h's
fancy was of a tamer kind, and little inclined him in the direction of
the supernatural or the terrible. Leech, for instance, never produced
anything which equalled _Fagin in the Condemned Cell_; _The Murder of
Sir Rowland Trenchard_; _Xit Wedded to the Scavenger's Daughter_; _Jack
o' Lantern_; or the reverie of the _Triumph of Cupid_. We shall find but
few diabolicals in his gallery of pictorial subjects, notwithstanding
which there is not a fiend in the whole of Cruikshank's demon ranks who
equals Leech's devil in Thomas Ingoldsby's legend of "The
House-warming."

It may seem invidious to institute a comparison between the two men.
Some, indeed, may hold that a comparison is impossible; but we will
quickly show that such a comparison is not only possible but
unavoidable. George Cruikshank, for instance, might or might not have
illustrated the "Comic Histories" of England and of Rome better than
John Leech; we may fancy, however, his hand on the Surtees' novels, the
odd men, the strange coats, the eccentric women, the podgy "cockhorses,"
the wonderful dogs that would have put in an appearance in the various
sporting scenes and incidents which form the subject of these "horsey"
romances; we should like, for instance, to see what he would have made
of the pretty serving woman who figures in the frontispiece of "Ask
Mamma;" how he would have treated the fair "de Glancey"; how he would
have grouped and dressed his figures at _The Handley Cross Ball_; how he
would have treated poor old Jorrocks when he fell into the shower bath.
But, admirable as are Leech's book illustrations and etchings, it is in
the minor designs which he executed for _Punch_ during the short quarter
of a century allotted to him that we must seek for Leech's _genius_: it
is these little drawings which place him in the front rank of nineteenth
century graphic satirists. They are characterized by genuine humour and
satire, unalloyed with a single trace of ill-humour, exaggeration, or
vulgarity. It was in this direction that the artistic instincts of poor
Robert Seymour inclined him; but his imagination and invincible tendency
to exaggerate, inherited from the caricaturists who preceded him, failed
to bear him beyond the limited sphere of cockney sports and cockney
sportsmen in which his soul delighted. Here, we have the swells and
vulgarians, the flunkies and servants, the old men and maidens, the
soldiers, the parsons, the pretty women of English eve