To return to the “Table Book.” The miscellaneous etchings and drawings in this book are mostly arrows aimed at folly as it was flying at that time. The railway mania, clairvoyance, emigration, the fashions, furnished Cruikshank with inexhaustible humorous or grave material. His etching of Mr. John Ball in a Quandary, or the Anticipated Effects of the Railway Calls, is one of those wondrously filled drawings, in the composition of which he stands alone. John Bull is in his armchair, with a great railway bell clanging over his head. Hosts of pestilent demons cover him, and are stripping him. Some are hoisting his hat, some are bearing away his wig, others have perched ladders against his capacious paunch, and are dragging his money and his watch from his waistcoat pockets. The greedy imps are tugging his gloves from his hands, unfastening his neckcloth, and pulling his boots off. Liliputian lawyers, at hand, are demolishing a barrel of oysters, and leaving a plentiful supply of shells for their clients. Imps, driving a little locomotive, have attached it to Bull’s cash-box, and are making off with it; and in the distance the pictures are marked for sale. Then we have a few bits of Cruikshankian humour called “‘Heads of the Table,”--the final head being a capital study of an old gentleman who is _entre deux vins_, saying, “Well, we’ll just take another glass--and then--we’ll join the--the ladies.” Opposite this page is a drawing of a family, and also of their shoes. [Illustration: 071] [Illustration: 072] I will now endeavour to afford the reader an idea of the man who created the extraordinary variety of artistic work of high excellence briefly described in the foregoing chapters. George Cruikshank was eminently a convivial man. He was born in a boisterous and coarse convivial time; when Lords and Commons boxed at Jackson’s; went to see monkeys set to fight terriers at Cribb’s; fought “Charleys” and turnpike-men; and drank hard and played high at Crockford’s. Their humble imitators were the associates of Robert and George Cruikshank. George’s associates were tavern frequenters for the most part: in those days taverns were used by many of the men who now frequent clubs. The portrait of him drawn by Maclise was Cruikshank in his earlier and humbler time, when he was in the hands of the caricature vendors. The writer in _Fraser_ says: “Here we have the sketcher sketched; and, as is fit, he is sketched sketching. Here is George Cruikshank (see Frontispiece)--the George Cruikshank--seated upon the head of a barrel, catching inspiration from the scenes presented to him in a pot-house, and consigning the ideas of the moment to immortality on the crown of his hat.... [Illustration: frontispiece]