The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-07 00:00:00

THE STIN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 7, 1864

THE SATURDAY REVIEW.--It would be only
pedantry to compare the late and lamented John
Leech either with his contemporaries or his pre-
decessors as a caricaturist. A caricaturist he was
not ; and if he is to be reduced to a single type,
Hogarth is the only artist—and Hogarth only par-
tially—to whom he can be at all likened. Chrono-
logically, of course, Leech stood in legitimate suc-
cession as the representative humourist artist of the
day, in that series which comprises the names of
Bunbury, Gilray, Rowlandson, H. 8., and George
1 Cruikshank. Bat the range of each and of all
these artists was confined, and their aim compare.
tively narrow. Bunbary attached himself to fashion-
able life, but he was a mere caricaturist, or distor.
tionist. Gilray, with wonderful fertility of invention,
chiefly occupied himself with politics. He was a par-
tisan, and a coarse one. Occasionally he almost hit
the sublime, as in the Worship of the Sans Culotte
Deity ; but he must have been a man of fiery tem-
perament and strong passions, Rowlandson, who
was a real artist when he chose, must have been a
man of nasty ideas—so coarse, so swinish, so bestial
are his subjects. And if he satirised the worst animal
passions, it was not without a sneaking sympathy
with them. H. B. confined himself, we believe, to
political portraits, which were not deficient in cha.
ratter; but they-were cold, and the wit usually re-
-1 quired a scholiast. Cruikshank, though a genius of
the first rank, and of wonderful fertility in invention
and unrivalled in subjects of diablerie and grim
fancy, is absolutely without a sense of beauty. It
has been reserved for Leech to pour out in unabated
succession for mere than 20 years, week after week,
works of real art,which are certainly not caricatures,
but rather humouristic pictures, illustrating the ac-
tual life of the times, its political and social facts,
with a precision and versatility and originality—
and, above all, with a real moral goodness—which
presents a new chapter in the history of the pencil.
Hogarth's aim, it must be admitted, was much the
same ; and he had the unapproachable merit of ori-
ginating a new function for art. He brought art
home to living men by showing it concerned with
living life—with the vices, follies, and facts of the
times as they were. The "Enraged Musician"
might have been one of Leech's own subjects;
"Beer Lane!' and "Gin Alley" might appser in
next week's Punch ; and if Hogarth's chief fame
depends upon his two great pictorial epics, it is only
by reason of a change in taste that' Leech was
precluded from scourging the Fast Life of our
own days with the vigour of the immortal
painter of the Georgian Rakes and Harlots. Ho-
girth attacked sin rather than folly ; while Leech
confused himself to the pettinesses and weak-
nesses of mankind. At any rate it is something
to
,be proud of that neither our Hogarth nor our
Leech prostituted their gifts by the sort of apotheo-
sis of the demimonde and Lorettism which forms
the main attraction of the Charivari. Leech, how-
ever had advantages which were denied to Hogarth.
The brush or the etching-needle were Hogarth's
only tools ; woodcutting is to a prolific draughtsman
what the railway is to the traveller, Leech's works
divide themselves natural:a- into two great groups
—the political and the social " pencillings," as he
thought proper, and with all modesty, to call them.
Political epigrams with the pencil were impossible
in Hogarth'e days. There was not a congregation
for the pictorial preacher to address. Nor are we
aware that the thing itself was in Hogarth's way.
Besides which, the weekly epigram on Punch's full
page only epitomises the limes' articles of the week.
It compresses, as with an hydraulic power, the float•
ing sentiment of the day—presents it with admir-
able point, and in the neatest and most memorable
shape. But Leech, as a politician, is hardly ever
original. He only claims to reflect and to represent
the general public judgment on men and things.
Hence there is a certain timidity in his obsequious
following suit to the popular voice. At the time of
the Papal aggression he was a strong anti. Catholic ;
but as the popular fanaticism began to cool, he ven-
tured on one of hie most memorable hits—Lord John
chalking up No Popery and then running away. If
all the world had not agreed that the same Lord
John's cfficial powers were limited, we should not
have had the Page who was " not strong enough for
the place." Had not a gust of gossip surmised that
Lord Brougham was, some 20 years ago, intiigaing
for place, we should not have had to laugh at that
most comic of eketcheatheex- Chancellor as theMerry-
man in the Circus, ready "for to come, for to go, for to
fetch, for to carry." But to say this is no disparage.
