His works are:
- ‘Hymns on a variety of Divine Subjects,’ Aberdeen, 1761, 12mo.
- ‘Nature Spiritualised, in a variety of Poems, containing pious and practical observations on the works of nature, and the ordinary occurrences in life,’ London, 1766, 8vo.
- ‘Sermons on Evangelical and Practical Subjects,’ London, 1787, 8vo, with his portrait prefixed, engraved by T. Trotter from a painting by D. Allen.
[Wilson's Dissenting Churches, iv. 9; Addit. MS. 28518 a, Nos. 1710, 1711; Notes and Queries, 2nd series, iii. 447, 516; Scott's Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 838; Jones's Bunhill Memorials, 36.]
CRUIKSHANK, GEORGE (1792–1878), artist and caricaturist, born 27 Sept. 1792, in Duke Street, Bloomsbury, was the second son of Isaac Cruikshank [q. v.], and the younger brother of Robert Cruikshank [q. v.] He was educated at a school at Mortlake, and afterwards at Edgware, but his school-days were of the briefest. His earliest inclination, it is said, was to go to sea; but his mother opposed this, and urged his father to give him some lessons in art, for which he already exhibited an aptitude. In the collection of his works at the Westminster Aquarium are a number of sketches described as ‘first’ or ‘early attempts,’ dated from 1799 to 1803, or when he was between eight and eleven years of age. To a ‘Children's Lottery Picture,’ dated 1804, is appended in the catalogue the further information, emanating from the artist, that it was ‘drawn and etched by George Cruikshank when about twelve years of age,’ and that it was ‘the first that G. C. was ever employed to do and paid for.’ In the following year come two etchings of ‘Horse Racing’ and ‘Donkey Racing,’ and he may be said to have been launched as a professional artist and designer. Of art training he seems to have had none. His father held that if he were destined to become an artist he would become one without instruction; and his own applications at the Academy were met by the rough permission of Fuseli ‘to fight for a place,’ a forlorn hope which he gave up after two attendances. Meanwhile, in default of learning to draw, he was drawing. In the Westminster collection are several water-colour sketches, caricatures, and illustrations of songs, which bear date between 1805 and 1810, in which latter year appeared ‘Sir Francis Burdett taken from his house, No. 80 Piccadilly, by warrant of the speaker of the House of Commons in April 1810, and delivered into the custody of Earl Moira, constable of the Tower of London,’ an occurrence which had also prompted his father's final caricature, ‘The Last Grand Ministerial Expedition.’ Sir Francis Burdett had been a frequent figure in many of the later efforts of Gillray, whose last work, ‘Interior of a Barber's Shop in Assize Time,’ after Bunbury [see Bunbury, Henry William], belongs to 1811. Thus, as has often been pointed out, Cruikshank takes up the succession as a political caricaturist. He was now a youth of twenty. One of the earliest recorded of his book-illustrations is a coloured frontispiece of ‘The Beggars' Carnival’ to Andrewes's ‘Dictionary of the Slang and Cant Languages,’ 1809. To this followed a number of etchings to a scurrilous satirical periodical entitled ‘The Scourge, a Monthly Expositor of Imposture and Folly,’ 1811–16, edited by an eccentric and dissolute writer named Mitford, now remembered, if remembered at all, chiefly as the author of ‘Johnny Newcome in the Navy.’ For a similar work, ‘The Meteor, or Monthly Censor,’ 1813–14, Cruikshank supplied seven designs. Other volumes illustrated by him at this time are ‘The Life of Napoleon,’ 1814–15, a Hudibrastic poem by ‘Dr. Syntax’ (William Combe), which contains thirty coarsely coloured plates; and ‘Fashion,’ 1817, published by J. J. Stockdale. Side by side with these he produced a number of caricatures in the Gillray manner, of which it would be impossible, as well as unnecessary, to give an account here. Many, as for example, ‘Quadrupeds, or Little Boney's Last Kick,’ 1813; ‘Little Boney gone to Pot,’ 1814; ‘Snuffing out Boney,’ 1814; ‘Broken Gingerbread,’ 1814; ‘Otium cum Dignitate, or a View of Elba,’ 1814; ‘The Congress Dissolved,’ 1815; ‘Return of the Paris Diligence, or Boney rode over,’ 1815, are, as the titles generally import, frank expressions of the popular antipathy to the terrible Corsican. Others deal with such contemporary themes as Joanna Southcott and her impostures, the corn laws and the property tax, the purchase of the Elgin marbles, the Princess Charlotte and her marriage, and last, but not least, the unhappy disagreements of the regent and his wife.
Most of Cruikshank's more successful efforts in connection with this ancient scandal were concocted for William Hone, the compiler of the ‘Table, Year, and Every-day Books,’ and the friend of Procter and Lamb. Already in 1816 Cruikshank had etched a portrait of Stephen Macdaniel for Hone's ‘History of the Blood Conspiracy,’ and in 1819 he produced with him the first of that series of pamphlet pasquinades in which the portly ‘dandy of sixty, who bowed with a grace, and had taste in wigs, collars, cuirasses, and lace,’ was held up in every aspect to
