Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/408

and haste to which they were happily strangers. Hence it is, that while the admirable satires of John Leech enhance the value of the Punch volumes themselves, taken singly, not only will they not command a fiftieth part of the price asked and given for the coloured but inferior productions of an earlier school, but they are to all intents and purposes valueless. Leech himself has often been known to say to friends who admired his composition on the wood block:—"Wait till Saturday, and see how the engraver will have spoiled it." We will subject the justice of these observations to a practical test. Let the reader compare an ordinary Punch cartoon with one of the tinted lithographs issued from the Punch office during the artist's lifetime under the title of The Rising Generation, and he cannot fail to be struck with the enormous advantages possessed by the latter. These last have their price, and command, by reason of their scarcity, a comparatively high one.