ment to Leech. He secures impersonality by the
palpable abeyance of his own private views, Gilray
dashed and daubed under the inspiration of strong
personarfeelings, in his fierce attacks onthe French
Revolution. But Leech gains in force and impres-
siveness by merging the man in the chronicler. His
commentaries on public things are party commen•
tams, but they do not affect to be his own. They
are the current interpretation of regular politicians ;
they only claim to represent with point and defi-
niteness the judgment, on public men and public
events, of a least half the nation. And this has its
value—the value, that is, of all contemporary judg-
ments, with their incompleteness, their rapidity,
their one-sidedness, their inexactness. To the Ma-
caulay that is to be, a volume of Punch's political
pencillings will stand him in good stead for a file
of the Times. But in one thing Leech must be
credited with personal merits of no slight character
in his political sketches. Personal in one sense he
must be, in the other he is not. It is always
open to the political satirist to treat his sub-
ject in the spirit of the early John Bull and
the manner of Theodore Hook. This is
what Leech never did. Private character was to
him a sacred territory. He never listened at key.
holes, or subsidised butlers and lady's-maids for the
barb of his epigrams. And if it should be said
that the taste of our own days would not bear the
revival of the Age and Satirist, it may be owing to
such as Leech that tile Age and Satirist are now-a-
days impossible. After all, however, it was not by
his political satire that Leech made himself a per-
sonal friend and intimate of all English circles.
He was one of ourselves. He entered into our
common domestic life, with all its little funny
affectations, its grotesqueness, its foibles, its weak.
nese, and its strength. Leech shot folly as it flies;
but he was never bitter, seldom cynical. He was
not a mere Thackeray, with a theory of life that we
all have a dark cupboard, that there is a spectre
always hovering over the hearth, and some vice or
crime that we dare hardly to confess to ourselves.
Leech had all the human sympathies; a sense of the
beauties of nature, both in men and the external
world ; a certain confidence in his kind, and
a large sympathy with the great humanities.
It was not, as in Thackeray's case, that
the satirist took a solitary foible or a petti.
ness and expanded it into the representation of a
class. Leech really did assume the class and then
titan the individual. He was rather the Theophiase
t. 113 than the Timon of Art. He could not, even
had he been capable of writing, have invented a
Thackeray to ea
Becky Sharp ;
imagined
to
i n
ed
ybtuhtatitheisCounlod not disparagement
va gee
Leech's Mr. Briggs,
or his ideal " servant-gal," or
his superb flunkeys, or his schoolboys,so fearful
l
and wonderful in their immature'nsolence, and in
a wisdom of impertinence which
nearly reaches the
sublime. Nor must it be forgotten how wide was
the range of Leech's keen obssrvat'on. In thea
'
hunting-field, at the wateringeptec
, on the river
bank, in the drawing-room, in London streets, on
the solitary moor, at home or abroad, far out at sea,
in the nest garret, sumptuous or Fcraslicl, high or
low—it mattered not whet wls his subject, he sees

always at home. And, somehow or other, one never
thought worse of one's kind even in their absurdities
and vanities and oddities after they had been quizzed
by Leech. He always contrived to leave some subtle
trace of sympathy with the objects of his pencil.
He wielded only summer lightning, which played
genially round its subject, but seldom scorched it.
His victims, if they may be called victims, never
became disagreeable or offensive. Once, and once
only, if we remember right, he put forth his full
strength when he drew a hideous and almost awful
group of French prostitutes—the foreigners whom
we could spare ; but somehow there seemed to be
hardly enough of sincerity in the public mind to be
grateful for, or to appreciate, this sterner stuff. It
was not understood, and Leech never ventured again
out of the region of the playful and sportive,. It
was in him to have been a Crabbe or Swift ; public
taste compelled him to be elegant rather than austere.
No doubt he was, in some class portraits, monoton.
