works, with all the fervour and abundance, the very dew of his youth,-the Comic Latin Grammar. Look at the dress of Menelaus, who threatens to give poor Helen, his wife, 'a good hiding.' Look at his droll etchings and woodcuts for the otherwise tiresomely brilliant Comic Histories, by Gilbert A'Beckett, with their too much puns.

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 or their author's title. It is quite touching the unaccustomedness, the boyish, anxious, laborious workmanship of the hand that had done so much, so rapidly and perfectly in another style. They do not make us regret much, that he did not earlier 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, realising, submitting the shows of things

to the desires of the mind,' and

no one but the

This is the true

highest painter can paint like that. 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 con tagiously 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, was 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

To

kind of transparent colour which allowed the coarse lines of the enlargement to show through, so that the production presented the appearance of indifferent lithographs, slightly tinted. In a short time, however, he obtained great mastery over oil colour, and instead of allowing the thick fatty lines of printers' ink to remain on the canvas, he, by the use of turpentine, removed the ink, particularly with regard to the lines of the face and figure. These he re-drew with his own hand in a fine and delicate manner. this he added a delicacy of finish, particularly in flesh colour, which greatly enhanced the value and beauty of his later works. To any one acquainted with these sketches, we may mention for illustration of these remarks, No. 65 in the Catalogue. This work presents all the incompleteness and crudity of his early style. The picture represents Piscator seated on a wooden fence on a raw morning in a 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.

Of all art satirists none have such a pervading sense and power of girlish and ripe womanly beauty as Leech. Hogarth alone, as in his Poor Poet's