Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/519

 occasionally marred by the somewhat disproportionate size of their feet, and this charge seems to us sustainable. Mr. Tenniel displays rare excellence in the drawing of animals—an excellence peculiarly noteworthy in such cartoons as The British Lion Smells a Rat, and The British Lion's Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger.

Embracing a period of only fourteen years, from 1851 to 1864, during which time he worked side by side with his friend and colleague, John Leech, on the pages of Punch, our notice of the cartoons of John Tenniel must necessarily be short. During the last three years of his life, when, as we have seen, the strength of the artist who had been on the pictorial staff from the commencement had been gradually failing, the execution of the weekly cartoons had fallen almost entirely upon Mr. Tenniel. As fellow-labourers, constantly associated on the same periodical, we are enabled to compare their individual merits. The conclusion we have arrived at is as follows: That as a political satirist, Tenniel is the best of the two; while as a delineator of English habits, manners, eccentricities, and peculiarities, Leech finds no equal. After 1864, when the artistic friendship and partnership (so to speak) of these gifted men was dissolved by the untimely death of John Leech, it would be beyond the declared scope and purpose of this work to follow Mr. Tenniel further. Unlike the caricaturists who preceded him, many of whom relied on humour, more or less forced, for the success of their productions, the cartoons of John Tenniel are oftentimes distinguished by a gravity and sternness of purpose which, combined with their artistic excellence, appeals forcibly to the imagination. Unfortunately, as in the case of those of John Leech, these truly admirable examples of nineteenth century satire, apart from the Punch volumes themselves—owing to the material on which they are impressed and the process to which the original drawings are subjected—are practically valueless by the side of an indifferent caricature torn from the scurrilous and worthless pages of "The Scourge" or "The Meteor."

To the persons who charge this artist with want of humour, his cartoon of Britannia Discovering the Source of the Nile—probably the