ous. His girls, fresh, honest, pretty, and unitellec-
tual, are true to fact, but as a class—which perhaps
makes them more true to fact—they are slightly tire-
some. Yet there was always heart in them ; their
ankles might be impossible, but they represented the
right stuff out of which wives and mothers are to
be made. In all this we have been, however
slightly and superficially, only touching on the
moral characteristics of Leech as an illustrator of
extant English life. But it must not be forgotten
that he was really a very great artist. It may be
that his artistic versatility is to be traced to the
circumstance that he was not regularly trained to
art as Hogarth was. It may sound something like
treason to the received canons if we say that Ho•
garth's professional training, slight as it was,
cramped his genius. Leech, at any rate, by trying
all branches of art, found the vast range of his
powers. We are not aware that Hogarth ever
went beyond character-drawing and expression by
the human figure. Of landscape he seems to have
known little. Bat Leech was equally at home
when he had to hint the subtle sense, the mixed
motive, the suppressed emotion, the unspoken wit-

ticism in his Peels or his Cohens, his O'Connells or
his Disraelis, or when he had to convey the vast-
ness of immeasurable stretches of ocean, or the
depths of a wood, or the lengthening distance of
miles after miles of flat inland scenery by a few but
masterly lines of the mere lead pencil. Nor was
his art at all the less accurate because he occasion-
ally reached even to something of Turner's sense of
space. His horses are as well defined, and bear
witness to as careful study, and as well satisfy the
skilful in horse flesh and horse points, as those of
Alken ; and in accuracy of drawing not inferior to
the more legitimate disciples of the historical
schools. The only wonder is how any man, com-
pelled or induced to be so prolific, could find time
for his largeness and versatility of study ; and it
could only have been by the hardest work that he so
seldom repeated himself, and was for so many years
a genial student of life, and its conceits and follies,
its strength and weakness. But his soul and
strength were in his work, and it has been given
to few with the same loving heart to feel, and with
easy hand to transcribe, the powers of scenery, the
mountain and flood, the deep squelchy ploughed
fields, the blackness of night, the curl of the break-
ing sea, or the dulness of the moor. Of course,
he paid the penalty for all this herd work. Nobody
can work week after week,and year after year,with-
out intermission, and not suffer loss of the sub.
stance of life. Leech, it seems, was—or he could
never have done what he did—susceptible,
delicately organised, impatient of the little
worries of life, He fell an early victim
to over work. Hie powers never failed ;
they seldom do in the case of a lover of work, t nd a
conscientious high-minded character. His inven-
tion did not wax f, eble, nor did 'ais facility dege-
nerate into mannerism and vapid iteration. But he
sacrificed life for the means of life, or at least for
the work of life. If be had taken a six months'
holiday, he might have lived to a riper age; and
though it may be an exaggeration to say that be
was killed by the detestable organ-grinders, it is
not too much to say that he was worked to death,
and that, to a man in his excitable and probably
morbid state, organ-grinding, or any other potty
misery of human life dwelt upon and acutely
realised, accelerated the crisis which only rest
could have averted.
THE ATITENEUM.—" Speak no evil of the dead,''
would be superfluous caution to the biographer of
John Leech. It would be hard indeed to find any-
thing evil to say of a man so generous, genial,
affectionate, and tender-hearted—one so full of self-
sacrifice that his existence presents the ideal of a
gentleman put into practice,—one who, with all the
temptations of a subtle wit and relish for the ridi-
culous in human conduct, seems never to have hesi-
tated between his friend and nisjoke, but in a sense
contrary to the first application of this famous
phrase. Of a man in Leech's pow.tion i; imp...
bible :o tell a more houcurable thing than that we
have looked at hundreds, one miglAt say thousands,
of his sketches of character and satiric delineations,
yet never found him on the side of passion, party
prtjudice or pique, never the servant of a cliquish
whim, never spiteful, never meretricious, and
justifying his least purposeful humour by truth of
characterisation that is devoid of ill will. To this
testimony of a negative sort to be folind in .his
works, there must be added one which is positive,
i.e., that he was often the active advocate of good
things, and usually on the thoughtful and kindly
side of any popular question. He wielded, in his
appropriate way, a really great power to influence
opinion—one of his cartoons often so aptly and stre-
nuously expressed a tone of public feeling that hosts
of men, whose minds had not echoed it ere Leech
took up the theme, gave their consent to the thought
he treated so truthfully. Looking at many hundreds
of this true artist's works, no one thing strikes us
with so much force as the fact, that he was so un.
ceasingly found on the side of Right, as English.
men receive it. One of the earliest sketches in
Punch, contributed by Leech, will illustrate this
point and his genial way of deeling with a theme.
It was styled " Foreign Affairs," and published in
August, 1841, showing a considerable number of
heads and faces of French and German scamps, such
as take refuge in London—these were drawn with
considerable: skill, and their knavish or grimy
characteristics stringently delineated ; lest this ap-
plication of the lash, however, should seem British
prejudice, the reader was warned by a footnote that
these affairs must not be considered as representa-
tives of foreign gentlemen. In 1841 the caution was
more needed than it would be now. To show that
there was often a deeper thought than that which
purposed to hit the flying folly of the hour, we need
oniy ask the reader to turn to such cartoons as "A
Case of Real Distress," in the recently republished
"Early Pencillings," and campare the theme of the
design with the figure of the wretched boy, who, in
need of food, housing,teaching, and raiment, stands
vulgarly grinning in the corner of the • com-
position ; turn also to " The Home of the
Rick-Burner," for something out of the run of
shallow thought, to " The Rivals—Prize Peasant
and Prize Pig," and to " The Educational Ques-
tion," the young rustic who, between the stools of
state and voluntary education, comes to the ground.
