k Walker had just started on his brief
but splendid career; Frederick Sandys had burst on the black-and-white
world like a meteor; and Charles Keene, who was illustrating the
_Cloister and the Hearth_ in the intervals of his _Punch_ work, had,
after long and patient labour, attained that consummate mastery of
line and effect in wood draughtsmanship that will be for ever
associated with his name; and his work in _Punch_, if only by virtue
of its extraordinary technical ability, made Leech's by contrast
appear slight and almost amateurish in spite of its ease and boldness.

So that with all my admiration for Leech it was at the feet of Charles
Keene that I found myself sitting; besides which we were much together
in those days, talking endless shop, taking long walks, riding side by
side on the knife-boards of omnibuses, dining at cheap restaurants,
making music at each other's studios. His personal charm was great, as
great in its way as Leech's; he was democratic and so was I, as one is
bound to be when one is impecunious and the world is one's oyster to
open with the fragile point of a lead-pencil. His bohemian world was
mine--and I found it a very good world and very much to my taste--a
clear, honest, wholesome, innocent, intellectual, and most industrious
British bohemia, with lots of tobacco, lots of good music, plenty of
talk about literature and art, and not too much victuals or drink.
Many of its denizens, that were, have become Royal Academicians or
have risen to fame in other ways; some have had to take a back seat in
life; surprisingly few have gone to the bad.

This world, naturally, was not Leech's; if it had ever been, I doubt;
his bohemia, if he ever had lived in one, had been the bohemia of
medicine, not of art, and he seemed to us then to be living on social
heights of fame and sport and aristocratic splendour where none of us
dreamed of seeking him--and he did not seek us. We hated and despised
the bloated aristocracy, just as he hated and despised foreigners
without knowing much about them; and the aristocracy, to do it
justice, did not pester us with its obtrusive advances. But I never
heard Leech spoken of otherwise in bohemia than with affectionate
admiration, although many of us seemed to think that his best work was
done. Indeed, his work was becoming somewhat fitful in quality, and
already showed occasional signs of haste and illness and fatigue; his
fun was less genial and happy, though he drew