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1、【国外英文文学】George CruikshankGeorge Cruikshankby William Makepeace ThackerayAccusations of ingratitude, and just accusations no doubt, are made against every inhabitant of this wicked world, and the fact is, that a man who is ceaselessly engaged in its trouble and turmoil, borne hither and thither upon
2、the fierce waves of the crowd, bustling, shifting, struggling to keep himself somewhat above water-fighting for reputation, or more likely for bread, and ceaselessly occupied to-day with plans for appeasing the eternal appetite of inevitable hunger to-morrow-a man in such straits has hardly time to
3、think of anything but himself, and, as in a sinking ship, must make his own rush for the boats, and fight, struggle, and trample for safety. In the midst of such a combat as this, the ingenious arts, which prevent the ferocity of the manners, and act upon them as an emollient (as the philosophic bar
4、d remarks in the Latin Grammar) are likely to be jostled to death, and then forgotten. The world will allow no such compromises between it and that which does not belong to it-no two gods must we serve; but (as one has seen in some old portraits) the horrible glazed eyes of Necessity are always fixe
5、d upon you; fly away as you will, black Care sits behind you, and with his ceaseless gloomy croaking drowns the voice of all more cheerful companions. Happy he whose fortune has placed him where there is calm and plenty, and who has the wisdom not to give up his quiet in quest of visionary gain.Here
6、 is, no doubt, the reason why a man, after the period of his boyhood, or first youth, makes so few friends. Want and ambition (new acquaintances which are introduced to him along with his beard) thrust away all other society from him. Some old friends remain, it is true, but these are become as a ha
7、bit-a part of your selfishness; and, for new ones, they are selfish as you are. Neither member of the new partnership has the capital of affection and kindly feeling, or can even afford the time that is requisite for the establishment of the new firm. Damp and chill the shades of the prison-house be
8、gin to close round us, and that vision splendid which has accompanied our steps in our journey daily farther from the east, fades away and dies into the light of common day.And what a common day! what a foggy, dull, shivering apology for light is this kind of muddy twilight through which we are abou
9、t to tramp and flounder for the rest of our existence, wandering farther and farther from the beauty and freshness and from the kindly gushing springs of clear gladness that made all around us green in our youth! One wanders and gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in a storm of p
10、olitics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to rise-to mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink a stone to the bottom.The reader who has seen the name affixed to the head of this article scarcely expected to be entertained with a declamation upon ingratitude, youth, and the vanit
11、y of human pursuits, which may seem at first sight to have little to do with the subject in hand. But (although we reserve the privilege of discoursing upon whatever subject shall suit us, and by no means admit the public has any right to ask in our sentences for any meaning, or any connection whate
12、ver) it happens that, in this particular instance, there is an undoubted connection. In Susans case, as recorded by Wordsworth, what connection had the corner of Wood Street with a mountain ascending, a vision of trees, and a nest by the Dove? Why should the song of a thrush cause bright volumes of
13、vapor to glide through Lothbury, and a river to flow on through the vale of Cheapside? As she stood at that corner of Wood Street, a mop and a pail in her hand most likely, she heard the bird singing, and straight-way began pining and yearning for the days of her youth, forgetting the proper busines
14、s of the pail and mop. Even so we are moved by the sight of some of Mr. Cruikshanks works-the Busen fuhlt sich jugendlich erschuttert, the schwankende Gestalten of youth flit before one again,-Cruikshanks thrush begins to pipe and carol, as in the days of boyhood; hence misty moralities, reflections
15、, and sad and pleasant remembrances arise. He is the friend of the young especially. Have we not read, all the story-books that his wonderful pencil has illustrated? Did we not forego tarts, in order to buy his Breaking-up, or his Fashionable Monstrosities of the year eighteen hundred and something?
