then merely some mock "Verses for Pantomime
Music"--strictly speaking, for the harlequinade--(January 4th, 1845),
designed to show the fatuous idiotcy of those compositions.

Contrary to what might have been expected in so prolific an artist,
Leech never for a moment entertained the sentiment not unusual among
comic artists--"je prends mon bien la ou je le trouve." He was even
diffident about accepting a suggestion for a joke. His own observation
gave him the vast majority of his "pictures of life and character," but
he would occasionally accept with a quiet undemonstrative smile some of
the many proposals that were submitted to him. You might find it in
_Punch_ next week, or next year; but if the giver were an artist too, he
would hesitate to make use of it, lest he might wrong a brother-pencil.
He often figures in his own cuts, as in "The Dismay of Mr. Jessamy on
being told that he will spoil the whole thing [private theatricals] if
he doesn't Shave off his Whiskers" (Almanac, 1854--his own whiskers
which he always regarded with a sort of mock-tender pride.) To his own
little son we owe the delightful cut of the child who reminds the new
nurse that he is one of those children who can only be managed by
kindness, "so please get me a cake and an orange;" like that other
_Punch_ youngster who, aping mamma, faintly asks, "Is there such a thing
as a bun in the house?" "Astonishingly quick Leech was," says Mr.
Silver, "to seize on any sight or subject that seemed to have some
humour in it. I can call to mind, for instance, how I chanced to see a
chimney-sweep with his hand held to his eyes, as he was passing a
street-door while the mat was being shaken. I told Leech of the
incident; for, covered as he was with soot, the sweep seemed
over-sensitive. In a very few minutes the scene was sketched most
funnily, and was then drawn on the wood. The sketch hangs in my
billiard-room, and they who please may turn to _Punch_ and see the
drawing. Another time I recollect we noticed some big buoys which were
just the shape of fishing-floats, and which I said that Gulliver might
have seen so used in Brobdingnag. 'Not a bad idea,' said Leech, and he
made a hasty sketch then. Next morning the result appeared upon the
wood, and soon afterwards in _Punch_, with a 'legend' which I quote from
memory only:--'I s'pose you sometimes catch some biggish fish here, eh,
old Cockywax?' 'Why, yes; and them's the floats we uses; see, young
Cockywax'?"