Of the purely witty class, among a thousand more,
let us recall to the reader's mind, selecting from one
volume of Leech's works, and a few from a multi-
tude, the well-known' Peace,' Louis Philippe look-
ing askant into the chamber of a gun. ' A great
Demonstration,' My Lord Assassin Clarendon mur-
dering the Irish,' Shall I hold your Horse, Sir?'
concerning the ridiculous Wellington horse-statue
which is still a disgrace to the western entrance to
London; 'The Last Appeal,' Sir It. Inglis and a
gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion ; and The
Protection Dodge.' We have but recently spoken of
the artistic merit of Leech's works, that by which
he held a position among the first artists of the age,
and which would, as one of the witnesses before
the recent Royal Academy Commission averred,
in any other country than ours, have secured hon-
ours for him. We need not repeat this opinion.
One of the most extraordinary things connected
with the life of Leech is the number of his works,
attesting, as it does, the energy, fertility,and diver-
sity of his mind, and the extent of his observation
of character and nature. He did not deal more
happily with men and women than with landscape;
some of his backgrounds are true pictures in the
best sense of the word, wealthy in incident, light
and shade, and "colour," as artists style the almost
indescribable manner, of which Leech was a master,
of representing that quality of nature by black
and white : he owed this power to his large as
well as intricate knowledge of effect and detail.
It was almost equally Leech's merit that he dealt
happily with morning, noon, evening, moonlight or
darkness without, or artificial light within, in his
drawings. Every observer can recall examples of
this singular faculty, end none can say he repeated
himself therein. Of the vast ne:nber of his works
—the quality of which, be it noted, did not dete-
riorate, but continued to improve as he grew older
and worked harder—let it suffice to say, that
the ' Pictures of Life and Character' alone, being
but selections from the artist's contributions to
Punch, and by no means the whole of his multi-
farious drawings in that publication, amount to not
fewer than two thousand five hundred in all. To
these are to be added countless designs, such as the
illustrations to' Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, and
other not very worthy works of that class, the
' Comic History of England,' the Ingoldsby
Legends,' and minor books, which would, if collected, form
a small library. how arduous must have been the labours
of a man so fertile of intellect as this multitude of produc-
tions shows Leech to have been, may be surmised now,
however lightly it might hive impressed those who de-
lighted in the results. and had small thought that such toil
was wearing down a brain thus prolific, and urging into an
eerie grave a man so much beloved, Thus it was, however

artist,

—ceaseless labour had been telling upon the artist for years
past ; his whole nervous system fell into a state of ex-
treme irritability, threatening complete loss of power and
physical exhaustion, unless thorough rest could set it steady
again. Debility of this sort had so great an effect upon
Leech, that at times the slightest noise caused him great
suffering, and he fled in vain from that annoyance which
others bear with bitter resignation or transient anger. His
sufferings may provoke sympathy for other over-wrought
intellects. So vast an amount of intellectual labour as
that referred to would seem enough for the life of a man
long past the prime of his days. Few out of Leech's im-
mediate circle knew, however, that this was supplemented,
as it were, to an education in the medical profession, to
hospital studies and apprenticeship to a surgeon, with prac-
tice such as students seek and have, and that, ere Leech
called himself an artist, he was qualified to be a doctor.
