1586, and M.A. 4 Nov. 1589. It is highly probable that he is identical with the vicar of Walden mentioned by Strype (Life of Sir Thomas Smith, p. 6), who combined the occupations of his cure with the ushership of Walden school He was certainly a school-master, and according to Wood took great delight in that employment, and educated many generous youths and others.' We are told by the same authority that his labours were greatly encouraged by Robert Johnson [q. v.], archdeacon of Leicester and founder of several schools in the eastern midlands. To Johnson Leech directed one of the Latin epistles in his 'Grammar Questions.'
In 1628 was published what Wood thinks was the second edition of Leech's 'Book of Grammar Questions,' dedicated to George Digby, son of the author's former pupil, Sir John Digby, afterwards first earl of Bristol [q. v.] The first edition must have appeared before 1622, as in that year John Brinsley [q. v.], in the valuable catalogue raisonné of existing grammars, appended to his 'Consolation for our Grammar Schooles,' says, 'For the chief rules of the Syntax shortly comprized … take Maister Leeches Dialogues' (p. 62). A fourth edition appeared in 1650 under the title ' A Booke of Grammar Questions for the help of Yong Scholars, to further them in the understanding of the Accidence and Lilies Verses, divided into three parts. Now the fourth time imprinted, corrected, and somewhat amended, set foorth for the ease of Schoolmasters and Young Scholars' (Brit. Mus. Library). To the volume is appended 'Four Little Dialogues or Colloqvies in Latine. Now verbally translated … but long since gathered … London, at the Black Spread Eagle in Duck-lane.' These 'Dialogues,' between 'Georgius' and 'Edvardus,' are noticed by Wood under the title 'Praxis totius Latinæ Syntaxeos in quatuor Dialogis comprehensa,' 1629, 8vo, and the English text of them is included in the 'Dux Grammaticus' set forth by John Clarke of Lincoln in February 1633 under the title 'Second Praxis Dialogicall of the Latin Syntax.' Leech the schoolmaster has been confused with other Leeches of the same christian name [see Leech or Leitch, John, fl. 1623].
[Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, ii. 352; Reg. Univ. Oxf. (Ox£ Hist. Soc.), i. 230, ii. 123, iii. 135; Ellis's Letters of Eminent Lit. Men, p. 75; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Hazlitt's Collections and Notes, 1876, p. 253; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
LEECH, JOHN (1817–1864), humorous artist, was born in Bennett Street, Stamford Street, London, on 29 Aug. 1817, his father, also John Leech, being proprietor of the London Coffee-house on Ludgate Hill. He was baptised on 15 Nov. at Christ Church, Blackfriars Road. Of Irish extraction, the elder Leech was a man of much natural ability, a good Shakespearean scholar, and a draughtsman of more than ordinary accomplishment. If tradition is to be believed, his son was by no means slow to follow in his footsteps, and Flaxman, who found him drawing at a very early age on his mother's knee, is said to have recommended that so precocious a genius should be permitted to follow its own bent, advice which he practically repeated a few years later. When very young, Leech was sent to the Charterhouse, to the distress of his mother, of whom the pretty story is told that she hired a room in the vicinity of the school from which, unknown to her son, she could watch him in his play hours. His Charterhouse career was not brilliant. Fond of games of skill and of open-air exercises generally, he seems to have had little aptitude for the studies of the place, and the chief memory connected with his sojourn there is the friendship he formed and maintained through life with Thackeray. It is possible, however, that as the future author of 'Vanity Fair' was six years his senior, their boyish connection, like that of Addison and Steele, has been exaggerated. At sixteen, after nine years of 'Grey Friars,' he began, by his father's desire, to study medicine at St. Bartholomew's, where he made the acquaintance of Albert Smith, Percival Leigh, and Gilbert à Beckett, all of whom were subsequently to earn distinction with the pen rather than the scalpel. At St. Bartholomew's Leech was most distinguished for the excellence of his anatomical drawings. His father had intended to place him with Sir George Ballingall of Edinburgh. But his monetary affairs had not prospered, and young Leech left the hospital to follow the instructions of a certain Mr. Whittle of Hoxton, who combined a very moderate business as a doctor with a great deal of pigeon-fancying, and the kind of athletics in favour with strong men at fairs. His portrait, not greatly caricatured, is drawn at length, under the name of Rawkins, in Albert Smith's 'Adventures of Mr. Ledbury,' 1844, which Leech afterwards illustrated during its progress through 'Bentley's Miscellany,' perhaps also supplying his old colleague at Bartholomew's with the leading points of the character itself. Leaving Mr. Whittle, Leech passed to Dr. John Cockle, the son of the inventor of Cockle's pills. But already he was gravitating towards his true vocation, and becoming known among his fellows as a humorous artist. When at length his father's failing
