John Leech, we believe remotely of Irish | This was said in full consciousness of what is extraction, was a thoroughly London boy, involved in advising such a step. His father though never one whit of a Cockney in na- wisely, doubtless, thought otherwise, and put ture or look. He was born in 1817, being him to the medical profession at St. Bartholothus six years younger than Thackeray, both mew's, under Mr. Stanley. He was very of them Charterhouse boys. We rejoice to near being sent to Edinburgh, and apprenlearn that Lord Russell has, in the kindest ticed to Sir George Ballingall. If he had way, given to Mr. Leech's eldest boy a pre- come to us then, he would have found one sentation to this famous school, where the student, since famous, with whom he would best men of London birth have so long had have cordialized: Edward, afterwards Protheir training, as Brougham and Jeffrey, fessor Forbes, who to his other great gifts Scott and Cockburn, had at the Edinburgh added that of drawing, especially of all High School. This gift of our Foreign Minis- sorts of wild, fanciful, elfish pleasantries ter is twice blessed, and is an act the coun- and freaks, most original and ethereal-and try may well thank him for. the specimens of which, in their many strange resting-places, it would be worth the while to reproduce in a volume. Leech soon became known among his fellow-students for his lifelike, keen, but always good-natured caricatures; he was for ever drawing. He never had any regular art-lessons, but his medical studies furnished him with a knowledge of the structure and proportions of the human form, which gives such reality to his drawing; and he never parades his knowledge, or is its slave; he values expression ever above mere form, never falsifying, but often neglecting, or rather subordinating, the When between six and seven years of age, some of Leech's drawings were seen by the great Flaxman, and, after carefully looking at them and the boy, he said, "That boy must be an artist; he will be nothing else or less." customary to have ten or twelve dinners at places in the neighbourhood of London, Greenwich, Richmond, Blackwall, etc. And once a year they attend the annual dinner of the firm, at which compositors, readers, printers, machinemen, clerks, etc., dine. This dinner is called the "Way Goose," and is often referred to in Punch. At the weekly dinner, the contents of the forth coming number of Punch are discussed. When the cloth is removed, and dessert is laid on the table, the first question put by the editor is, "What shall the Cartoon be ?"` During the lifetimes of Jerrold and Thackeray, the discussions after dinner ran very high, owing to the constitutional antipathy existing between these two. Jerrold being the oldest, as well as the noisiest, generally came off victorious. In these rows it required all the suavity of Mark Lemon (and he has a great deal of that quality) to calm the storm; his award always being final. The third edition of Wednesday's Sun is generally brought in to give the latest intelligence, so as to bring the Cartoon down to the latest date. On the Thursday morning following, the editor calls at the houses of the artists to see what is being done. On Friday night all copy is delivered and put into type, and at two o'clock on Saturday proofs are revised, the forms made up, and with the last movement of the engine, the whole of the type is placed under the press, which cannot be moved until the Monday morning, when the steam is again up. This precaution is taken to prevent waggish tricks on the part of practical joking compositors. At these dinners none but those connected with the staff proper are permitted to attend; the only occasional exceptions, we believe, have been ir Joseph Paxton, Mr. Layard, the present Foreign Under-Secretary, Charles Dickens, and Charles Dickens, junior. As an illustration of the benefit arising from these meetings, we may mention that Jerrold always used to say, "It is no use any of us quarrelling, because next Wednesday must come round with its dinner, when we will all have to shake hands again." By means of these meetings, the discussions arising on all questions helped both caricaturist and wit to take a broad view of things, as well as enabled the editor to get his team to draw well together, and give a uniformity of tone to all the contributions. latter to the former. This intense realism and insight, this pure intense power of observation it is that makes the Greek sculptors so infinitely above the Roman. We believe the Greeks knew nothing of what was under the skin-it was considered profane to open the human body and dissect it; but they studied form and action with that keen, sure, unforgetting, loving eye, that purely realistic faculty, which probably they, as a race, had in more exquisite perfection than any other people before or since. Objective truth they read, and could repeat as from a book. The Romans, with their hardy, penetrating, audacious nature-rerum Domini--wanted to know not only what appears, but what is, and what