16、 Have we not before us, at this very moment, a print,-one of the admirable Illustrations of Phrenology-which entire work was purchased by a joint-stock company of boys, each drawing lots afterwards for the separate prints, and taking his choice in rotation? The writer of this, too, had the honor of
17、drawing the first lot, and seized immediately upon Philoprogenitiveness-a marvellous print (our copy is not at all improved by being colored, which operation we performed on it ourselves)-a marvellous print, indeed,-full of ingenuity and fine jovial humor. A father, possessor of an enormous nose and
18、 family, is surrounded by the latter, who are, some of them, embracing the former. The composition writhes and twists about like the Kermes of Rubens. No less than seven little men and women in nightcaps, in frocks, in bibs, in breeches, are clambering about the head, knees, and arms of the man with
19、 the nose; their noses, too, are preternaturally developed-the twins in the cradle have noses of the most considerable kind. The second daughter, who is watching them; the youngest but two, who sits squalling in a certain wicker chair; the eldest son, who is yawning; the eldest daughter, who is prep
20、aring with the gravy of two mutton-chops a savory dish of Yorkshire pudding for eighteen persons; the youths who are examining her operations (one a literary gentleman, in a remarkably neat nightcap and pinafore, who has just had his finger in the pudding); the genius who is at work on the slate, an
21、d the two honest lads who are hugging the good-humored washerwoman, their mother,-all, all, save, this worthy woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome certainly are they, and yet everybody must be charmed with the picture. It is full of grotesque beauty. The artist has at the back of his
22、own skull, we are certain, a huge bump of philoprogenitiveness. He loves children in his heart; every one of those he has drawn is perfectly happy, and jovial, and affectionate, and innocent as possible. He makes them with large noses, but he loves them, and you always find something kind in the mid
23、st of his humor, and the ugliness redeemed by a sly touch of beauty. The smiling mother reconciles one with all the hideous family: they have all something of the mother in them-something kind, and generous, and tender.Knights, in Sweetings Alley; Fairburns, in a court off Ludgate Hill; Hones, in Fl
24、eet Street-bright, enchanted palaces, which George Cruikshank used to people with grinning, fantastical imps, and merry, harmless sprites,-where are they? Fairburns shop knows him no more; not only has Knight disappeared from Sweetings Alley, but, as we are given to understand, Sweetings Alley has d
25、isappeared from the face of the globe. Slop, the atrocious Castlereagh, the sainted Caroline (in a tight pelisse, with feathers in her head), the Dandy of sixty, who used to glance at us from Hones friendly windows-where are they? Mr. Cruikshank may have drawn a thousand better things since the days
26、 when these were; but they are to us a thousand times more pleasing than anything else he has done. How we used to believe in them! to stray miles out of the way on holidays, in order to ponder for an hour before that delightful window in Sweetings Alley! in walks through Fleet Street, to vanish abr
27、uptly down Fairburns passage, and there make one at his charming gratis exhibition. There used to be a crowd round the window in those days, of grinning, good-natured mechanics, who spelt the songs, and spoke them out for the benefit of the company, and who received the points of humor with a genera
28、l sympathizing roar. Where are these people now? You never hear any laughing at HB.; his pictures are a great deal too genteel for that-polite points of wit, which strike one as exceedingly clever and pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet, gentleman-like kind of way.There must be no smiling with
29、 Cruikshank. A man who does not laugh outright is a dullard, and has no heart; even the old dandy of sixty must have laughed at his own wondrous grotesque image, as they say Louis Philippe did, who saw all the caricatures that were made of himself. And there are some of Cruikshanks designs which hav
30、e the blessed faculty of creating laughter as often as you see them. As Diggory says in the play, who is bidden by his master not to laugh while waiting at table-Dont tell the story of Grouse in the Gun- room, master, or I cant help laughing. Repeat that history ever so often, and at the proper mome
31、nt, honest Diggory is sure to explode. Every man, no doubt, who loves Cruikshank has his Grouse in the Gun-room. There is a fellow in the Points of Humor who is offering to eat up a certain little general, that has made us happy any time these sixteen years: his huge mouth is a perpetual well of lau
32、ghter-buckets full of fun can be drawn from it. We have formed no such friendships as that boyish one of the man with the mouth. But though, in our eyes, Mr. Cruikshank reached his apogee some eighteen years since, it must not be imagined that such is really the case. Eighteen sets of children have
