The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-19 00:00:00

JOHN LEECH.

It is a great mistake, says a writer in the Cornhill Map-
:Alm, to suppose that pleasant labour is not labour, and that
what is done rapidly involves but a slight effort. All con.
centrated endeavour wears the mind, and it was well said
by a painter to one who underrated the worth of a picture
produced in a week, " You forget that I have spent my
whole life in learning to paint that picture in so shoot
time." But Mr Leech's working was more rapid in appear.
ance than it was in reality . He formed his ideas very
quickly; he saw his way in a moment. Mr Samuel Lucas
went to him once for a little sketch, which he wanted as the
initial letter to a
.tale that was about to appear in Once a
Week. It was the story of a clown who had to crack his
jokes in a circuit while his wife was in her dying agonies.
She was a columbine who, standing on horseback, used to
leap through hoops. On the occasion of one of her leaps
she missed her footing, fell to the ground, and injured
herself fatally. To illustrate this tale a sketch was wanted,
suggesting the initial letter I. Before Mr Lucas had ceased
speaking the thing was done. "I think this is what you
want," said
,Mr Leech, showing hifa the first draught of
the following sketch, which, by the way, is remarkable not
alone for its instantaneousness, but also as an indication of
what he, who generally took a humorous view of life,
could achieve in the direction of tragedy. See, again, how
perfect, and how vital, is the alight suggestion of the horse
underneath. When Mr Mark Lomon went to.him with the
suggestion of a cartoon for Punch, he was always struck
with Mr Leech's rapidity of understanding. He would
sometimes knock off one of his large cartoons in an hour, or
an hour and a half, while the friendly editor chatted with
him over a cigar. But although Mr Leech was thus rapid
in his conceptions, he very rarely trusted himself to draw
in the first instance upon the wood; an I the artist who first
of all makes a tolerably complete sketch upon paper, then
laboriously transfers the sketch to the block by means of
a tracing, and then again minutely fills in the details upon

the wood, can bcarcely be described as a very rapid worker.
At all events it is plain that his work gave him an immense
deal of minute trouble. One consequence of this, however, is
that nearly all his first sketches upon paper remain, end

.heso will probably be soon exhibited by the public. They are
of course rough in comparison with his finished work, but in
all their roughness they are sometimes even more powerful.
In the very last work on which he was engaged in contrast
between the bold lines of his first sketch and the minute
elaboration of the picture, in so far as it has been transferred
to the wood, is more remarkable than ever. lhis careful
elaboration will, to some extent, be seen in the copy of it
which we have been permitted to publish, The block itself
is too precious a possession to be cut by the engraver; but
Mr Mark Lemon, jun., has, by n.eans of photography,
succeeded in transferring its lines to another block which
has been cut for our use. The scene is one of a series
of what he called Dogleeves, which ho intended for the
forthcoming Almanac. It is entitled "An Afternoon on
the Flegs—Compliments ;" and between the key and the
dog there is the faint outline of a huntsman who is supposed
to be saying—" She is a beautiful Creechur, ain't she, my
L ely ? She is cur great Favourite—and Lord °veneer
always says that for Symmetry and High Breeding, and for
Beautiful Nose, she's just like your Ladyship."
On the day before his death he wrote to his kind friend
and publisher, Mr Evans, that he had been suffering from
"much annoyance and disturbance." The end of the sad
story has been told in the newspapers, but one cannot help
dwelling on it, in the knowledge that if Mr Leech could
have found rest and peace, he might have lived to delight
us for many years to come. On that Friday before his death
Dr Quain assured him that his only chance was in rest;
and when, a few hours before he fainted away, he asked Mr
ilufchinson's peruission to work at some drawing— that last
unfinished sketch of the lady and the dog—it was given
only on the express understanding that it would be an
amusement to him. Three hour 3 afterwards, no physician
being near him—Dr Quain being out of town, and his other
medical friends having left him to rest—his pain returned
to him, and in the anguish of it he died. His pain came to
him almost while he was in the act of catering for our en-
tertainment, and he who has done more than perhaps any of
his contemporaries, not even excepting Mr Dickens (for no
art of words can in this respect keep pace with that of the
pencil), to amuse the present generation, died in agonies
which he said were too great to be endured. The news of his
death rang through London with a dismal shock. "There
was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where
there was not one dead." In what home was not John
Leech an inmate F Personally ho shunned observation ;he
was always very quite and retiring; and few but friends
could recognise his handsome face and fine tall figure in a
crowd—not even when he rode past on Red Mullet, a pony
for him at least so diminu'ive that people declared it was
not a pony at all, bat Punch's dog Toby doing duty for one.
He, however, who was so little known to sight, was, for a
private person, the best known man in England, and his
death was a death in our homes.