Such was the case. Lecch added authorship to his many
accomplishments, and the pages of Punch retain occasional
papers by the artist who did so much for its euccess. His
personal habits may be described here. He was an ardent
fisher and rider, fond of studying as well as sharing in
athletic sports, and, although not gifted with a remark-
ably strong physique, sustained, by his energetic and
nervous temperament, a great deal of fatigue. • As to
Leech's method, or rather habit of practising his art,
we may say that all his friends knew the never-failing
little note-book, which contained wealth of sketches of ex-
pression, bits of composition, effect, and humour, such as
the artist met in his walks and visits. Did an odd or char-
acteristic face pass him by, out would come the little
book as soon as he was unobserved, and ifs pages re-
corded the impression of the observer with extraordinary
facility and felicity, These notes often suggested themes,
or were used as occasion required and the fertile memory of
the artist brought them forth. A few lines will record
Leech's earthly career. He was of Irish descent, born, in
the city of London, in 1817. At an unusually early age he
went to the Charterhouse School, where he remained eight
years, under Dr Russell, and during the stay of Thackeray
in that place. Several of his schoolfellows are now, or have
been, distinguished in many ways. Even in childhood
Leech practised drawing; he was an able sketcher while at
school ; all the teaching he got in art was of the common
sort wasted upon boys at school in those days. Beyond some
tempoiary counsel, from Mr Millais, with regard to the
practice of painting in oil,—required when it was contem
platel to produce the well-known gallery of painted designs
from .Punch, which appeared at the Egyptian-hall quite
recently,—Leech received no instruction of the sort during
the whole of his life, Yielding, it is believed, to the wishes
of others, Leech, on quitting the Charterhouse, commenced
to study medicine and surgery under Mr Stanley, and
entered St. Bartholomew's Hospital as a student : he re-
mained there until his own inclination for Art found en-
couragement by the advice of some judicious friends, and
he essayed to draw on wood for publication. _Punch
seemed created as a field for the display of his
ability. From this period our subject has been before the
world : what his labours were we have said. It is satisfac-
tory, in a melancholy way, to know that a time for rest was
near at hand for Leech, and that we might still have had
him amongst us, kindly, and as much a true gentleman as
ever, had the attack which bereft us not proved fatal. Ar-
rangements had been made by which he would have had
many months of entire repose and obtained new health, it
was hoped. The provision was too late; for some time
past the artist's health was in a depressed and exceedingly
feverish state ; he was receiving medical advice and known
to be seriously affected, but not, it was thought, in any
dangerous way, although the anxiety of his friends made
them watch him heedfully. His greatest misery was lack
of sleep : for three nights together it was no uncommon
thing for the artist who pleased so many of us to get not a
moment's rest. He had been to consult Dr Quain on Fri-
day: there seemed no unusually alarming symptoms to be
dreaded in his case. On Saturday he was worse, but not
markedly so; some few children, friends of his children,
were gathered at his house, so little expected was the event
we deplore ; the evening found him still worse, and
a succession of nervous fits ended in death, He was
buried at, Kensal Green on Friday. Two children sur-
vive him. Tire beat portrait of Leech is that exhibited by
Millais at the Royal Academy in 1835, No. 1,088. It
was executed in water colours, and is in the possession of
the family of the deceased. A small statuette was shown
in Trafalgar-square at the last Exhibition. Leech' s last im-
portant effort for the recovery of his health was a visit to
Baden-Baden and Homburg : this was connected with a
series of sketches of life at the gaming tables that were
:o form an important addition to the published works of the

THE LONDON REVIEW.—Wit, which is in itself the
brightest and most nimble emanation of life, seems to have
some strange affinity with death. Whether it be that the
wit and humorist can only be such by virtue of some ex.
quisite delicacy of' organization which is seldom able to
withstand for long the rough usage of the world,—or
whether the perpetual creativeness of genius exhausts the
animal energies in the process, drawing, as it were, through
the fine electric agency of the nerves, all the spirit and sap
of a man's life, and expending it inbeautiful and airy forms
—certain it is that men of conspicuous ability in the gay
and ut faulty at u gengraily bltu t lived. oncee-
spere dying at 52 is a type of the fate that seems reserved for
all who, whether in literature or in what is technically called
art, have any share in the mental power which created Fal-
staff. Of Shakspere's dramatic contemporaries, not many
lived to be elderly. Philosophers last out their eight or
nine decades, and are vigorous almost to the end; statesmen
and lawyers are conspicuous in the records of longevity ;
epic poets and high art painters not unfrequently hold on
until 70 or SO ; but the humorist is most fragile, and dies
young. Thomas Hood and Mackworth Praed are instances
in point, and of those who founded _Punch three-and-twenty
years ago but few now remain. A'Beckett died at 40,
Albert Smith at not much later, Jerrold at 51, Thackeray
at 52. And now we have to mourn the loss of one who has
done more perhaps than any of those brilliant writers to
create and sustain the unexampled popularity of our weekly
satirist. At the early ago of 47, John Leech is dead. The
announcement of his decease, which was made in some of
the morning papers on Monday, came like an astonishment
on all who had learnt to regard the sketches of this genial
and gifted man as a part of the appointed and unfailing sun-
shine of their lives. For more than twenty years ho had,
week
indeed, been almost as regular in his appearances as the sun
witself.hieh his
Scarcely
pleasante ekpassed during all that period
fanciesin did not shine out from the pages
of Punch, and not seldom from other pages too. We came
at length to expect them like some natural largesse of the
earth or elements, and, it is to be feared, took them too
much as a matter of course, ungratefully forgetting the
enormous labour of such productiveness. It is said of
some men that wo cannot associate with them the idea cf
death ; and this was pre-eminently so with him who has
just departed from our midst. He could draw sad and
and happy-making,
; yet his sketches, for
so full both of the vigour and zest of English life, that we
tt
emh iens gt
,p
sa
ryt,, awn de r eevseonl
iggr
ha
tn
brightdantdhings
never thought of their originator in the solemn twilight of
mortality. We knew, too, that he was still in the prime of life,
and if we calculated chances at all, we hoped to see him work-
ing for our delight during another quarter of a century.
