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. [Illustration] The first illustration, given above, is from a ballad called "Billy Taylor," popular in my young days, in which Billy's true love--with the reluctance to part from him common to persons suffering from that passion--disguises herself as a man before the mast, and shares the dangers of the sea with her sailor-lover: "Ven as the Captain comed for to hear on't, Wery much applauded vot she'd done." [Illustration] The verb "applauded" has here no nominative case, whereas it ought to have been governed by the pronoun "he." "He very much applauded," etc., says the writer of the "Comic Grammar" for our instruction. The second example, given above, seems to me capital fooling, and an excellent proof of the necessity for care in punctuation and accent. "Imagine," says the writer, "an actor commencing Hamlet's famous soliloquy thus: "'To be or not to be; that is. The question,' etc. Or saying, in the person of Duncan in 'Macbeth': "'This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air.' Or, as the usurper himself, exclaiming: "'The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! Where got's thou that goose? Look!'" Here we have the fault of _hardness_ that I speak of, and something of feeble drawing, but the humour is perfect.