33、since then learned to love and admire him, and may many more of their successors be brought up in the same delightful faith. It is not the artist who fails, but the men who grow cold-the men, from whom the illusions (why illusions? realities) of youth disappear one by one; who have no leisure to be
34、happy, no blessed holidays, but only fresh cares at Midsummer and Christmas, being the inevitable seasons which bring us bills instead of pleasures. Tom, who comes bounding home from school, has the doctors account in his trunk, and his father goes to sleep at the pantomime to which he takes him. Pa
35、ter infelix, you too have laughed at clown, and the magic wand of spangled harlequin; what delightful enchantment did it wave around you, in the golden days when George the Third was king! But our clown lies in his grave; and our harlequin, Ellar, prince of how many enchanted islands, was he not at
36、Bow Street the other day,* in his dirty, tattered, faded motley-seized as a law-breaker, for acting at a penny theatre, after having wellnigh starved in the streets, where nobody would listen to his old guitar? No one gave a shilling to bless him: not one of us who owe him so much.* This was written
37、 in 1840.We know not if Mr. Cruikshank will be very well pleased at finding his name in such company as that of Clown and Harlequin; but he, like them, is certainly the childrens friend. His drawings abound in feeling for these little ones, and hideous as in the course of his duty he is from time to
38、 time compelled to design them, he never sketches one without a certain pity for it, and imparting to the figure a certain grotesque grace. In happy schoolboys he revels; plum-pudding and holidays his needle has engraved over and over again; there is a design in one of the comic almanacs of some you
39、ng gentlemen who are employed in administering to a schoolfellow the correction of the pump, which is as graceful and elegant as a drawing of Stothard. Dull books about children George Cruikshank makes bright with illustrations-there is one published by the ingenious and opulent Mr. Tegg. It is enti
40、tled Mirth and Morality, the mirth being, for the most part, on the side of the designer-the morality, unexceptionable certainly, the authors capital. Here are then, to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied by George Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a com
41、mon! Such a light, brisk, airy, gentleman-like drawing was never made upon such a theme. Who, cries the author- Who has not chased the butterfly, And crushed its slender legs and wings, And heaved a moralizing sigh: Alas! how frail are human things!A very unexceptionable morality truly; but it would
42、 have puzzled another than George Cruikshank to make mirth out of it as he has done. Away, surely not on the wings of these verses, Cruikshanks imagination begins to soar; and he makes us three darling little men on a green common, backed by old farmhouses, somewhere about May. A great mixture of bl
43、ue and clouds in the air, a strong fresh breeze stirring, Toms jacket flapping in the same, in order to bring down the insect queen or king of spring that is fluttering above him,-he renders all this with a few strokes on a little block of wood not two inches square, upon which one may gaze for hour
44、s, so merry and lifelike a scene does it present. What a charming creative power is this, what a privilege-to be a god, and create little worlds upon paper, and whole generations of smiling, jovial men, women, and children half inch high, whose portraits are carried abroad, and have the faculty of m
45、aking us monsters of six feet curious and happy in our turn. Now, who would imagine that an artist could make anything of such a subject as this? The writer begins by stating,- I love to go back to the days of my youth, And to reckon my joys to the letter, And to count oer the friends that I have in
46、 the world, Ay, and those who are gone to a better.This brings him to the consideration of his uncle. Of all the men I have ever known, says he, my uncle united the greatest degree of cheerfulness with the sobriety of manhood. Though a man when I was a boy, he was yet one of the most agreeable compa
47、nions I ever possessed. . . . He embarked for America, and nearly twenty years passed by before he came back again; . . . but oh, how altered!-he was in every sense of the word an old man, his body and mind were enfeebled, and second childishness had come upon him. How often have I bent over him, va
48、inly endeavoring to recall to his memory the scenes we had shared together: and how frequently, with an aching heart, have I gazed on his vacant and lustreless eye, while he has amused himself in clapping his hands and singing with a quavering voice a verse of a psalm. Alas! such are the consequence
49、s of long residences in America, and of old age even in uncles! Well, the point of this morality is, that the uncle one day in the morning of life vowed that he would catch his two nephews and tie them together, ay, and actually did so, for all the efforts the rogues made to run away from him; but he was so fatigued that he de