“It will be seen that the arch-conspirator--for so I must continue to call him, though he could not be got into the archway--has placed his hat upon the ground, a little point in which I have blended imagination with history, and both with convenience. The imagination suggests that such a villain ought not to wear his hat; history does not say that he did, which is as much as to hint that he didn’t; while convenience, coming to the aid of both, renders it necessary for his hat to lie upon the ground; for if I had tried to place it on his head, there would have been no room for it There was one gratifying circumstance connected with this cartoon, which, in spite of my being charged with vanity, I must repeat. As it was carried through the streets, it seemed to be generally understood and appreciated; every one, even children, exclaiming as it passed, ‘Oh! there’s a Guy!’ “George Cruikshank.” There was some bitterness in this jesting; for Cruikshank felt conscious of the latent power to execute a cartoon about which there should have been no buffoonery. Alas! his lines had been cast in humble places. He had lived to earn his bread from day to day in the grotesque market; and the solemn and poetic side of his genius had been left unworked, or had been only partially and fitfully developed as he became an illustrator of books. In the Almanac which included the Guy Fawkes cartoon appeared Cruikshank’s Father Mathew, a nice man for a small party. Father Mathew appears in the shape of a pump or filter to a convivial domestic circle, and holds parley with them. The animated pump, with the extended handle for a warning arm, and the spout for a nose, is an old Cruikshankian figure. “Touch not--taste not,” says the preacher-pump: “if you _must_ take anything, take the Pledge.” Paterfamilias, with a severe frown and aggressive attitude, has turned upon the intruder. “Dost thou think,” he says, “because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” Pater’s friend is more insinuating, and has an excuse. “Why, you see, old gent,” he remarks, “the case is this--the ladies insist upon my singing a comic song, and I should like to know how I am to manage that over a glass of pump-water.” The grandfather pleads: “Won’t you allow an old gentleman a little warm elder wine this cold night?” And the buxom lady of the house is coaxing: “Pray take a chair, sir, and taste my home-made wine, or a glass of our home-brewed ale.” These suggested compromises expressed very faithfully the mood of the artist’s mind at the time. His sympathies inclined him towards the Apostle of Temperance; but he was not yet prepared to go over, body and soul, to the cause. The picture is accompanied by an “Ode to Father Mathew,” conceived in a spirit of hearty opposition, that only goes towards proving that Cruikshank was at the half-way house of elder and home-made wines and home-brewed beer, between the punch bowl and the pump. The ode is in the fine old style:--