These original designs, executed as water-colour drawings, are all in existence, and are here reproduced in _facsimile_.
Dickens never denied that the artist had in the first instance designed the _suite_ of illustrations portraying a parish boy's progress, in advance of Boz's undertaking to write _Oliver Twist_. Nor could Ainsworth for an instant assume to claim the first idea of the scheme of eighteenth century fashionable 'Life in London,' as it might have unfolded itself panoramically to the observation of William Hogarth himself--the effective _scenario_ of _The Miser's Daughter_, in a word.
Moreover, subsequent _suites_--of correspondingly graphic and melodramatic character--also similarly dramatised on their publication, confirm the _bona fides_ of the artist's somewhat startling theory, which proved so disconcerting to the minds of George Cruikshank's actual literary collaborateurs.
In his monograph--'A Critico-Biographical Essay upon George Cruikshank'--Professor William Bates, B.A., has elucidated the controversial aspects of these trying questions from his personal impressions: 'In viewing the representation of _The Bottle_, as produced on the stage, an adaptation from Cruikshank's famous series, one was much more struck with the artist's talent for seizing upon the most dramatic situations of the story for the exercise of the pencil.'
Moncrieff, so the tale goes (_Every Night Booky or Life after Dark_, 1827), when he dramatised for the Adelphi 'Tom and Jerry' (_Life in London_), 'wrote his piece from Cruikshank's plates,' and 'boiled his kettle with Pierce Egan's letterpress.'
Half a century later, Andrew Halliday, adapting _The Miser's Daughter_ for the same theatre, made up his most effective scenes from the designs of the artist.
It was on witnessing the performance of this latter, and finding his part in its production was totally ignored--always a sensitive subject with the combative veteran--that George Cruikshank was incited to make that public vindication of his claim to a share in the authorship of this and other works--notably _Oliver Twist_--illustrated by his hand, and involving the candour and sense of justice of Ainsworth, Dickens, and himself.