on paper those grand figures of Parson Adams, and Squire Allworthy, and
the great Jonathan Wild.

With regard to the modern romance of "Jack Sheppard," in which the
latter personage makes a second appearance, it seems to us that Mr.
Cruikshank really created the tale, and that Mr. Ainsworth, as it were,
only put words to it. Let any reader of the novel think over it for
a while, now that it is some months since he has perused and laid it
down--let him think, and tell us what he remembers of the tale? George
Cruikshank's pictures--always George Cruikshank's pictures. The storm in
the Thames, for instance: all the author's labored description of that
event has passed clean away--we have only before the mind's eye the fine
plates of Cruikshank: the poor wretch cowering under the bridge arch, as
the waves come rushing in, and the boats are whirling away in the drift
of the great swollen black waters. And let any man look at that second
plate of the murder on the Thames, and he must acknowledge how much more
brilliant the artist's description is than the writer's, and what a real
genius for the terrible as well as for the ridiculous the former has;
how awful is the gloom of the old bridge, a few lights glimmering from
the houses here and there, but not so as to be reflected on the water at
all, which is too turbid and raging: a great heavy rack of clouds goes
sweeping over the bridge, and men with flaring torches, the murderers,
are borne away with the stream.

The author requires many pages to describe the fury of the storm, which
Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, he has to prepare you with
the something inexpressibly melancholy in sailing on a dark night upon
the Thames: "the ripple of the water," "the darkling current," "the
indistinctively seen craft," "the solemn shadows" and other phenomena
visible on rivers at night are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric)