In 1848 an incomplete and refined translation of "II Pentamerone" appeared with pretty and sprightly designs by Cruikshank. These designs show a more direct sympathy with juvenile taste than his famous etchings for "German Popular Stories." With shut eyes one can still see his ogre swearing at the razor-crop, and his strong man marching off with all the wealth of the King of Fair-Flower, while the champion blower with one good blast makes bipeds of horses and kites of men. Nennella stepping grandly out of the enchanted fish to embrace her brother is dear to an indulgent scepticism. There were beautiful fields and a fine mansion inside that fish and his toothful mouth is but a portico of Fairyland.
[Illustration: From George Cruikshank's Fairy Library, 'Cinderella,' 1854.]
Tails not having been invented merely to mitigate the sorrows of Satan, Cruikshank had some more of these appendages to draw when with "Kit Bam's Adventures" (1849) he entered the fairyland of Mrs Cowden Clarke. The very rhetorical mariner of that story is remembered for the sake of the tails of mer-children twining about his legs in the frontispiece to it, and human children allow their Louis Wain to wane for a minute as, with Kit Bam, they look at Cruikshank's tortoiseshell cat, ruffed and aproned, laying the table while Captain Capsicum, horned and gouty, urbanely watches her.
Naturally Cruikshank desired to associate himself permanently with fairy stories better known in England than the name of any folklorist or Perrault D'Armancourt himself. Rusher had published, circa 1814, "Cinderella" and "Dick Whittington" with cuts "designed by Cruikshank," whose prenomen was or was not George; and to George Cruikshank is ascribed by Mr Edwin Pearson some early cuts for "Mother Hubbard and her Dog." Each of these illustrations could be covered with a quartet of our postage stamps and only those for "Mother Hubbard," which are droll and tender, possess more than an antiquarian interest. In 1846, in twelve designs built round the title "Fairy Songs and Ballads for the young ... By O. B. Dussek ...," George Cruikshank illustrated "Dick Whittington," "Jack and the Beanstalk," etc., and was lively and pretty in a wee way. These were trifles, however, and Cruikshank was ambitious. In 1853-4 and 1864 he flattered his ambition by the issue of "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library." Unfortunately Ruskin was displeased with the earlier issues of this "library," for in 1857 he forbade his disciples to copy Cruikshank's designs for "Cinderella," "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Tom Thumb" [_sic_] as being "much over-laboured and confused in line." But on July 30, 1853, Mrs Cowden Clarke begged Cruikshank to allow her to thank him in the name of herself "and," writes she, "the other grown-up children of our family, together with the numerous little nephews and nieces who form the ungrown-up children among us, for the delightful treat you have bestowed in the shape of the 1st No. of the 'Fairy Library.'" This was the maligned "Hop-o'-my-Thumb," the pictures of which possess the charm of the artist's "Pentamerone." None of Cruikshank's ogres are as horrible as J. G. Pinwell's man-eating giant in "The Arabian Nights," and so the ogre in his "Hop-o'-my Thumb" is merely a glutton with a knife, but what a passion of entreaty is expressed in the kneeling children at his feet! The seven-leagued boots are worth all Lilley and Skinner's as, formally introduced, they bow before the smiling king. The architectural effect of the design which, as it were, makes a historian of a tree is admirable. The beanstalk in No. 2 is a true ladder of romance; and, seeing it, I think that Cruikshank escaped from the repugnant vulgarity of G. H. on that May or June day of 1815 when he drew The _Pedigree of Corporal Violet_ (_alias_ Napoleon) as a perpendicular of flowers and fungi and dreamed of the fairy seed he would sow for children. In "Jack and the Beanstalk" there is not only a fairy plant but a real English fairy gauzy-winged, tiny, with a wand as fine as a needle. Yet Ruskin was displeased, and we may define the fault which caused his displeasure as a finicky unveracity about shade and textures.