lled with biting sarcasms on French habits, manners, and
sentiments, which were keenly felt, because, unlike the English who
figure at the Varietes or in French caricatures, in the dirty men who
regard with astonishment the English washstand at the exhibition, the
cabs full of hirsute monstrosities, the "Flowers of the French army,"
the grimy Revolutionists of Leicester Square--the hundred and one
Frenchmen who figure in the satires of John Leech, the Parisian
recognises compatriots whose ridiculous lineaments have been too
faithfully reproduced to render identification a matter of doubt or
difficulty.

Leech executed very few illustrations for Dickens; and the amusing
blunder which he perpetrated in "The Battle of Life," in allowing the
lady to elope with the wrong man, and the "horror and agony" of the
author in consequence thereof, have been set forth in Forster's "Life."
The mistake was discovered too late for correction, and remains a
curious proof of the carelessness with which distinguished artists will
sometimes read the manuscript of an author however illustrious.

[Illustration:
JOHN LEECH. "_Illuminated Magazine._"

"I HOPE MR. SMUG, YOU DON'T BEAT YOUR BOYS?"

_Face p. 292._]

The Surtees' novels afford singular evidence of the keenness of John
Leech's critical observation. An ardent lover of sport himself, and a
frequent attendant at the "Pytchley," when he went a day's hunting it
was his custom to single out some fellow disciple of Nimrod that
happened to take his fancy, keeping behind him all day, noting his
attitudes in the saddle, and marking every item of his turn-out, to the
last button and button-hole of his hunting coat. It was in this way that
he obtained the correctness of detail which renders his famous sporting
etchings so wonderfully true to nature. Strange to say, notwithstanding
his knowledge of every detail of the huntsman's dress, even to the
number of buttons on his coat, he himself, with reference to his own
outfit, invariably presented in the hunting field a somewhat incongruous
appearance. Either he would wear the wrong kind of boots, or would
dispense with some detail which on the part of an enthusiast would be
considered an unpardonable omission. Leech, however, was not what is
called a "rough rider," his constitutional nervousness prevented him
indeed from making a prominent figure in the hunting field, and his
friends attributed this want of attention to detail in dress