n Oxenford, Horace Mayhew,
Shirley Brooks, Mark Lemon, W. M. Thackeray, and others, could not
manage to prolong its existence beyond its first volume. In matters
connected with his own interests he was not only impracticable, but
seems to have been remarkably destitute of tact and even of discernment.
It cannot be doubted that the estrangement from Bentley was unwise and
impolitic, for as one of the greatest publishers of fiction of the day,
his influence was both far-reaching and comprehensive. In quarrelling
with Dickens, Ainsworth, and Bentley, three of the great artistic
employers of labour of his time, and in face of the growing popularity
of John Leech and Hablot Knight Browne, he was literally quarrelling
with his bread and butter, and few men, even of genius, may afford to do
that. He was essentially impulsive, and frequently acted under the
influence of first impressions. Although fond of his pipe and his glass,
as his famous _Reverie_,--_The Triumph of Cupid_, in the "Table Book,"
will show, he had always evinced a horror of drink, and had, as we have
seen, done his best at various times to expose its insidious and baneful
influences. At last, in 1847, came a sudden and extraordinary impulse of
enthusiasm, under the influence of which he not only produced his
_Bottle_, but laid aside for ever his pipe and his bowl. To do any real
good, he said he must practise what he preached: he joined the
"teetotallers," and not being one of those who did things by halves,
entered heart and soul into the crusade against drink by becoming a
temperance advocate. This last was the one step needed to fill up the
measure of the artist's folly, and to secure for him the reputation of
being an incurably eccentric, self-willed man.

Those who would charge the author with blaming George Cruikshank for
joining the ranks of the teetotallers will do him grave injustice.
Although very much of the opinion of Robert Burton, author of the
"Anatomy of Melancholy," that, "No verses can please men or live long
that are written by water-drinkers," and disposed to undervalue the tact
and discretion of some of the advocates of total abstinence, for its
abstract principles he can say and think nothing but what is good. But
he is writing, be it remembered, of a great artist--one whose mission
was that of an artist, not that of a _temperance orator_,--of one who
had served the righteous and good cause of temperance _best_ when he
remembered that ge