No doubt the work he undertook for Bell’s Life in London, a long-established and long-discontinued paper, in which sport of all kinds was the most prominent feature—and which occupied much of Leech’s time in his youthful days—contributed to the creation of a taste and love for field sports that always distinguished him. Quite a band of comic artists, including Cruikshank, Kenny Meadows, “Phiz,” Seymour, and Leech, contributed sketches illustrative of a variety of subjects by a variety of authors; Leech’s work being easily distinguishable from that of his brethren of the pencil.
CHAPTER XIII.
“COMIC GRAMMAR” AND “COMIC HISTORY.”
The friendship, begun in their student-days at St. Bartholomew’s, between Leech and Percival Leigh flourished in renewed strength by the discovery of similarity of taste—Leigh unable to draw, but possessing a truly humorous pen; so the friends “laid their heads together,” the result being the production of the “Comic Latin Grammar,” letter-press by Leigh, illustrations by Leech. The first intention of the authors was that this should be a mere skit, a trifling brochure, consisting of a few pages; but, as so often happens, the work grew under their hands, and when published in 1840 it had assumed somewhat formidable proportions, and was followed by a work of similar character, with the title of “The Comic English Grammar.”
The “Comic English Grammar” was a work full of pleasant humour, charmingly illustrated by Leech “with upwards of fifty characteristic woodcuts.” It is curious to observe in these drawings the contrast that they afford to the artist’s later and more perfect work. There is a timidity, and what we call a hardness, from which the sketches in “Pictures of Life and Character” are entirely free; the general drawing, too, is faulty, but the humour and character are all there.