English humorist and artist, born in London in 1806; notary public in the Royal Exchange, where the family had been engaged in the same profession for over a century. He began to publish in the magazines when he was only fifteen years of age, and before he had completed his twentieth year had made considerable progress in drawing, pursuing his artistic studies with the object of illustrating his own works. He published Leaves from My Memorandum Book, consisting of selections of his own comic prose and verse, illustrated by himself; and Eccentric Tales. He joined the staff of Colburn’s Magazine in 1828, in which he was associated with the most brilliant wits of the time. He next became connected with Bentley’s Miscellany, and was the first illustrator of Punch and The Illustrated London News. He exhibited large pen-and-ink drawings at the Royal Academy; painted in oil; was also a designer and modeler, a specimen of his ability in the latter art being his statuette of the Duke of Wellington, produced a week before the Iron Duke’s death. His works include The Wanderings of a Pen and Pencil; Comic English Grammar; Comic Arithmetic; Phantasmagoria of Fun; Bentley Fun; A Bundle of Crowquills; Magic and Meaning It; Railway Raillery; St. George and the Dragon; Gold: A Poem; Absurdities; Reproof of the Brutes. He died in London on the 26th of May 1872. See To My Nose.