makes appear. They had no misgivings or shyness at cutting into and laying bare their dead fellows, as little as they had in killing them or being themselves killed; and as so often happens, their strength was their weakness, their pride their fall. They must needs show off their knowledge and their muscles, and therefore they made their statues as if without skin, and put on as violent and often impossible action as ever did Buonarotti. Compare the Laocoon and his boys (small men, rather) with the Elgin marbles; the riders on the frieze so comely in their going, so lissome; their skin slipping sweetly over their muscles; their modestly representing not of what they know, but of what they see. In John Leech and Tenniel you see some- | meat, out of the strong that there comes thing of the same contrast; the one knows forth sweetness. In the letter we refer to, more than he needs, and shows it accord- which is well worth reading, there is a good ingly; the other knowing by instinct, or from remark, that Lecch had no mere minutia, good sense, that drawing has only to do with as Turner had none; everything was subor appearances, with things that may be seen, dinated to the main purpose he had, but he not with things that may be known, drew had exquisite finesse and delicacy when it merely what he saw, but then with what an was that he wanted. Look at his drawing inevitable, concentrated eye and hand he did of our "Jocund Morn," from the boots to draw that! This made him so pre-eminent the swallows. His pencil work on wood was in reproducing the expression of action-es- marvellous for freedom and loveliness. pecially intense and rapid action. No know- The bent of his genius and external causes ledge of what muscles were acting, and what made him, when about seventeen, give up the are their attachments, etc., could teach a man study of medicine and go in stoutly and for how a horse trots, or how he gathers himself life for art. His diligence was amazing, as up to leap, or how a broken-backed cab- witnessed by the list we give, by no means horse would lie and look, or even how Mr. perfect, of his works; in Bentley they are in Briggs-excellent soul-when returning multitudes; and in Punch alone, up to 1862, home, gently and copiously ebriose from Ep- there are more than three thousand separate som on his donkey, would sway about on his drawings! with hardly the vestige of a repodgy legs, when instructing his amazed and petition; it may be the same tune, but it is ancient groom and friend as to putting up a new variation. In nothing is his realistic and rubbing down--the mare. But observa-power more seen than in those delightful retion such as the Greeks had, that dxpißsía or accuracy-carefulness, as they called it--it enabled Leech to do all this to the life. All through his course, more and more, he fed upon nature, and he had his reward in having perpetually at hand her freshness, her variety, her endlessness. There is a pleasant illustration of this given in a letter in Notes and Queries for November 5, 1864 :"On one occasion he and I were riding to town in an omnibus, when an elderly gentleman, in a very peculiar dress, and with very marked features, stepped into the vehicle, and sat down immediately in front of us. He stared so hard and made such wry faces at ns, that I could hardly refrain from laughter. My discomfiture was almost completed when Leech suddenly exclaimed, 'By the way, did Prendergast ever show you that extraordinary account which has been lately forwarded to him?' and, producing his notebook, added, 'Just run your eye up that column, and tell me what you can make of it? The page was blank; but two minutes afterwards the features of that strange old gentleman gaping at us were reflected with life-like fidelity upon it." There is humour in the choice of the word "Prendergast." This is the true way to nurse invention, to preen and let grow imagination's wings, on which she soars forth into the ideal, "sailing with supreme dominion through the azure depths of air.". It is the man who takes in, who can give out. The man who does not do the one, soon takes to spinning his own fancies out of his interior, like a spider, and he snares himself at last as well as his victims. It is the bee that makes honey, and it is out of the eater that there comes forth cords of his own holidays in Punch. A Mr. Leech was singularly modest, both as a man and as an artist. This came by nature, and was indicative of the harmony and sweetness of his essence; but doubtless the perpetual going to nature, and drawing out of her fulness, kept him humble, as well as made him rich, made him, what every man of sense and power must be, conscious of his own strength; but before the great mother he was simple and loving, attentive to her lessons, as a child, for ever learning and doing. This honesty and modesty were curiously brought out when he was, after much persuasion, induced to make the coloured drawings for that exhibition which was such a splendid success, bringing in nearly £5000. Nothing could induce