Previous to all this, there is no doubt that George began to draw when he was a mere child. Some of his productions of 1799 are still extant. "George's first playthings," says Mr. Bates "were the needle and the dabber;" but play insensibly merged into work, as he began to assist his hard-worked father. His earliest inclination, it is said, was to go to sea, but his mother opposed this. The earliest job in the way of etching, for which he was employed and received payment, was a child's lottery ticket. This was in 1804, when he was about twelve years of age. in 1805 he made a sketch of Nelson's funeral car, and whimsical etchings of the fashions of the day. His earliest signed work is dated two years later, and represents the demagogue Cobbett going to St. James's. His father's early death threw the lad on his own resources, and he quickly found that he must fight for a place in the world, as Fuseli told him he would have to do for a seat in the Academy. Anything that offered was acceptable--headings for songs and halfpenny ballads, illustrations for chap books, designs for nursery tales, sheets of prints for children--a dozen on the sheet and a penny the lot--vignettes for lottery tickets, rude cuts for broadsides, political squibs--all trivial records but now of the utmost rarity and value.
While still very young, and before his father's decease, young George, with a view to becoming an Academy student, took specimens of his work to Fuseli for his inspection, when that, official told him that he would just have to "fight for his place," and at same time gave him permission to attend the lectures on painting. He attended two of the lectures and then stopped going, as his father held that if he was destined to be an artist he would become one without instruction, so that he never became a real student of that institution, nor had he a regular training in any way, so that his education, both so far as art and ordinary schooling was concerned, was very irregular and deficient. In fact, as a lad and young man he appeared to have been too full of animal spirits and too fond of sight-seeing to settle down to a hard course of study. The goings-on of the two brothers were severely condemned by their pious and strict mother. Occasionally she even went the length of castigating George when he returned home in the small hours from fairs and horse races, or the prize ring, and sometimes not quite sober.