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In the second part, the old tale of “The Three Hunchbacked Fiddlers” is illustrated with equal felicity. The famous classical dinners and duel in “Peregrine Pickle” are also excellent in their way; and the connoisseur of prints and etchings may see in the latter plate, and in another in this volume, how great the artist’s mechanical skill is as an etcher. The distant view of the city in the duel, and of a market-place in “The Quack Doctor,” are delightful specimens of the artist’s skill in depicting buildings and backgrounds. They are touched with a grace, truth, and dexterity of workmanship that leave nothing to desire. We have before mentioned the man with the mouth, which appears in this number emblematical of gout and indigestion, in which the artist has shown all the fancy of Callot. Little demons, with long saws for noses, are making dreadful incisions into the toes of the unhappy sufferer; some are bringing pans of hot coals to keep the wounded member warm; a huge, solemn nightmare sits on the invalid’s chest, staring solemnly into his eyes; a monster, with a pair of drumsticks, is banging a devil’s tattoo on his forehead; and a pair of imps are nailing great tenpenny nails into his hands to make his happiness complete.

The late Mr. Clark’s excellent work, “Three Courses and a Dessert,” was published at a time when the rage for comic stories was not so great as it since has been, and Messrs. Clark and Cruikshank only sold their hundreds where Messrs. Dickens and Phiz dispose of their thousands. But if our recommendation can in any way influence the reader, we would enjoin him to have a copy of the “Three Courses,” that contains some of the best designs of our artist, and some of the most amusing tales in our language. The invention of the pictures, for which Mr. Clark takes credit to himself, says a great deal for his wit and fancy. Can we, for instance, praise too highly the man who invented that wonderful oyster?

Examine him well; his beard, his pearl, his little round stomach, and his sweet smile. Only oysters know how to smile in this way; cool, gentle, waggish, and yet inexpressibly innocent and winning. Dando himself must have allowed such an artless native to go free, and consigned him to the glassy, cool, translucent wave again.

In writing upon such subjects as these with which we have been furnished, it can hardly be expected that we should follow any fixed plan and order–we must therefore take such advantage as we may, and seize upon our subject when and wherever we can lay hold of him.

For Jews, sailors, Irishmen, Hessian boots, little boys, beadles, policemen, tall life-guardsmen, charity children, pumps, dustmen, very short pantaloons, dandies in spectacles, and ladies with aquiline noses, remarkably taper waists, and wonderfully long ringlets, Mr. Cruikshank has a special predilection. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with amazing gusto; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth’s “Jack Sheppard,” and the immortal Fagin of “Oliver Twist.” Whereabouts lies the comic vis in these persons and things? Why should a beadle be comic, and his opposite a charity boy? Why should a tall life-guardsman have something in him essentially absurd? Why are short breeches more ridiculous than long? What is there particularly jocose about a pump, and wherefore does a long nose always provoke the beholder to laughter? These points may be metaphysically elucidated by those who list. It is probable that Mr. Cruikshank could not give an accurate definition of that which is ridiculous in these objects, but his instinct has told him that fun lurks in them, and cold must be the heart that can pass by the pantaloons of his charity boys, the Hessian boots of his dandies, and the fan-tail hats of his dustmen, without respectful wonder.

He has made a complete little gallery of dustmen. There is, in the first place, the professional dustman, who, having in the enthusiastic exercise of his delightful trade, laid hands upon property not strictly his own, is pursued, we presume, by the right owner, from whom he flies as fast as his crooked shanks will carry him.