Charles Keene is seldom a satirist. His nature was too tolerant and too sweet for hate, and that makes him a bad and somewhat perfunctory hater. He tries to hate 'Arry, but he can't, for he draws an ideal 'Arry that surely never was, and thus his shaft misses the mark: compare his 'Arry to one of Leech's snobs, for instance! He tries to hate the haw-haw swell, and is equally unsuccessful. When you hate and can draw, you can draw what you hate down to its minutest details—better, perhaps, than what you love—so that whoever runs and reads and looks at your pictures hates with you.
Who ever hated a personage of Keene's beyond that feeble kind of aversion that comes from mere uncongeniality, a slightly offended social taste, or prejudice? One feels a mere indulgent and half-humorous disdain, but no hate. On the other hand, I do not think that we love his personages very much—we stand too much outside his eccentric world for sympathy. From the pencil of this most lovable man, with his unrivalled power of expressing all he saw and thought, I cannot recall many lovable characters of either sex or any age. Here and there a good-natured cabby, a jolly navvy, a simple-minded flautist or bagpiper, or a little street Arab, like the small boy who pointed out the jail doctor to his pal and said, "That's my medical man."
Whereas Leech's pages teem with winning, graceful, lovable types, and here and there a hateful one to give relief.
But, somehow, one liked the man who drew these strange people, even without knowing him; when you knew him you loved him very much—so much that no room was left in you for envy of his unattainable mastery in his art. For of this there can be no doubt—no greater or more finished master in black and white has devoted his life to the illustration of the manners and humours of his time; and if Leech is even greater than he—and I for one am inclined to think he is—it is not as an artist, but as a student and observer of human nature, as a master of the light, humorous, superficial criticism of life.
[Illustration: "NOT UP TO HIS BUSINESS"
CROSS BUS DRIVER. "Now why didn't you take that there party?"
CONDUCTOR: "Said they wouldn't go."
CROSS BUS DRIVER. "Said THEY wouldn't go? THEY said they wouldn't go? Why, what do you suppose you're put there for? You call that conductin' a buss. Oh! THEY wouldn't go! I like that, &c., &c."— Punch, September 1, 1860.]
Charles Keene died of general atrophy on January 4, 1891. It was inexpressibly pathetic to see how patiently, how resignedly he wasted away; he retained his unalterable sweetness to the last.
His handsome, dark-skinned face, so strongly lined and full of character; his mild and magnificent light-grey eyes, that reminded one of a St. Bernard's; his tall, straight, slender aspect, that reminded one of Don Quixote; his simplicity of speech and character; his love of humour, and the wonderful smile that lit up his face when he heard a good story, and the still more wonderful wink of his left eye when he told one—all these will remain strongly impressed on the minds of those who ever met him.