myself was rather insisted upon by those who procured me the honour of
speaking at all. I find, however, that there is so much to say about
Leech and Keene that I have thought it better to sacrifice Richard
Doyle, who belongs to a remoter period, and whose work, exquisite as
it is of its kind, is so much slighter than theirs, and fills so much
less of the public eye; for his connection with _Punch_ did not last
long. Moreover, personally I knew less of him: just enough to find
that to know was to love him--a happy peculiarity he shared with his
two great collaborators on _Punch_.

_John Leech_! What a name that was to conjure with, and is still!

I cannot find words to express what it represented to me of pure
unmixed delight in my youth and boyhood, long before I ever dreamed of
being an artist myself! It stands out of the path with such names as
Dickens, Dumas, Byron--not indeed that I am claiming for him an equal
rank with those immortals, who wielded a weapon so much more potent
than a mere caricaturist's pencil! But if an artist's fame is to be
measured by the mere quantity and quality of the pleasure he has
given, what pinnacle is too high for John Leech!

Other men have drawn better; deeper, grander, nobler, more poetical
themes have employed more accomplished pencils, even in black and
white; but for making one _glad_, I can think of no one to beat him.

To be an apparently hopeless invalid at Christmas-time in some dreary,
deserted, dismal little Flemish town, and to receive _Punch's Almanac_
(for 1858, let us say) from some good-natured friend in England--that
is a thing not to be forgotten! I little dreamed then that I should
come to London again, and meet John Leech and become his friend; that