The earnestness and gravity of moral purpose which is so constant a note in the work of Hogarth is indeed far less characteristic of Leech, but there are touches of pathos and of tragedy in such of the Punch designs as the “Poor Man’s Friend” (1845), and “General Février turned Traitor” (1855), and in “The Queen of the Arena” in the first volume of Once a Week, which are sufficient to prove that more solemn powers, for which his daily work afforded no scope, lay dormant in their artist. The purity and manliness of Leech’s own character are impressed on his art. We find in it little of the exaggeration and grotesqueness, and none of the fierce political enthusiasm, of which the designs of Gillray are so full. Compared with that of his great contemporary George Cruikshank, his work is restricted both in compass of subject and in artistic dexterity.
Biographies of Leech have been written by John Brown (1882), and Frith (1891); see also “John Leech’s Pictures of Life and Character,” by Thackeray, Quarterly Review (December 1854); letter by John Ruskin, Arrows of the Chace, vol. i. p. 161; “Un Humoriste Anglais,” by Ernest Chesneau, Gazette des Beaux Arts (1875).
(J. M. G.)
LEECH, the common name of members of the Hirudinea, a division of Chaetopod worms. It is doubtful whether the medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis, which is rarer in England than on the continent of Europe, or the horse leech, Aulastoma gulo, often confused with it, has the best right to the original possession of this name. But at present the word “leech” is applied to every member of the group Hirudinea, for the general structure and classification of which see [Chaetopoda]. There are many genera and species of leeches, the exact definitions of which are still in need of a more complete survey. They occur in all parts of the world and are mostly aquatic, though sometimes terrestrial, in habit. The aquatic forms frequent streams, ponds and marshes, and the sea. The members of this group are always carnivorous or parasitic, and prey upon both vertebrates and invertebrates. In relation to their parasitic habit one or two suckers are always developed, the one at the anterior and the other at the posterior end of the body. In one subdivision of the leeches, the Gnathobdellidae, the mouth has three chitinous jaws which produce a triangular bite, though the action has been described as like that of a circular saw. Leeches without biting jaws possess a protrusible proboscis, and generally engulf their prey, as does the horse leech when it attacks earthworms. But some of them are also ectoparasites. The leech has been used in medicine from remote antiquity as a moderate blood-letter; and it is still so used, though more rarely than formerly. As unlicensed blood-letters, certain land-leeches are among the most unpleasant of parasites that can be encountered in a tropical jungle. A species of Haemadipsa of Ceylon attaches itself to the passer-by and draws blood with so little irritation that the sufferer is said to be aware of its presence only by the trickling from the wounds produced. Small leeches taken into the mouth with drinking-water may give rise to serious symptoms by attaching themselves to the fauces and neighbouring parts and thence sucking blood. The effects of these parasites have been mistaken for those of disease. All leeches are very extensile and can contract the body to a plump, pear-shaped form, or extend it to a long and worm-like shape. They frequently progress after the fashion of a “looper” caterpillar, attaching themselves alternately by the anterior and the posterior sucker. Others swim with eel-like curves through the water, while one land-leech, at any rate, moves in a gliding way like a land Planarian, and leaves, also like the Planarian, a slimy trail behind it. Leeches are usually olive green to brown in colour, darker patches and spots being scattered over a paler ground. The marine parasitic leech Pontobdella is of a bright green, as is also the land-leech Trocheta.
The term “leech,” as an old English synonym for physician, is from a Teutonic root meaning “heal,” and is etymologically distinct from the name (O. Eng. lyce) of the Hirudo, though the use of the one by the other has helped to assimilate the two words.
(F. E. B.)
LEEDS, THOMAS OSBORNE, 1st Duke of (1631-1712), English statesman, commonly known also by his earlier title of Earl of Danby, son of Sir Edward Osborne, Bart., of Kiveton, Yorkshire, was born in 1631. He was great-grandson of Sir Edward Osborne (d. 1591), lord mayor of London, who, according to the accepted account, while apprentice to Sir William Hewett, cloth worker and lord mayor in 1559, made the fortunes of the family by leaping from London Bridge into the river and rescuing Anne (d. 1585), the daughter of his employer, whom he afterwards married.[1] Thomas Osborne, the future lord treasurer, succeeded to the baronetcy and estates in Yorkshire on his father’s death in 1647, and after unsuccessfully courting his cousin Dorothy Osborne, married Lady Bridget Bertie, daughter of the earl of Lindsey. He was introduced to public life and to court by his neighbour in Yorkshire, George, 2nd duke of Buckingham, was elected M.P. for York in 1665, and gained the “first step in his future rise” by joining Buckingham in his attack on Clarendon in 1667. In 1668 he was appointed joint treasurer of the navy with Sir Thomas Lyttelton, and subsequently sole treasurer. He succeeded Sir William Coventry as commissioner for the state treasury in 1669, and in 1673 was appointed a commissioner for the admiralty. He was created Viscount Osborne in the Scottish peerage on the 2nd of February 1673, and a privy councillor on the 3rd of May. On the 19th of June, on the resignation of Lord Clifford, he was appointed lord treasurer and made Baron Osborne of Kiveton and Viscount Latimer in the peerage of England, while on the 27th of June 1674 he was created earl of Danby, when he surrendered his Scottish peerage of Osborne to his second son Peregrine Osborne. He was appointed the same year lord-lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1677 received the Garter.
Danby was a statesman of very different calibre from the leaders of the Cabal ministry, Buckingham and Arlington. His principal aim was no doubt the maintenance and increase of his own influence and party, but his ambition corresponded with definite political views. A member of the old cavalier party, a confidential friend and correspondent of the despotic Lauderdale, he desired to strengthen the executive and the royal authority. At the same time he was a keen partisan of the established church, an enemy of both Roman Catholics and dissenters, and an opponent of all toleration. In 1673 he opposed the Indulgence, supported the Test Act, and spoke against the proposal for giving relief to the dissenters. In June 1675 he signed the paper of advice drawn up by the bishops for the king, urging the rigid enforcement of the laws against the Roman Catholics, their complete banishment from the court, and the suppression of conventicles,[2] and a bill introduced by him imposing special taxes on recusants and subjecting Roman Catholic priests to imprisonment for life was only thrown out as too lenient because it secured offenders from the charge of treason. The same year he introduced a Test Oath by which all holding office or seats in either House of Parliament were to declare resistance to the royal power a crime, and promise to abstain from all attempts to alter the government of either church or state; but this extreme measure of retrograde toryism was successfully opposed by wiser statesmen. The king himself as a Roman Catholic secretly opposed and also doubted the wisdom and practicability of this “thorough” policy of repression. Danby therefore ordered a return from every diocese of the numbers of dissenters, both Romanist and Protestant, in order by a proof of their insignificance to remove the royal scruples.[3] In December 1676 he issued a proclamation for the suppression of coffee-houses because of the “defamation of His Majesty’s Government” which took place in them, but this was soon withdrawn. In 1677, to secure Protestantism in case of a Roman Catholic succession, he introduced a bill by which ecclesiastical patronage and the care of the royal children were entrusted to the bishops; but this measure, like the other, was thrown out.