him to do what was wanted, call them paintings. "They are mere sketches," he said, "and very crude sketches too, and I have no wish to be made a laughing-stock by calling them what they are not." Here was at once modesty and honest pride, or rather that truthfulness which lay at the root of his character, and was also its" bright consummate flower," and he went further than this, in having printed in the Catalogue the following words :-"These sketches have no claim to be regarded or tested as finished pictures. It is impossible for any one to know the fact better than I do. They have no pretensions to a higher name than that I have given them-SKETCHES IN OIL." We have had, by the kindness of Mr. John Heugh, their possessor, the privilege of having beside us for some time two of the best of those coloured sketches, and we feel at once the candour and accuracy of their author's title. It is quite touching the unaccustomedness, the boyish, anxious, laborious workmanship of the practised hand that had done so much, so rapidly and perfectly in another style. They do not make us regret much that he did not carlier devote himself to painting proper, because then what would have become of these 3000 cuts in Punch? But he shows, especially, true powers of landscape painting, a pure and deep sense of distance, translucency, and colour, and the power of gleams and shadows on water. His girls are lovelier without colour-have, indeed, "to the eye and prospect of the soul," a more exquisite bloom, the bloom within the skin, the brightness in the dark eye, all more expressed than in those actually coloured. So it often is; give enough to set the looker on a painting imagining, realizing, bringing up "the shows of things to the desires of the mind," and no one but the highest painter can paint like that. This is the true office of the masters of all the ideal arts, to evoke, as did the rising sun on Memnon, the sleeping beauty and music and melody of another's soul, to make every reader a poet, every onlooker an artist, every listener eloquent and tuneful, so be it that they have the seeing eye, the hearing ear, the loving and understanding heart. As is well known this exhibition took London captive. It was the most extraordinary record by drawing, of the manners and customs and dress of a people, ever produced. It was full "from morn to dewy eve," and as full of mirth; at times this made it like a theatre convulsed as one man by the vis comica of one man. The laughter of special, often family groups, broke out opposite each drawing, spread contagiously effervescing throughout, lulling and waxing again and again like waves of the sea. From his reserve, pride, and nicety, Leech could never be got to go when any one was in the room; he had an especial horror of being what he called "caught and talked at by enthusiastic people." It is worth mentioning here, as it shows his true literary turn as a humourist, and adds greatly to the completeness of his drawings and of his genius, that all the funny, witty, and often most felicitous titles and wordings of all sorts were written by himself; he was most particular about this. One day a sporting nobleman visited the gallery with his huntsman, whose naïve and knowing criticisms greatly amused his master. At last, coming to one of the favourite hunting pictures, he said, "Ah! my Lord, nothin' but a party as knows 'osses cud have draw'd them ere 'unters." The origin and means of these sketches in oil is curious. Mr. Leech had often been asked to undertake works of this character, but he had for so many years been accustomed to draw with the pencil, and that only on small blocks, that he had little confidence in his ability to draw on a large scale. The idea originated with Mr. Mark Lemon, his friend and colleague, who saw that by a new invention a beautiful piece of machinery-the impression of a block in Punch, being first taken on a sheet of india-rubber, might be enlarged; when, by a lithographic process, the copy thus got could be transferred to the stone, and impressions printed upon a large sheet of canvas. Having thus obtained an outline groundwork consisting of his own lines enlarged some eight times the area of the original block, Leech proceeded to colour these. His knowledge of the manipulation of oil colours was very slight, and it was under the guidance of his friend, John Everett Millais, that his first attempts were made, and crude enough they were. He used a kind of transparent colour which allowed the coarse lines of the enlargement to show through, so that the production presented the appearance of indifferent pelting shower of rain, the lines necessary to give the effect of a leaden atmosphere being very numerous and close. The works which illustrated his later style are best shown in Nos. 36 and 41. In the framing of these sketches he persisted in leaving a margin of white canvas somewhat after the manner of water-colour sketches. lithographs, slightly tinted. In a short time, | a little amusing and curious for a student of manhowever, he obtained