JOHN LEECH,
Obiit October xxix, mdccclxiv,
Ætat 46.
“The simplest words are best where all words are vain. Ten days ago a great artist, in the noon of life, and with his glorious mental faculties in full power, but with the shade of physical infirmity darkening upon him, took his accustomed place among friends who have this day held his pall. Some of them had been fellow-workers with him for a quarter of a century, others for fewer years; but to know him well was to love him dearly, and all in whose name these lines are written mourn as for a brother. His monument is in the volumes of which this is one sad leaf, and in a hundred works which at this hour few will remember more easily than those who have just left his grave. While society, whose every phase he has illustrated with a truth, a grace, and a tenderness heretofore unknown to satiric art, gladly and proudly takes charge of his fame, they, whose pride in the genius of a great associate was equalled by their affection for an attached friend, would leave on record that they have known no kindlier, more refined, or more generous nature than that of him who has been thus early called to his rest.
November the Fourth.”
[156] I estimate the number of his cartoons as nearly as possible as follows:—
| 1842 | 3 | 1850 | 37 | 1858 | 30 |
| 1843 | 11 | 1851 | 42 | 1859 | 21 |
| 1844 | 42 | 1852 | 35 | 1860 | 15 |
| 1845 | 43 | 1853 | 32 | 1861 | 10 |
| 1846 | 35 | 1854 | 34 | 1862 | 4 |
| 1847 | 35 | 1855 | 41 | 1863 | 3 |
| 1848 | 38 | 1856 | 33 | 1864 | 4 |
| 1849 | 37 | 1857 | 33 |
[157] Shirley Brooks in Illustrated London News of 19th November, 1864.
[158] Charles Mackay’s “Forty Years’ Recollections.”