John Leech and other papers

John Leech. 25
Wife, comes near him. There is a genuine domes-
ticity about his scenes that could come only from
a man who was much at his own fireside, and in the
nursery when baby was washed. You see he is him
self paterfamilias, with no Bohemian taint or raffish
turn. What he draws he has seen. What he asks
you to live in and laugh at and with, he has laughed
at and lived in. It is this wholesomeness, and, to
use the right word, this goodness, that makes Leech
more than a drawer of funny pictures, more even
than a great artist. 1 It makes him a teacher and an
example of virtue in its widest sense, from that of
manliness to the sweet devotion of woman, and the
loving, open mouth and eyes of parvula on your
knee. How different is the same class of art in
France ! you dare not let your wife or girls see their
Leech ; he is not for our virgins and boys. Hear
what Thackeray says on this point : —
' Now, while Mr. Leech has been making his com-
ments upon our society and manners, one of the
wittiest and keenest observers has been giving a
description of his own country of France, in a thou-
sand brilliant pages, and it is a task not a little amus-
1 It is honourable to the regular art of this country that
many of its best men early recognised in Leech a true brother.
Millais and Elmore and others were his constant friends ; and
we know that more than twelve years ago Sir George Harvey
wished to make Leech and Thackeray honorary members of
The Royal Scottish Academy [1865].