John Leechs Pictures of Life and Character | Page 4

of Plancus? and the wax- work in Fleet Street,
not like that of Madame Tussaud's, whose chamber of death is gay and
brilliant; but a nice old gloomy wax- work, full of murderers; and as a
chief attraction, the Dead Baby and the Princess Charlotte lying in
state?
Our story-books had no pictures in them for the most part. Frank (dear
old Frank!) had none; nor the "Parent's Assistant;" nor the "Evenings at
Home;" nor our copy of the "Ami des Enfans:" there were a few just at
the end of the Spelling-Book; besides the allegory at the beginning, of
Education leading up Youth to the temple of Industry, where Dr.
Dilworth and Professor Walkinghame stood with crowns of laurel.
There were, we say, just a few pictures at the end of the Spelling-Book,
little oval gray woodcuts of Bewick's, mostly of the Wolf and the Lamb,
the Dog and the Shadow, and Brown, Jones, and Robinson with long
ringlets and little tights; but for pictures, so to speak, what had we? The
rough old wood-blocks in the old harlequin-backed fairy-books had
served hundreds of years; before OUR Plancus, in the time of Priscus
Plancus--in Queen Anne's time, who knows? We were flogged at
school; we were fifty boys in our boarding-house, and had to wash in a
leaden trough, under a cistern, with lumps of fat yellow soap floating
about in the ice and water. Are OUR sons ever flogged? Have they not
dressing-rooms, hair-oil, hip-baths, and Baden towels? And what

picture-books the young villains have! What have these children done
that they should be so much happier than we were?
We had the "Arabian Nights" and Walter Scott, to be sure. Smirke's
illustrations to the former are very fine. We did not know how good
they were then; but we doubt whether we did not prefer the little old
"Miniature Library Nights" with frontispieces by Uwins; for THESE
books the pictures don't count. Every boy of imagination does his own
pictures to Scott and the "Arabian Nights" best.
Of funny pictures there were none especially intended for us children.
There was Rowlandson's "Doctor Syntax": Doctor Syntax in a fuzz-wig,
on a horse with legs like sausages, riding races, making love, frolicking
with rosy exuberant damsels. Those pictures were very funny, and that
aquatinting and the gay-colored plates very pleasant to witness; but if
we could not read the poem in those days, could we digest it in this?
Nevertheless, apart from the text which we could not master, we
remember Doctor Syntax pleasantly, like those cheerful painted
hieroglyphics in the Nineveh Court at Sydenham. What matter for the
arrow-head, illegible stuff? give us the placid grinning kings, twanging
their jolly bows over their rident horses, wounding those good-humored
enemies, who tumble gayly off the towers, or drown, smiling, in the
dimpling waters, amidst the anerithmon gelasma of the fish.
After Doctor Syntax, the apparition of Corinthian Tom, Jerry Hawthorn,
and the facetious Bob Logic must be recorded--a wondrous history
indeed theirs was! When the future student of our manners comes to
look over the pictures and the writing of these queer volumes, what will
he think of our society, customs, and language in the consulship of
Plancus? "Corinthian," it appears, was the phrase applied to men of
fashion and ton in Plancus's time: they were the brilliant predecessors
of the "swell" of the present period-- brilliant, but somewhat barbarous,
it must be confessed. The Corinthians were in the habit of drinking a
great deal too much in Tom Cribb's parlor: they used to go and see
"life" in the gin-shops; of nights, walking home (as well as they could),
they used to knock down "Charleys," poor harmless old watchmen with
lanterns, guardians of the streets of Rome, Planco Consule. They
perpetrated a vast deal of boxing; they put on the "mufflers" in
Jackson's rooms; they "sported their prads" in the Ring in the Park; they
attended cock- fights, and were enlightened patrons of dogs and

destroyers of rats. Besides these sports, the delassemens of gentlemen
mixing with the people, our patricians, of course, occasionally enjoyed
the society of their own class. What a wonderful picture that used to be
of Corinthian Tom dancing with Corinthian Kate at Almack's! What a
prodigious dress Kate wore! With what graceful ABANDON the pair
flung their arms about as they swept through the mazy quadrille, with
all the noblemen standing round in their stars and uniforms! You may
still, doubtless, see the pictures at the British Museum, or find the
volumes in the corner of some old country-house library. You are led to
suppose that the English aristocracy of 1820 DID dance and caper in
that way, and box and drink at Tom Cribb's, and knock down
watchmen; and the children of to-day, turning