Leech's art seems to me of just such a happy kind; he draws—I mean he scores like an amateur who has not made a very profound study of harmony, and sings his pretty song to his simple accompaniment with so sweet and true a natural voice that we are charmed. It is the magic of nature, whereas Keene is a very Sebastian Bach in his counterpoint. There is nothing of the amateur about him; his knowledge of harmony in black and white is complete and thorough; mere consummate scoring has become to him a second nature; each separate note of his voice reveals the long training of the professional singer; and if his tunes are less obviously sweet and his voice less naturally winning and sympathetic than Leech's, his aesthetic achievement is all the greater. It is to his brother-artists rather than to the public at large that his most successful appeal is made—but with an intensity that can only be gained by those who have tried in vain to do what he has done, and who thereby know how difficult it is. His real magic is that of art.
This perhaps accounts for the unmistakable fact that Leech's popularity has been so much greater than Keene's, and I believe is still. Leech's little melodies of the pencil (to continue the parallel with the sister art) are like Volkslieder—national airs—and more directly reach the national heart. Transplant them to other lands that have pencil Volkslieder of their own (though none, I think, comparable to his for fun and sweetness and simplicity) and they fail to please as much, while their mere artistic qualities are not such as to find favour among foreign experts, whereas Keene actually gains by such a process. He is as much admired by the artists of France and Germany as by our own—if not more. For some of his shortcomings—such as his lack of feeling for English female beauty, his want of perception, perhaps his disdain, of certain little eternal traits and conventions and differences that stamp the various grades of our social hierarchy—do not strike them, and nothing interferes with their complete appreciation of his craftsmanship.
[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE LANDLORD!
RIBBONMAN (getting impatient). "Bedad, they ought to be here be this toime! Sure, Tiriace, I hope the ould gintleman hasn't mit wid an accidint!!!"—Punch, July 27, 1878.]
Perhaps, also, Leech's frequent verification of our manly British pluck and honesty, and proficiency in sport, and wholesomeness and cleanliness of body and mind, our general physical beauty and distinction, and his patriotic tendency to contrast our exclusive possession of these delightful gifts with the deplorable absence of them in any country but our own, may fail to enlist the sympathies of the benighted foreigner.
Whereas there is not much to humiliate the most touchy French or German reader of Punch, or excite his envy, in Charles Keene's portraiture of our race. He is impartial and detached, and the most rabid Anglophobe may frankly admire him without losing his self-esteem. The English lower middle class and people, that Keene has depicted with such judicial freedom from either prejudice or pre-possession, have many virtues; but they are not especially conspicuous for much vivacity or charm of aspect or gainliness of demeanour; and he has not gone out of his way to idealise them.
Also, he seldom if ever gibes at those who have not been able to resist the temptations (as Mr. Gilbert would say) of belonging to other nations.
Thus in absolute craftsmanship and technical skill, in the ease and beauty of his line, his knowledge of effect, his complete mastery over the material means at his disposal, Charles Keene seems to me as superior to Leech as Leech is to him in grace, in human naturalness and geniality of humour, in accurate observation of life, in keenness of social perception, and especially in width of range.
[Illustration: A STROKE OF BUSINESS
VILLAGE HAMPDEN ("who with dauntless breast" has undertaken for sixpence to keep off the other boys). "If any of yer wants to see what we're a Paintin' of it's a 'Alfpenny a 'Ead, but you marn't make no Remarks."—Punch, May 4, 1867.]