looks at the sun; but it is not hard to be thankful for the joke, and for the tickle, and for the sneeze. Our business rather is now gratefully to acknowledge the singular genius, the great personal and artistic worth of one of our best masters of 'heart-easing mirth,' than to discourse upon the why and how he makes us laugh so pleasantly, so wholesomely and well, and to deplore along with all his friends (who has not in him lost a friend?), his sudden and irreparable loss (October 29, 1864). It was as if something personal to every one was gone; as if a fruit we all ate and rejoiced in had vanished for ever; a something good and cheery, and to be thankful for, which came every week as sure as Thursday-never to come again. Our only return to him for all his unfailing goodness and cheer, is the memory of the heart, and he has it if any man in the British empire has. The noble, honest, kindly, diligent, sound-hearted, modest, and manly John Leech-the very incarnation in look, character, and work of the best in an Englishman.

As there is and has always been, since we had letters or art of our own, a rich abounding power and sense of humour and of fun in the English nature; so ever since that same nature was pleased to divert and express itself and its jokes in art as well as in books, we have had no lack of depicters of the droll, the odd, the terrible, and the queer. Hogarth is the first and greatest of them all, the greatest master in

If you

his own terribile via the world has ever seen. want to know his worth and the exquisite beauty of his colouring, study his pictures, and possess his prints, and read Charles Lamb on his genius. Then came the savage Gillray, strong and coarse as Churchill, the very Tipton Slasher of political caricature; then we had Bunbury, Rowlandson, and Woodward, more violent than strong, more odd than droll, and often more disgusting than either. Smirke, with his delicate, pure, pleasant humour, as seen in his plates to Don Quixote, which are not unworthy of that marvellous book, the most deeply and exquisitely humorous piece of genius in all literature; then the Monkeyana, designed and engraved by Thomas Landseer, forgotten by, and we fear unknown to many, so wickedly funny, so awfully human, as almost to convert us to Mr. Huxley's pedigree-The Duel, for instance. Then we had Henry Alken in the Hunting Field, and poor Heath, the ex-Captain of Dragoons, facile and profuse, unscrupulous and clever. Then the greatest since Hogarth, though limited in range and tending to excess, George Cruikshank, who happily still lives and plies his matchless needle ;1-it would take an entire paper to expound his keen, penetrating power, his moral intensity, his gift of wild grimace, the dexterity and super-subtlety of his etching, its firm and delicate lines. Then came poor short-lived tragical 1 Died 1878.

Seymour, whom Thackeray wished to succeed as artist to Pickwick; he embodied Pickwick as did 'Phiz,'Hablot Browne,—Messrs. Quilp, and Pecksniff, and Micky Free, and whose steeplechasing Irish cocktails we all know and relish; but his manner is too much for him and for us, and his ideas are neither deep nor copious, hence everlasting and weak repetitions of himself. Kenny Meadows, with more genius, especially for fiends and all eldritch fancies, and still more mannerism. Sibson,-and Hood, whose drawings were quaint and queer enough, but his words better and queerer. Thackeray, very great, answering wonderfully his own idea. We wonder that his Snobs and Modern Novelists and miscellaneous papers were ever published without his own cuts. What would Mrs. Perkins's Ball be without The Mulligan, as the spreadeagle, frantic and glorious, doing the mazurka, without Miss Bunion, and them all; and the good little Nightingale, in Dr. Birch, singing 'Home, Sweet Home' to that premature young brute Hewlett. But we have already recorded our estimate of Mr. Thackeray's worth as an artist; and all his drolleries and quaint bits of himself,-his comic melancholy, his wistful children, his terrific soldans in the early Punches. They should all be collected,-whereever he escapes from his pen to his pencil, they should never be divorced. Then Doyle, with his

1 North British Review. No. lxxix., February 1864.

wealth of dainty phantasies, his glamourie, his won derful power of expressing the weird and uncanny, his fairies and goblins, his enchanted castles and maidens, his plump caracolling pony chargers, his charm of colour and of unearthly beauty in his watercolours. No one is more thoroughly himself and alone than Doyle. We need only name his father, H. B.,' the master of gentlemanly, political satire,—as Gillray was of brutal. Tenniel we still have, excellent, careful, and often strong and effective; but more an artist and a draughtsman than a genius or a humorist.

John Leech is different from all these, and, taken as a whole, surpasses them all, even Cruikshank, and seats himself next, though below, William Hogarth. Well might Thackeray, in his delightful notice of his friend and fellow-Carthusian in The Quarterly, say, 'There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet John Leech is the righthand man. Fancy a number of Punch without Leech's pictures! What would you give for it ?' This was said ten years ago. How much more true it is now! We don't need to fancy it any longer! And yet, doubtless, nature is already preparing some one else she is for ever filling her horn-whom we shall never think better, or in his own way, half so good, but who like him will be, let us trust, new and true, modest, and good; let us, meanwhile, rest and be thankful, and look back on the past. We'll move

on by and by-'to fresh fields and pastures new ’— we suppose and hope.

We are not going to give a biography, or a studied appraisement of this great artist; that has been already well done in the Cornhill,-and we trust the mighty 'J. O.' who knew him and loved him as a brother, and whose strong and fine hand-its truth, nicety, and power-we think we recognise in an admirable short notice of Leech as one of the Men of Mark,' in the London Journal of May 31, 1862-may employ his leisure in giving us a memorial of his friend. No one could do it better, not even the judicious Tom Taylor, and it is worth his while, to go down the great stream side by side with such a man. All that we shall now do is to give some particulars, not, so far as we know, given to the public, and end with some remarks on a few selected woodcuts from Punchillustrative of his various moods and gifts.1

1 When the history of the rise and progress of Punch comes to be written, it will be found that the Weekly Dinner has been one of the chief things which contributed to its success. Almost from the foundation of that journal it has been the habit of the contributors every Wednesday to dine together. In the winter months, the dinner is usually held in the front room of the first floor of No. 11 Bouverie Street, Whitefriars,— the business offices of the proprietors, Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. Sometimes these dinners are held at the Bedford Hotel, Covent Garden. During the summer months, it is 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