How and when he was conceived, where the artist found his model, what share Dickens had, and what part belonged to Cruikshank of “the awful Jew,” are points of controversy which have been kept alive in society as much by Cruikshank’s own acting of his idea, and his many accounts of his conception, as by the deep impression made by that dreadful wretch glaring in the condemned cell. The writer of the obituary notice of Cruikshank in the _Daily News_ himself heard Cruikshank relate that Fagin was sketched from a rascally old Jew whom he observed in the neighbourhood of Saffron Hill;” and, he added, “I watched him for weeks, studying him.” Fagin possessed Cruikshank’s mind to the end of his life. He was always ready to talk about him, and to act him. “Sitting down,” says Cuthbert Bede, describing one of his visits to the artist in the Hampstead Road, “and crouching in the huddled posture of ‘the Jew--the dreadful Jew--that Cruikshank drew’--to quote Thackeray’s words--fiercely gnawing at his finger-nails, tossing his hair loosely about his head, and calling up a look of wild horror into his eyes, the artist, with the great histrionic powers that he possessed, seemed to have really transformed himself into the character of the Jew whom he so forcibly depicted. His features somewhat helped him in this impersonation, though those of Sir Charles Napier required no distortion of art, but were so exceedingly like to those of Cruikshank’s Jew, that he was popularly called in the army by the name of ‘Old Fagin.’” Cruikshank told Horace Mayhew how he hit upon the figure of Fagin in the condemned cell. He had been thinking it over many days, and could not satisfy himself. “At length, beginning to think the task was almost hopeless, he was sitting up in bed one morning, with his hand covering his chin, and the tips of his fingers between his lips, the whole attitude expressive of disappointment and despair, when he saw his face in a cheval glass, which stood on the floor opposite to him. ‘That’s it,’ he involuntarily exclaimed, ‘that’s just the expression I want!’ and by this accidental process the picture was formed in his mind.” * Memories of my Time.” By George Hodder, author of “Sketches of Life and Character.” Tinsley Brothers. 1870.