Yet already he is gone. The current number of Trench,
published on Wednesday, contains a sketch of his, full of
his wonted spirit, humour, observation of life, Bed easy
mastery of touch ; but, on the previous Saturday evening,
the hand that drew it dropped cold in death. Some five-
and-twenty years must have passed since Mr Leech—then
a medical student and a friend of Albert Smith, whd.
was also qualifying himself for the same profession—began
to make little droll sketches of life and character, which
were published in some of the periodicals of the day.
Though full of humour and keen appreciation of social
oddities, they were somewhat course in execution, partak-
ing of the extravagant caricaturisra of the time, and pro.
bably few mho looked at them anticipated that the artist
would at no very distant day attain the consummate power
which ho afterwards displayed. Some of his early etchings
on steel, in illustration of stories published in Bentley's
Miscellany about the year 1811, were indeed sufficiently
poor—and, though he afterwards improved greatly even in
this respect, and produced some good effects of colour on
steel; his real calling was for sketches on wood. He had
the good sense to know this, and to keep mainly to that
line. There are certain things which are specially adapted
to call forth a man's peculiar faculty ; and happy is he
who meets with the very employment best calculated to
develope all that is in him, The establishment of _Punch
was a singularly fortunate circumstance for Leech. No
other publication, except one of the same kind, could have
been so admirably fitted for the particular talent of the man
It helped to educate him ; it was partly made by him, and
partly made him, He joined it in the second month of its
existence, and very few numbers have appeared, from that
August, 1841, to this present November, 1864, that have
not been gladdened and enriched by the creations of his
exhaustless brain. In earlier years, he did many of the
political caricatures ; but of late he abandoned that species
of work, entirely, and confined himself to those sketches of
social manner and character in which he has never had an
equal, and seems to have left no successor. When it is borne
in mind that these drawings were almost entirely pure exer-
cises of the fancy—based indeed on certain general condi-
tions in the outer world, but not suggested by aotual oc-
currences, and therefore requiring an immense amount of
invention to bring them forth in a palpable and " telling"
shape—the most inexperienced will be able to form some
idea of the tremendous draught on a man's spirits and
energy implied in the production of such pictures, week
after week, year after, in sickness and in health in de-
spondency as well as in natural mirth, and whether the
season ware prolific or sterile in suggestive matter
That l'Slr Lech sometimes " repeated himself" is
doubtless perfectly true. He had a manner of his own, as
all men of genius have, and he had his pet subjects and his
favourite types of face. But within the circle which cir-
cumscribed him, as it circumscribes the greatest—and his
very devotees du not claim for him a position among the
chosen few—how rich was the variety, how admirable the
skill 1 What artist has yet so felicitously united the rough
oddity of caricature with an overmastering perception of
truth and a sanctifying sense of beauty ? Leech gave us
the humours of the streets, and did not disgust ; he sketched
the frivolities of the drawing room, and did not weary.
