Many years later Cruikshank had not quite given up his dream of the epic or historical picture; for the dream had been encouraged by the criticisms of some of the most thoughtful of his contemporaries, who set him on a level with Hogarth and Durer, and said that posterity would delight in him as one of our most venerated old masters. But our present concern is with George Cruikshank as he lived, and moved, and impressed his friends. They all speak cordially of him. Poor Samuel Phillips, who was hearty in spirit, albeit he lived for many years at death’s door, says of him: “George is popular among his associates. His face is an index of his mind. There is nothing anomalous about him and his doings. His appearance, his illustrations, his speeches, are all alike--all picturesque, artistic, full of fun, feeling, geniality, and quaintness. His seriousness is grotesque, and his drollery is profound. He is the prince of caricaturists, and one of the best of men.” In a whimsical account of an amateur strolling excursion, in which Cruikshank was one of the company (1847), supposed to be written by Mrs. Gamp, Dickens has vividly described the illustrator of ‘Oliver Twist’:-- “I do assure you, Mrs. Harris, when I stood in the railways office that morning, with my bundle on my arm, and one patten in my hand, you might have knocked me down with a feather, far less porkmangers which was a lumping against me, continual and sewere all round. I was drove about like a brute animal and almost worritted into fits, when a gentleman with a large shirt-collar, and a hook nose, and a eye like one of Mr. Sweedlepipes’s hawks, and long locks of hair, and wiskers that I wouldn’t have no lady as I was engaged to meet suddenly a turning round a corner, for any sum of money you could offer me, says, laughing, ‘Halloa, Mrs. Gamp, what are _you_ up to?’ “I didn’t know him from a man (except by his clothes); but I says faintly, ‘If you’re a Christian man, show me where to get a second-cladge ticket for Manjester, and have me put in a carriage, or I shall drop.’ Which he kindly did, in a cheerful kind of way, skipping about in the strangest manner as ever I see, making all kinds of actions, and looking and vinking at me from under the brim of his hat (which was a good deal turned up), to that extent, that I should have thought he meant something but for being so flurried as not to have no thoughts at all until I was put in a carriage along with an individgle--the politest as ever I see--in a shepherd’s plaid suit with a long gold watch-guard hanging round his neck, and his hand a trembling through nervousness worse than an aspian leaf. Presently they fell into conversation. “‘P’raps,’ he says, ‘if you’re not of the party, you don’t know who it was that assisted you into this carriage!’ “‘No, sir,’ I says, ‘I don’t indeed.’ “‘Why, ma’am,’ he says, a-wisperin, ‘that was George, ma’am.’ “‘What George, sir? I don’t know no George,’ says I.