great mastery over oil ners to note the difference between the two saticolour, and instead of allowing the thick rists-perhaps between the societies which they fatty lines of printer's ink to remain on the describe. Leech's England is a country peopled by noble elderly squires, riding large-boned canvas, he, by the use of turpentine, removed horses, followed across country by lovely beings the ink, particularly with regard to the lines of the most gorgeous proportions, by respectful reof the face and figure. These he redrew with tainers, by gallant little boys emulating the courhis own hand in a fine and delicate manner. age and pluck of the sire. The joke is the preTo this he added a delicacy of finish, parti- cocious courage of the child, his gallantry as he cularly in flesh colour, which greatly enhanced charges at his fences, his coolness as he eyes the the value and beauty of his later works. To any glass of port or tells grandpapa that he likes his champagne dry. How does Gavarni represent one acquainted with these sketches, we may the family-fatlier, the sire, the old gentleman in mention for illustration of these remarks, No. his country, the civilized country? Paterfami65 in the Catalogue. This work presents all lias, in a dyed wig and whiskers, is leering by the the incompleteness and crudity of his early side of Mademoiselle Coralie on her sofa in the style. The picture represents Piscator seated Rue de Bréda; Paterfamilias, with a mask and a on a wooden fence on a raw morning in a nose half-a-yard long, is hobbling after her at the ball. The enfant terrible is making Papa and Mamma alike ridiculous by showing us Mamma's lover, who is lurking behind the screen. A thousand volumes are written protesting against the seventh commandment. The old man is for ever hunting after the young woman, the wife is for ever cheating the husband. The fun of the old comedy never seems to end in France; and we have the word of their own satirists, novelists, Of all art satirists none have such a per-painters of society, that it is being played from day to day. vading sense and power of girlish and ripe womanly beauty as Leech. Hogarth alone, as in his Poor Poet's Wife, comes near him. There is a genuine domesticity about his scenes that could come only from a man who was much at his own fireside, and in the nursery when baby was washed. You see he is himself paterfamilias, with no Bohemian taint or raffish turn. What he draws he has seen. What he asks you to live in and laugh at and with, he has laughed at and lived in. It is this wholesomeness, and, to use the right word, this goodness, that makes Leech more than a drawer of funny pictures, more even than a great artist.* It makes him a teacher and an example of virtue in its widest sense, from that of manliness to the sweet devotion of woman, and the loving, open mouth and eyes of parvula on your knee. How different is the same class of art in France! you dare not let your wife or girls see their Leech; he is not for our virgins and boys. Hear what Thackeray says on this point: “Now, while Mr. Leech has been making his comments upon our society and manners, one of the wittiest and keenest observers has been giving a description of his own country of France, in a thousand brilliant pages, and it is a task not * It is honourable to the regular art of this country that many of its best men early recognised in Leech a true brother. Millais and Elmore and others were his constant friends; and we know that more than twelve years ago Mr. Harvey, now the perspicacious President of the Royal Scottish Academy, wished to make Leech and Thackeray honorary members of that body. In the works of that barbarian artist Hogarth, the subject which affords such playful sport to the civilized Frenchman is stigmatized as a fearful crime, and is visited by a ghastly retribution. The English savage never thinks of such a crime as funny, and a hundred years after Hogarth, our modern painter of mankind' still retains his barbarous modesty, is tender with children, decorous before women, has never once thought that he had a right or calling to wound the modesty of either. "Mr. Leech surveys society from the gentle- is. "Woe to you, you tyrant and heartless dear gents is to laugh. To watch them looking at their own portraits in this pleasant gallery will be no small part of the exhibition; and as we can all go and see our neighbours caricatured here, it is just possible that our neighbours may find some smart likenesses of their neighbours in these brilliant, life-like, goodnatured sketches in oil."