He was never tired of talking on the subject. Fagin possessed him, just as Dickens lived in his characters, and made them talk in his letters and speeches. Mr. Austin Dobson, who met Cruikshank at breakfast at Mr. Frederick Lockers house on the 14th of December (1877), writes to me, “He told us many particulars respecting his work, and especially his visits to prisons and criminals in connection with ‘Oliver Twist.’ Finally, I asked him if the popular story of the conception of Fagin’s wonderful attitude in the condemned cell was correct. He replied rather energetically, ‘False!’ You will remember that in that version the drawing was the result of accident. The artist was biting his nails in desperation, when suddenly he caught the reflection of his perplexed face in a cheval glass--hence Fagin. Cruikshank’s account was different. He had never been perplexed in the matter, or had any doubt as to his design. He attributed the story to the fact that not being satisfied whether the knuckles should be raised or depressed, he had made studies of his own hand in a glass, to the astonishment of a child-relative looking on, who could not conceive what he was doing. He illustrated his account by putting his hand to his mouth, looking, with his hooked nose, wonderfully like the character he was speaking of,--so much so, that for a few minutes afterwards Mr. Locker playfully addressed him as ‘Mr. Fagin.’ I did not see at the time why he was so tenacious. But, of course, what he wished to impress upon us was that the drawing of Fagin in the cell, which shares with Sikes attempting to destroy his dog the post of honour in ‘Oliver Twist,’ was the result, not of a happy accident, but his own persistent and minute habit of realization; and though there appears to be a modern disposition to doubt that a man can know anything about his own past, I for one shall always prefer Mr. Cruikshank’s story to the others.” There is, no doubt, truth in all these stories. Cruikshank studied often in Petticoat Lane, to begin with, and probably fixed his model of Fagin there. That he himself told Horace Mayhew, many years ago, how he caught sight of his own image as he sat up in bed, and adopted it for Fagin in the condemned cell, I know. And finally, that he studied his hands in his glass, with that careful observation of details by which he reached such intensity in the expression of an emotion, or a dramatic incident, by all who knew him will be accepted as an ordinary illustration of his “habit of realization.” On Cruikshank’s illustrations to “Oliver Twist,” how many critics have dwelt; and by them, how many writers have pointed their moral. Ruskin, in his chapter on Vulgarity, * turns for his illustration to Landseer and Cruikshank. * “Modern Painters.”