From Tommy Toddles's Comic Almenak, 1862.

There aren't very many imaginary organ-griders in the literature.  The caption here reads, "Do you not perceive an Italian organ-grinder over there?" (English Illustrated, 1900).  In 1886, "Tom went to the window, called out to an imaginary organ grinder, pitched a copper, and ordered him to be off with his hideous music" (John Robertson, One of the People).  In 2007, one Harrison Forbes blogged about traveling with an imaginary organ grinder's monkey named Ivan.

Here's a "pack of nonsense" from Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1873.

A colossus of Rhodes from Polk's Indianapolis City Directory, 1888.

"His comrades christened him Aladdin on account of his wonderful lamp."  From The American Legion Weekly, Sept. 2, 1921, illustrated by Wallgren.

From George Meredith: His Life and Friends in Relation to His Work by Stewart Marsh Ellis, 1920.

From Overheard in a Garden by Oliver Herford, 1900.

From Catoninetales by W. J. Linton, 1892.

From Whist Scores and Card-Table Talk by George Hempl, 1887.

From Outing magazine, 1885.

From Zur Farbenlehre, 1810.

Here's a 1917 precursor to filmmaker David Lynch, by Evans for the Baltimore American, reproduced in Cartoons Magazine.

Here's an encounter with Bibendum, the Michelin Man, whom William Gibson has described as a stomach-churningly creepy, "weird, jaded, cigar-smoking elder creature suggesting a mummy with elephantiasis ... the rolls of his pallid, rubbery flesh like the folds of a partially deflated blimp, greasy and vile" (Pattern Recognition). From The Saturday Evening Post, 1920.

From The Pictorial Book of Ancient Ballad Poetry of Great Britain by Joseph S. Moore, 1853.

"Tally-ho.  This light shows the way."  An ad from McClure's Magazine, 1896.

Here's a precursor to the manga character Naruto, from Two Little Savages by Ernest Thompson Seton, 1922.