ckbone of _Punch_,' what would become of the
paper?" At which Leech smiled, says his biographer, and retorted, "Don't
talk such rubbish! Backbone of _Punch_, indeed! Why, bless your heart,
there isn't a fellow at work upon the paper that doesn't think _that_ of
himself, and with about as much right and reason as I should. _Punch_
will get on well enough without me, or any of those who think themselves
of such importance." In his life-time none would have been found to
share the speaker's views; nevertheless, _Punch_--for all Leech's
paramount importance to the paper--has maintained his prosperity, and
more than doubled his lease of life since Leech laid down his pencil.
Yet in his time he was as much the artistic _Punch_ as Jerrold was the
literary; and there are nearly as many who still believe that Leech at
one time was _Punch's_ Editor as accord the same unmerited honour to
Jerrold.

[Illustration: JOHN LEECH.
(_From the Portrait by Sir John E. Millais, Bart., R.A., in the National
Portrait Gallery._)]

The story of Leech's early life has been already told. How he was the
son of the luckless owner of the London coffee-house in Ludgate Hill;
how Flaxman saw his infantile drawings and declared he would be nothing
but an artist--nay, "he _was_ an artist;" how, at the Charterhouse, the
gentle, nervous lad was schoolfellow of Thackeray, with whom he formed a
passionate, life-long friendship; and of yet another hearty friend, Mr.
Nethercote; how, when he was medical student at Bartholomew's Hospital,
he contracted another evergreen friendship with Percival Leigh, and
formed an acquaintanceship, long maintained, but never fully ripened,
with another medico--Albert Smith, of Middlesex; how his father's
failure caused him to give up medicine and the knife in favour of art
and the pencil--by the exercise of which, when he was still under Dr.
Cockle, son of the pill-doctor, he had already fascinated his
fellow-students, and in particular Percival Leigh--on whose initiative
it was that the "Comic Latin Grammar" was carried into execution. All
this and more has ere now been recorded. But it all bears directly on
his _Punch_ career, and must not by any means be overlooked.

In 1836, when he was but nineteen years of age, he had made a bid for
the unhappy Seymour's vacant place as Charles Dickens' illustrator; but
he had been already forestalled by "Phiz," and Leech was perforce
rejected, as Thackeray had been refused before him