The engravers were the Dalziel Brothers (14 subjects), T. Williams (11), W. J. Linton (10), Martin and Corbould (8), Smith and Cheltnam (5), Groves (3), Thompson (3), F. P. Becker (2), Gray (2), Swain (2), Green (1). Four designs were etched on steel by John Leech, thus making up the full complement of illustrations. JOHN LEECH Leech's Early Attempts at Drawing--Medical Studies--First Published Work--Desires to Illustrate "Pickwick"--Becomes Acquainted with Dickens--"A CHRISTMAS CAROL"--Sale of the Original Drawings--"THE CHIMES"--Leech Misinterprets his Author--"THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH"--An Altered Design--The Artist's Humour Exemplified--"THE BATTLE OF LIFE"--Sale of Original Drawings--Unpublished Letters by Leech--A Grave Error--"THE HAUNTED MAN"--Leech's Method of Work--Artistic Value of his Sketches--Ruskin's Criticism--Leech as an Actor--A Serious Accident--Dickens as Nurse--Ill-health--A Fatal Seizure--Sir John Millais' Portrait of Leech. John Leech, the leading spirit of _Punch_ for more than twenty years, was born in London in 1817, his father (an Irishman of culture) being a vintner, and at one time the proprietor of the London Coffee-House on Ludgate Hill, then the most important of the large City hotels. As the elder Leech showed some skill as a draughtsman, we may reasonably assume that from him the son inherited a talent for drawing, by means of which he was destined, before many years had passed, to astonish the world by his humour and originality. When a mere lad, he exhibited such aptitude and dexterity with the pencil, that Flaxman, the famous sculptor, pronounced these precocious efforts to be wonderful, and exclaimed: "That boy must be an artist; he will be nothing else or less." Notwithstanding this recommendation, young Leech (after a course of schooling at the Charterhouse, where he had William Makepeace Thackeray as a fellow-pupil) was entered by his father at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, with a view to his adopting the medical profession; but his _penchant_ for drawing and sketching proved irresistible, and he gained more repute among the students by means of his life-like (but good-natured) caricatures, than for any ability he may have displayed in hospital work. On leaving St. Bartholomew's, he was placed under an eccentric practitioner named Whittle (whom Albert Smith has immortalised as Mr. Rawkins), and subsequently under Dr. John Cockle, afterwards Physician to the Royal Free Hospital. PLATE XLIII JOHN LEECH From the Water-colour Drawing by SIR JOHN E. MILLAIS, P.R.A., 1854 [Illustration]