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JOHN LEECH'S PUNCH PICTURES.*
This scrap-book volume of wood-cuts will be none the less welcome for being familiar; rather it possesses a gusto of old acquaintance seasoning a quality of truth and amusement which cannot cease to be young. De- sign chases design so rapidly from Mr. Leech's hand,, that, though we do not forget the first in the smile which greets the last,, we can soon bear to be reminded of it, and are pleased at being so. The humour of today is the thing for today ; but the humour of yesterday has been caught in such a graphic form, that on turning back to it we find it as risible, as ever— not a squib which has fizzed out, but a classic. Here, in a collection which must number considerably upwards of five hundred, we have the cream of Mr. Briggs's House-keeping and Horse-keeping, the Brook Green Volunteer, the Rising Generation, Flunkeitine, • Pictures of Life and Character, by John Leach. From the collection of Mr. Punch. Published by Bradbury and Evans.
Bloomerism, and other eccentricities serial or single. And these belong almost exclusively to the last four years or so-certainly the period of Mr. Leech's most complete command of his artistic powers ; a desert of years and sketches remains behind unrepresented. Neither are any of the political subjects included, in which the designer luxuriates: the whole lot may be laughed at unreservedly by all.
Last year it was another of the old Punch artists-Richard Doyle-who, in his Brown, Ames, and Robinson, supplied the pictured wit for Christmas and New Year. The genius of the two men is distinctly various. Leech's art is social, Doyle's individual. The first has more wit, the second more fancy. Both possess humour ; but Doyle has that essence of peculiar personal humour-quaintness-in a very superior degree. On the other hand, Leech has, in a certain sense, more of ready invention as distinguished from fancy. He has represented more scenes, more incidents, each with a specially-invented subject of his own in it,-in this, coming more near to the inimitable Gavarni than any other English artist. What Doyle sees are types of society, classes of men and women ; round which he throws the riches of an exuberant and airy fancy, or which he sublimates-we can scarcely say caricatures-into exquisite burlesque. Leech sees the men and women themselves ; and portrays them with a spice of caricature, indeed, when that serves his turn, but on the whole with very lifelike exactness. He has, it may be said, a broader and more unbiassed eye for character ; his view being, however, an excellent one of an order com- mon to all men having a touch of the same faculty ; while Doyle's is something peculiar to himself, and is therefore the likelier to suggest new trains of observation and perception. In fine, Leech leans to the dra- matic side. He might have written excellent scenes in a comedy, had he handled the pen instead of the pencil. Doyle is a discursive humourist, like Hood-seizing on all kinds of things, but un- certain in his use of them ; and having that kind of poetic aro- ma and intrinsic life which marks the creations of the Elizabethan stage as a class, and makes their separate dramatic characters a part of them and not the whole,-a part which just corresponds to that wherein Leech is the higher master. That Doyle requires to be left to himself, and not to follow out fully-defined characters in a systematic and con- sistent manner, may be seen in the failure which has attended his embodi- ment of Mr. Thackeray's personages in The Newcomes ; and might, for that matter, have been predicated from the general tenour of his powers and performances as an artist.
It would be unfair to quit Mr. Leech without adverting to the acute and thorough feeling which he possesses for English scenery. A hunting- field, a fishing-punt, a winter's drive, or a sea-side, from his hand, is done to the very life. In such subjects, besides the most lively characteristic truth, he gives remarkable breadth and solidity, and a something in the command of his light and shade which even stands for colour.
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