Mr. Sala very properly questions whether Cruikshank would have succeeded even with “Pickwick.” “While,” he adds, “to illustrate such works as ‘Martin Chuzzlewit,’ and the later novels of Dickens, he would have been manifestly out of place,” he might have “been in his element” with “Nicholas Nickleby.” Thackeray, however, once pointed out that Cruikshank would never have managed to draw Sir Mulberry Hawk’s cabriolet horse. But he was never more at home than in his illustrations to the life of his old Islington friend and boon companion, Joe Grimaldi, which Dickens unwillingly consented to edit for Mr. Bentley. [Illustration: 279] Dickens put the manuscript in order, and strung it together--dictating connecting bits to his father, whom Mr. Forster describes as revelling in the work. John Dickens revelled in work as well as play; in a bowl of gin punch, which it was his delight to mix at the Rainbow, in Fleet Street, and over which I have heard him tell many a capital story, not more than in his work as first manager of the Parliamentary staff of the _Daily News_. Dickens described the manuscript of the life of the celebrated clown as twaddle, and was astonished at its success. “Seventeen hundred Grimaldis have been already sold,” he wrote to Forster, “and the demand increases daily!” Perhaps he did not rate at their full value George Cruikshank’s etchings, which had a habit, in those days, of making “twaddle” palatable to the public very often. Over Grimaldi, Dickens and Cruikshank parted as author and artist; but they continued fast friends for many years after. [Illustration: 281] [Illustration: 282] “The dustman’s cart offends thy clothes and eyes, When through the street a cloud of ashes flies.” From “More Mornings at Bow Street.” CHAPTER IX. ILLUSTRATIONS TO HARRISON AINSWORTH’S ROMANCES. Early in 1839, on the conclusion of “Oliver Twist,” Charles Dickens handed over the editorship of _Bentley’s Miscellany_ to Harrison Ainsworth; and with this transfer, George Cruikshank’s etching-needle passed from the pages of the old to those of the new editor. Cruikshank by no means stood alone as illustrator at the outset of _Bentley’s Miscellany_. Samuel Lover illustrated his own “Handy Andy,” and Buss and Phiz appeared as etchers. Dickens, in announcing vol. ii. in a theatrical address, said: “The scenery will continue to be supplied by the creative pencil of Mr. George Cruikshank.” In the second volume, by way of illustration to “The Autobiography of a Joke”--Dr Charles Mackay’s first appearance, he tells me, as a magazine writer--Cruikshank drew one of his wonderful jovial bottles dancing upon the table. It was in the third volume, beginning with the year 1838, that Cruikshank stood alone as illustrator. Early in 1839, Dickens transferred the editorship of the _Miscellany_ to one of his “most intimate and valued friends,” Mr. Ainsworth.