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noble in his calm; the hair and whiskers put back, gave up his fine forehead and handsome features-and the eternal stillness gave his face an elevated expression. I looked a very long time on my old friend's face. We have known one another many years, and he has been engaged with me in business as well as in pleasure. He was very kind--very good-and is in heaven, whatever that means."

Writing at the

"Our Mutual

This death of

London was, perhaps, more shocked at the sudden and unexpected death of John Leech than even when Thackeray was smitten. The shock radiated all over the country; for there was not a household in the land in which his name was not familiar as a household word. His personal friends were deeply affected-none more so than his attached friend, Charles Dickens. time to Forster, in reference to his coming book, Friend," he said, "I have not done my number. poor Leech (I suppose) has put me out woefully. Yesterday, and the day before, I could do nothing; seemed, for the time being, to have quite lost the power; and am only by slow degrees getting back into the track to day." Mr. John Tenniel heard of the loss of his valued confrère that same Sunday, 30th October, and was stunned at the news, totally unexpected by him." * A special meeting of the Punch staff was called by Mark Lemon on the following day; himself, Messrs. Percival Leigh, Shirley Brooks, F. C. Burnand, Tom Taylor, Charles Keene, H. Silver, John Tenniel, -all were present with the exception of Horace Mayhew. With the particulars of that meeting we of course have nothing to do; its melancholy character the reader may well imagine.

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On Friday, the 4th of November, 1864, they laid John Leech to rest in Kensal Green Cemetery, "in the next grave but one to W[illiam] M[akepeace] T[hackeray]. When Annie Thackeray heard of the death, she [had] said to Mrs. Millais, 'How glad my father will be to meet him!' 'And he will,'" adds the friend whose note we have transcribed. We take the account of his burial from Mr. Edmund Yates's impressive and touching account in the Morning

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THE FUNERAL OF JOHn leech.

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Star newspaper. "The scene round the grave was a most impressive one. There, ranged round the coffin, stood the remnant of that famous body of wits who had caused the name of Punch to be famous at the ends of the earth; there, in the coffin, lay all that was earthly of him who, more than any of them, had helped to spread its renown, and to win for himself a name familiar as a household word in all our English homes. By its side stood Mark Lemon, who, for two and twenty years has presided over the weekly dinner where the good things are suggested, and the weekly sheet whereon they are inscribed; who has seen comrades fall out of the ranks in the march of life, and perish by the wayside. And such comrades! the brilliant, meteoric A'Beckett; fiery, impulsive, scathing Jerrold; playfully cynical Thackeray; and now-John Leech! There stood Shirley Brooks, who since Jerrold's death has been Punch's literary mainstay; Tom Taylor, working now in other channels, but still attached to the staff; Horace Mayhew and Percival Leigh, old colleagues of the dead man; F. C. Burnand and H. Silver, the youngest of the corps; and John Tenniel, who had taken Mr. Doyle's place on his secession, and worked in thorough amity with Leech. Over the coffin bowed the handsome head of Millais in overwhelming grief. All round one caught glimpses of well-known people. There, in the front rank of the crowd, was the frank, earnest face of Charles Dickens; by him Alexander Munro, the sculptor; there a group of artists--Messrs. Creswick, O'Neil, and Elmore ; * Messrs. Mowbray, Morris, Dallas, and W. H. Russell, of the Times. At the back of the grave, by the canopy, Mr. W. P. Frith, R.A.; near him a group of journalists-Messrs. Friswell, Halliday, Gruneison; Mr. Swain, the engraver, who had had for years the engraving of Mr. Leech's drawings; Richard Doyle; Mr. Orridge, the barrister; the Rev. C. Currey, preacher of the Charter House; Lieutenant-Colonel Wilkinson, who had had John Leech for his school-fellow and fag at Charter House; while amateur art was worthily represented by Messrs. Arthur Lewis, M. F. Halliday, and

H. K. Browne ("Phiz "), T. Landseer, George Cruikshank, Marcus Stone, Sir John Gilbert, and Mr. Philips, R. A., were also present.

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Jopling. And there, in the bright autumn sunshine, they laid him to his rest. Sir T. N. Talfourd relates that at the burial of Charles Lamb, the true-hearted son of Admiral Burney refused to be comforted.' It is our task to record that round the grave of John Leech there was not a dry eye, and that some of his old companions were very painfully affected. The most beautiful part of the service was read by Mr. Hole, in an earnest manner, broken occasionally by convulsions of grief which he had some difficulty in repressing, while here and there among the crowd loud sobs told of hearty though humble mourners."

On the 12th of November, 1864, there appeared in the pages of the periodical he had so well served, whose pages he has permanently enriched with some of the choicest specimens of graphic satire, and with whose fortunes he had been associated from the commencement, the following touching notice from the pen of his friend, the late Shirley Brooks:

JOHN LEECH,

OBIIT OCTOBER XXIX, MDCCCLXIV,

Ælat 46.

"The simplest words are best where all words are vain. Ten days ago a great artist, in the noon of life, and with his glorious mental faculties in full power, but with the shade of physical infirmity darkening upon him, took his accustomed place among friends who have this day held his pall. Some of them had been fellowworkers with him for a quarter of a century, others for fewer years; but to know him well was to love him dearly, and all in whose name these lines are written mourn as for a brother. His monument is in the volumes of which this is one sad leaf, and in a hundred works which at this hour few will remember more easily than those who have just left his grave. While society, whose every phase he has

The Rev. J. Reynolds Hole, author of "A Little Tour in Ireland," to which his friend, John Leech (who accompanied him), contributed some of the most charming of his illustrations.

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illustrated with a truth, a grace, and a tenderness heretofore unknown to satiric art, gladly and proudly takes charge of his fame, they, whose pride in the genius of a great associate was equalled by their affection for an attached friend, would leave on record that they have known no kindlier, more refined, or more generous nature than that of him who has been thus early called to his rest.

NOVEMBER THE FOUFTH."

CHAPTER XVI.

A BOOK ILLUSTRATOR: HABLOT KNIGHT browne.

IN a work dealing with comic artists and caricaturists, one is somewhat puzzled to decide what place to assign to the distinguished draughtsman who died a year and a half ago. Ultimus Romanorum, the last of the great trio of designers, Cruikshank, Leech, and Browne, his career offers to us a singular paradox; for although not born a comic artist (as we shall endeavour presently to show), he executed a vast number of comic illustrations; and while, so far as we know, never guilty of a caricature in his life, the larger portion of his drawings are caricatures pure and simple.

We might cite a hundred examples of this tendency to exaggera. tion, but one shall suffice. In the etching wherein Miss Nickleby is introduced to her uncle's objectionable friends, Miss Nickleby as well as the "friends" are remarkable for the largeness of their heads and the flimsiness of their bodies; while the men, if not exactly like those described by Pliny, or quoted from him (without acknowledgment) by our Sir John Mandeville, are at any rate too grotesque for human beings. If humanity offers to our study in daily life a variety in form, face, and feature, comprising eccentricities as well as excellencies, such specimens, nevertheless, as poor Smike or Mr. Mantalini were never designed in its atelier.

The artist's invincible tendency to exaggeration, that is caricature (in the Johnsonian definition of the word), was observed by his friend and ally, the late Charles James Lever, who remarked with reference to his illustrations of the novel of "Jack Hinton," "Browne's sketches are as usual caricatures; they make my scenes too riotous

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