Whether he were reproducing the poor little errand boy,
with his gambols, his mischief, and his harmless slang, or
7 the terrible human ff:courings of St, Giles's kennels, or

the gent out for a holiday, or the exquisite at his club or
in the parks, or the lady of fashion at dinner or ball, or
jauntily et.horseback in bewitching hat and feather, or the
Paterfamilias and Materfamilies of middle-class life at home
or by the seaside, surrounded by the girls and boys, or the
footman of Belgravia, or the " servant gal" of Paddington,
or the garotting ruffian, or the foreigner whom he detested,
or the whole tribe of huntsmen, sportsmen. and anglers
whom he loved—in all he was equally at home, for the
quick eye for truth and nature, and the cunning hand to
interpret what the eye had seen, were never wanting. What
a heaped measure and overplus of life do we find in these
amazing sketches I What a reflex of our age ! What a
miniature England I For not only did he give us character
and life.to excess, but he " threw in," as a sort of careless
make-weight, horses and dogs and donkeys, all discrimi-
nated with the touch of a master in that special walk ;
and not content with this, but adding wealth to wealth, he
would dash on to the block, as mere backgrounds, and often
effected by a few rough strokes, landscapes and sea-
scapes and sky-stapes, wherein wo saw the tangled
brakes and hedgerows of our land, the long flat fields, the
soft retirement of distant hills, the rivers drowsy with
muffling sedge and reedy overgrowth, the heavy heat
August noons, the wiry trees of March scratching and
quivering in a keen air from the north, or a wild coast
in autumn with the wind in visible motion on the frothy
billows and the scudding clouds, and in the streaming
hair and skirts of ladies on the shore, At this present
moment, with the shock of the artist's death fresh upon
us, we cannot pretend to enter into anything liko an ana-
lytical criticism on his genius, or to show wherein ho
failed, or what were the limitations of his powers. We
glance in imagination over the long achievements of years,
and can only note the wonderful panorama which they
unfold. But one point should be specially mentioned—
the tender, almost touching, sense which Mr Leech pos-
sessed of the beauty of women and children, And when-
ever we look again at those beautiful sketches of fresh young
life, we shall recollect with a sad interest that, on the
very evening when he breathed his last, a child's party
had assembled at his house, and was hastily dismissed by
the approach of death, The writer of the admirable
obituary notice in the Times hints that the melancholy
end of Mr Leech was accelerated by the agony he endured
from the organ men whom he so often satirised ; and a
letter from Mr Mark Lemon is quoted to that effect. Our
k street musiciens have already enough to answer for in dis-
turbing the peace of studious men, but this is surely an
extreme exaggeration. Mr Leech suffered greatly from all
; sorts of noises ; but the first causes of his sufferings were
I the first causes of his death. The truth—the sad truth

—is, that he worked his delicate organisation until the
whole nervous system gave way. The man was struck
down by excessive toil, yet he went on toiling. A form
of heart disease supervened, and while his years were
still in all their vigour, and not a little in their freshness,
he was taken from the place ho filled only too *ell, and
which we do not expect to see filled again.
THE SPECTATOR.—The death of John Leech is a
great loss to the public, but not exactly for the reason which
is to-day upon everybody's lip. He was not a great cars.
caturist, or a caricaturist at all. He might possibly have
become one, though we do not think his genius lay specially
in that direction, but he never seriously tried, at least in the
many years during which he delighted the public who now
misdescribe hien Satirist he was occasionally, end, if he
himself thought out some of the sketches ho drew, he could
rise to a high level of pictorial pathos, but his true function
was that of a social humourist, a man who used his pencil
instead of his pen to make the humorous side of ordinary
life clear to the least observant, to reflect the ways and the
whims and the follies current in English society. Gifted
with a rare sense of the ludicrous element always discern-
ible in artificial life, and specially visible in the pushing
life of the English middle class, and with a still more rare
felicity of expression, he generally contrived to make his
sketches comic, but they were never caricatures. The
essence of caricature is the exaggeration of some details,
some part of an idea on which the draughtsman perceives
that the impassion of the whole idea res's, in which he de-
tects, to use the phrase of another art, the point which all
other men have missed. Leech, if he exaggerated at all,
which he very rarely did, exaggerated the whole meaning,
not the figures by which he was making his meaning clear.
The boys of the young generation, for example, seldom do
things quite so mannish as the acts Leech loved to ascribe
to them, and there was therefore exaggeration in the idea of
all that series of pictures, but the boys themselves were not
exaggerated. On the contrary, the very essence of the fun
was the lifelike rendering of lads who were doing things
which lads according to popular judgment ought to leave
to men, or which only men could do. Cruikehank
would have made the boys' figures express the pom-
posity, precocity, or affectation which Leech con-
veyed through the design and the written scroll. In
many of his pictures, perhaps the majority, the whole force
consists in the realistic rendering of a comic incident, and
the spirit of caricature is not only absent, but it would if
present entirely destroy the effect. Nothing more laugh-
able, for example, can be conceived than a sketch now before
us, -' An Advertising Medium,' or animated sandwich, re-
gularly enclosed in placards, standing ia the Strand while a
wicked littler atraot Arab, his loco no full of fun, and
mis-
chief, and rascality as if Murillo had painted him, tickles
the unfortunate's nose with a long straw, but a touch
of caricature in auy of the figures would simply have
spoilt the design. In another, which ma:'e all London
laugh, the joke is not in the picture at all, which
shows simply two street lads pointing at one of those
dressed-up errand boys whom pretentious people call pages,
but in the letter-press, " I say Jim, here's Bill been and
got the influenza, and broke out all over buttons." Very
often Mr Leech threw aside comedy altogether, and relied
for effect simply on realism—pretty sketches of pretty girls
in the attitudes in which they are most commonly seen, but
which painters of Academy pictures studiously avoid, and
which so to speak excite the memory to a smile. No man
indeed illustrated more strongly the difference between the
tendency of the ultimate tendencies of caricature and of
pictorial humour. The tendency of the former is towards
the grotesque, ending in fantastic -but weird dreams like
the "Dance of Death;" of the latter towards the common-
place, ending in sketches like the vapidities published in
London dociety, and it was into this that Leech was always
in danger of falling. That he did not fall was owing
partly to his admirable skill as a draughtsman, partly to a
rich store of native humour, of true genial fun, such as
only Englishmen and Italians fully appreciate, partly
to some very keen antipathies—witness the series of
" Flunkeiana " and all sketches of foreigners—and
partly to an unusually wide experience. A man who
is London litterateur, artist, tourist, and sportsman all
at once has scope for the exercise of what faculty of obser-
vation nature may have have bestowed on him, and nature
had given Leech a considerable one. Into the respective
merits of the two kinds of power it is not now necessary to
enter. Caricature as an art has almost ceased to be prac-
tised in England, and the rising generation scarcely under.
