hand appears for the first time in the fourth number of _Punch_
(7th August, 1841),[133] to which he contributed the well-known
full-page illustration of _Foreign Affairs_. His first cartoon, _A
Morning Call_, will be found at page 119 of vol. ii., and the reader
will find it worth his while to refer to it for the purpose of comparing
it with the later and better work with which he afterwards enriched the
pages of this famous serial, which mainly through his instrumentality
was steered into the current of prosperity which carried it--after a
time of considerable doubt and perplexity--[134] steadily onwards. One
of _Punch's_ most celebrated contributors has borne testimony to the
value of his services. "Mr. Punch," says Thackeray in reviewing his
friend's contributions in 1854, "has very good reason to smile at the
work and be satisfied with the artist. Mr. Leech, his chief contributor,
and some kindred humourists with pencil and pen, have served Mr. Punch
admirably.... There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet
John Leech is the right-hand man."[135] That this was true is proved by
the fact that during his connection with _Punch_, extending over a
period of three and twenty years, he executed no less than three
thousand pictures, of which at least six hundred are cartoons.[136] No
wonder that when he lay dead, Shirley Brooks--another valued
contributor, and afterwards editor of _Punch_--mournfully acknowledged
that the good ship had lost its "mainsail."[137]

THE "ILLUMINATED MAGAZINE."

Most admirable examples of his designs on wood will be found in the
first three volumes of "The Illuminated Magazine," a delightful serial
which appeared in 1843-4, which also contains a series of etchings on
copper of unusual size and brilliancy. Associated with him on the pages
of this periodical, which is now seldom met with, were his friends
Thomas Hood and Mark Lemon, Douglas Jerrold and Laman Blanchard, Albert
Smith and Angus Bethune Reach, Samuel Lover and Kenny Meadows. The world
was young with authors and artists alike in those days; the youngest of
the band were William Hepworth Dixon, then aged twenty-two; John Leech,
twenty-six; and Wilkie Collins, literally not "out of his teens," one of
whose earliest literary productions we find here under the title of "The
Last Stage Coachman," illustrated by Hine. In these volumes appeared
Douglas Jerrold's delightful allegory of the "Chronicles of Clovernook,"
to w