celebrated; at all events, he was politic enough to know that he would surely find success by following out a course which he could make unmistakably his own. He aimed at distinction not only in the manner of his printing, but also in the matter of it. He desired that his press should be associated with the great names of English literature. With this object in view he held many consultations with Pickering. Every day these two cronies met. Nephew Whittingham would leave his office in Took's Court and call for Pickering at the book-shop in Chancery Lane. Then the zealous pair would go for middle-day dinner to the Crown Coffee House, in Holborn, opposite Chancery Lane, and talk of book projects and new fancies in paper and binding.

Although illustrated books were not the special features of the younger Whittingham's work, there were, nevertheless, some picture-prints produced by him that one cannot pass without attention. In May, 1830, George Cruikshank, who was then living at Amwell Street, in Pentonville, had many of his drawings printed at Took's Court. I do not now identify them, for only the blocks were struck, and the books were printed elsewhere. But William Kidd, a publisher at 6 Old Bond Street, ordered from Whittingham several little books illustrated by Robert Cruikshank. One of these was a comic poem by W. T. Mon

Drawn by Robert Cruikshank. Engraved by Bonner, 1830.

crieff, and it was called the "March of Intellect." It was illustrated, so the advertisement reads, "by eight splendid engravings on wood." There was no splendor in these engravings, but it is too late in the day to quarrel with the adjectives of the canny publisher. Half a dozen little books of humorous poetry, with Robert Cruikshank's drawings, soon followed this, and they were presently collected in single volumes called “Cruikshank's Comic Album." The first mention that I find in the Took's Court accounts of "Cruikshank's Comic Album" is in 1831, when Kidd had 500 copies printed. This publisher had many guide-books printed by Whittingham; some of them being of a comic sort and abounding with Cruikshank's cuts. And then there came, in 1833, "Cruikshank's Wild Craft," and "Cruikshank's New Police." Cruikshank, then living in Myddleton Terrace, negotiated with Whittingham, in 1834, for the production of his "Comic Almanack." The work appeared in 1835, and in each of the eighteen succeeding years. Its illustrations during that time numbered about two thousand woodcuts and steel engravings. Thackeray, Albert Smith, and Tom Hood wrote for the "Almanack"; Cruikshank, Hine, and Landells made most of the drawings; Charles Tilt published the affair, and Whittingham printed it, with the excерtion of the steel plates.

Basil Montagu, having prepared the catalogue of a "Barrister's Library" and several minor things which were printed in small editions by

From old books. Engraved by Mary Byfield.

Whittingham, is found in 1835 holding some official position in the Court of Bankruptcy, where he diverts himself by preparing a work called