The Sun. — 1864-12-05 (London, England)

JOHN LEECH'S ARTISTIC HABITS.—Mr Leech's life and character are in his own " Sketches of Life and Character." Any anecdote that can be told of him has its double in his own works. Suppose we give this anecdote in the words of Mr Charles Dickens. He was very fond of a bey known to Mr Dickens, an extraordinary small boy, but of great spirit, who was a midshipman in the navy. " Whenever this boy came home from a cruise," says Mr Dickens, " he and Leech, and never anybody else, used to go out in great state, and dine at the Garrick Club and go to the play, and finish in an exemplary way with kidneys and harmony. On the first of these occasions, the officer came out so frightfully small that, Leech told us afterwards, he was filled with horror when he saw him eating his dinner at the Garrick with a large knife. On the other hand, ho felt that to suggest a small knife to an officer and gentleman would be an unpardonable affront. So, after meditating for some time, he felt that his course was to object to the club knives as enormous and gigantic; to remonstrate with their servant on their huge proportions, and with a grim dissatisfaction to demand small ones. After which he and the officer messed with great satisfaction, and agreed that things in general were running too large in England." But incidents like these are precisely what we find pictured in his pages ; and his friends, pointing to sketch after sketch, can say, " I told him that:;" ".This happened to himself;" " I was present when he came upon so and so." We select two sketches, for which we are indebted to Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, to illustrate this, not because they are greatly superior to others, but because they show his manner of working, "the first is called " Private Theatricals," and appeared in the Almanac for 1854, with these words under it :—" Dismay of Mr James Jessamy on being told that he will spoil the Whole Thirg if he doesn't shave off his Whiskers." The incident happened to himself; it is his own whiskers that were in question ; and it is himself that he is here making fun of. So again but a few weeks ago, there appeared in Punch the sketch of " A Little Scene at Brussels," with these words underneath, " T-mpk-ns (who has just come down breakfast) : Here I I say, Garsong I I want a kelk chose for dejewnay l der Korfee, and des Moots, you know ! (N.B. 'The stout party, T. pokes in the ribs is a wealthy Belgian swell)." Hero tlio incident is founded on actual occurrence. During this last summer he went to the continent tor the benefit of hiehealth, in company with Mr Elmore; and it was he himself mho made the mistake of addressing a Belgian gentleman as the waiter. But whereas ho himself was tall, he pictures the hero of the escapade as short ; whereas he was a gentleman in all his ways, he represents the said hero with the manners of a " gent" terrible in his French. The type of an urn' menso number of these sketches is to be found in his letters, and one must conceive of them as a form of published letter. Ile writes to a young but moat distinguished artist with whom he had formed a close friendship—" When do you return ? Mind, you present yourself here directly you come back. You are of course something like this by this date," and then on opposite pages of his letter he draws with pen and ink two prodigious portraits of his friend, that illustrate the felicity with which he could give a likeness from memory, and preserve the likeness too, while confounding it with extravagances that have no existence in fact. So when he writes to another friend to appoint a day for hunting, he must wind up with a sketch of what is likely to take place on the morning of the hunt, He was troubled with a want of sleep, and indicates on the sketch how difficult it will be to wake him up. Now, what we have here in the rough, in his letters, we have highly finished in his public works. Representing scenes of private life, they have the same relation to art that a man's letters have to literature. They are his mode of correspondence, and they have the biographical character of a correspondence.—Corn/sill Magazine. The Mayor of Arbas (Haute•Garonne) committed suicide two days ago by blowing out his brains with a gun during a moment of temporary insanity.