stand the estimation in which the few professors like Cruik-
shank left among us were once held by their countrymen,
Here and there a few thinkers are left who regret the deca-
dence of a great art, who will tell you, and tell 3 ou truly,
that the caricaturist is as much greater than the humorist
as the poet is greater than the special correspondent, that
the one creates and the other only copies, that one requires
imagination and gives scope to genius, the other needs only
a skilful hand and eye, and leaves room only for a faculty
of power which is to genius what shrewdness is to intellec-
lectual power, but the public voice is against them. The
taste of the day is for realism in this as in all other branches
of art, and as the taste is not unsound but only narrow,
there is neither object nor use in contending too vehemently
against it. The success of Mr Leech—a very real success,
or half England would not have road the announcement of
his death with a sense of personal loss—was due to the readi-
ness with which he perceived the change, and seized on the
new path it opened to artists like himself, gifted with a per-
ception almost amounting to genius, real skill in design,
and facility in very rapid execution. We question if Mr
Leech, had _Punch not existed, would have gained a great
place iu art, but Punch. unquestionably owes to Mr Leech a
debt no amount of money would ever repay. In his own
walk, the representation of common incidents from the
humorous point of view, he was almost matchless. Whether
the subject were Mr Briggs hugging his first salmon out
of the water, or two Frenchman discussing English
voracity, or Edwin slightly bored by Augelina's extgeamce,
or the street Arab quizzing the street sentry, or the foot-
man giving in his "resignation," or the nouveau riche
giving a party with greengrocers for servants, no one could
give to the realistic rendering of the simplest accidents so
exquisite a flavour of absurdity. There is nothing that we
know of particularly absurd in fly-fishing in the rain, or a
footman dropping a plate over an exquisite's whiskers, or
an angry old gentleman rating a conductor, or a child
bathing in water too cold for him—but only look at Leech's
sketches of the victims of those occurrences. You can
see the oath in the old gentleman's mouth, the groan of
the exquisite, and the shudder of the child, and gala an
idea somehow of a slight unreasonableness in all three. The
joke was never over the head of the public for
whom it was intended, yet never coarse, and never tainted
by malice. Leech was with his pencil thoroughly good.
humoured, except when depicting foreigners, whom he de-
tested and always represents in some grotesquely ridiculous
light. In other cases his antipathies, which extended to whole
classes such as footmen, the unrefined wealthy, cabraen, and
old maids, merely gave his work a slight flavour of sarcasm,
which it occasionally required to keep it from insipidity.
He represented on paper precisely the view .Punch's
good-humoured John Bull sometimes takes, and always
wishes to take, of the incidents around him, and the spec-
tator was pleased by finding his own pleasantest thoughts
realised before him. If no laugh was to be had his pretty
girls were an unfailing resource, and were, on the whole,
more popular than the comic sketches. We are not at-
tempting to estimate Mr Leech's rank as an artist, but if
any one wishes to compare him with other humorous
draughtsmen lot him study the girls in Punch, and in any
of its rivals. Mr Leech could draw girls who were pretty,
and ladylike, yet belonged to the middle class, and were
pursuing ordinary, or it might be undignified, occupations
—a feat in which at least fire-sixths of our comic artists
fail. The truth seems to have been that, unliker
Lmeoesethmneont
who think much of the ludicrous side of life, 3,i
only understood refinement but sympathised with it, and
could therefore give it expression almost at will—in artiZens,
f r example, as fully as in the Ciaardenten ho was fond of