-Times, June 21, 1862. own peculiar manner. He admires the horses, and copies with the most curious felicity their form and action. The footman's calves and powder, the coachman's red face and floss wig, the over-dressed lady and plethoric gentleman in the carriage, he depicts with the happiest strokes; and if there is a pretty girl and a rosy child on the back seat, he takes them up tenderly' and touches them with a hand that has a caress in it. This artist is very tender towards all the little people. It is hard to say whether he loves boys or girls most-those delightful little men on their ponies in the hunting fields, those charming little Lady Adas flirting at the juvenile ball; or Tom the butcher's boy, on the slide; or ragged little Emily pulling the go-cart freighted with Elizarann and her doll. Steele, Fielding, Goldsmith, Dickens are similarly tender in their pictures of children. We may be barbarians, Monsieur - but even the savages are occasionally kind to their papooses.' When are the holidays? Mothers of families ought to come to this exhibition and bring the children. Then there are the full-grown young ladies-the very full-grown young ladies-dancing in the ball room, or reposing by the sea-shore--the men can peep at whole seraglios of these beauties for the inoderate charge of one shilling, and bring away their charming likenesses in the illustrated catalogue (two-and-six). In the 'Mermaids' Haunt,' for example, there is a siren combing her golden locks, and another dark-eyed witch actually sketching you as you look at her, whom Ulysses could not resist. To walk by the side of the much-sounding sea and come upon such a bevy of beauties as this, what bliss for a man or a painter! The mermaids in that haunt, haunt the beholder for hours after. Where is the shore on which those creatures were sketch-cnanthic acid and oil-a bouquet of his own; ed? The sly catalogue does not tell us. "The outdoor sketcher will not fail to remark the excellent fidelity with which Mr. Leech draws the back-grounds of his little pictures. The homely landscape, the sea, the winter wood by which the huntsmen ride, the light and clouds, the birds floating over head, are indicated by a few strokes which show the artist's untiring watchfulness and love of nature. He is a natural truthteller, and indulges in no flights of fancy, as Hogarth was before him. He speaks his mind out quite honestly, like a thorough Briton. He loves horses, dogs, river and field sports. He loves home and children, that you can see. He holds Frenchmen in light esteem. A bloated Mosoo' walking Leicester Square, with a huge cigar and a little hat, with 'billard' and 'estaminet' written on his flaccid face-is a favourite study with him; the unshaven jowl, the waist tied with a string, the boots which pad the Quadrant pavement, this dingy and disreputable being exercises a fascination over Mr. Punch's favourite artist. We trace, too, in his works a prejudice against the Hebrew nation, against the natives of an island much celebrated for its verdure and its wrongs; these are lamentable prejudices indeed, but what man is without his own? No man has ever depicted the little Snob' with such a delightful touch. Leech fondles and dandles this creature as he does the children. To remember one or two of those We could not resist giving this long extract. What perfection of thought and word! It is, alas! a draught of wine we can no more get; the vine is gone. What flavour in his dear prisoned spirit of the impassioned grape!" What a bouquet! Why is not everything that hand ever wrote, reproduced? shall we ever again be regaled with such oenanthic acid and ether?-the volatile essences by which a wine is itself and none other-its flower and bloom; the reason why Chambertin is not Sherry, and Sauterne neither. Our scientific friends will remember that these same delicate acids and oils are compounds of the lightest of all bodies, hydrogen, and the brightest when concentrated in the diamond, carbon; and these in the same proportion as sugar! Moreover, this ethereal oil and acid of wine, what we may call its genius, never exceeds a forty-thousandth part of the wine! the elevating powers of the fragrant Burgundies are supposed to be more due to this essence than to its amount of alcohol. Thackeray, Jeremy Taylor, Charles Lamb, old Fuller, Sydney Smith, Ruskin, each have the felicity of a specific others' wines are fruity or dry or brandied, or "from the Cape," or from the gooseberry, as the case may be. For common household use commend us to the stout home-brewed from the Swift, Defoe, Cobbet, and Southey taps. Much has been said about the annoyance which organ-grinding caused to Leech, but there were other things which also gave him great annoyance, and amongst these was his grievance against the wood-engravers. His drawings on the polished and chalked surface of the wood-block were beautiful to look at. Great admiration has been bestowed upon the delicacy and artistic feeling shown in the wood-blocks as they appeared in Punch, but any one who saw these exquisite little gems as they came from his hands would scarcely recognise the same things when they appeared in print in Punch. When he had finished one of his blocks, he would show it to his friends and say, "Look at this, and watch for its appearance in Punch." Sometimes he would point to a little beauty in a landscape, and calling particular attention to it, would say that probably all his fine little touches would be "cut away," in a still more literal sense than |