LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT, R.A. 



LESLIE, SIR JOHN'. 



HI 



became chancellor of Cloyne. He wu living In Ireland at tbe time 

 of the revolution, and distinguished himself in some disputations with 

 tho Koman Catholics on the aide of the Protestant Church. 



Though a zealous Protestant, he scrupled to renounce hit allegiance 

 to King James, and to acknowledge King William as his rightful 

 sovereign. There wu thus an end to bis prospects in the Church, 

 and leaving Ireland he camo to England, and there employed himself 

 in writing many of his controversial works. When James II. was dead, 

 Leslie transferred his allegiance to his son, tbo Pretender; and as be 

 made frequent visiU to the courts of the exiled princes, he so far fell 

 under suspicion at home that he thought proper to leave England, 

 and join himself openly to the court of tbe Pretender, then at Bar-le- 

 Duc. He was still a zealous Protestant, and had in that court a private 

 chapel, in which he was accustomed to officiate as a minuter of the 

 Protestant Church of England. When the Pretender removed to Italy, 

 Leslie accompanied him ; but becoming at length sensible to the 

 strangeness of his position, a Protestant clergyman in the court of a 

 zealous Roman Catholic, and age coming on, and with it the natural 

 desire of dying in the land which had given him birth, he sought and 

 obtained from the government of King George I. permission to return. 

 This was in 1721. He settled at Glaslough, in the county of Mouaghnn, 

 and there died in 1722. 



Leslie's writings in the political controversies of the time were all in 

 support of high monarchical principles. His theological writings wera 

 controversial ; they are too many to be particularised in the brief space 

 whirh wo can allot to him, but they have been distributed into the six 

 following classes : those against, 1, the Quakers ; 2, tbe Presbyterians ; 

 3, the Deists; 4, the Jews; 5, the Socinians; and, 6, tbe Papists. 

 Some of them, especially the book entitled ' A Short and Easy Method 

 with the Deists,' are still read and held in esteem. Towards the close 

 of his life be collected his theological writings, and published them in 

 two folio volumes, 1721. 



LESLIE, CHARLES ROBERT, R.A. As this eminent painter is 

 sometimes called an American and sometimes an Englishman, and as 

 English and American writers appear to view the matter differently, 

 while we see it stated in an American work of some authority that 

 Mr. Leslie "has always considered himself as an American citizen" 

 it may be as well to state his origin and place of birtb distinctly, aud 

 leave the reader to draw his own conclusion. The Leslies belonged 

 originally to Scotland, and from that country an ancestor of Mr. 

 Leslie emigrated shortly after 1745, and settled in Maryland, and his 

 children likewise established themselves in America, Mr. Leslie's 

 father commenced business early in life in Philadelphia, and is said 

 to have been a man of considerable attainments and ingenuity, and a 

 friend of Benjamin Franklin and other eminent -Americans. Mr. 

 Leslie, who bad married an American lady, and bad already had one 

 or two children, removed in 1792 to London; and there, in October 

 1794, his son Charles Robert, the subject of the present notice, was 

 born. In 1800 Mr. Leslie, sen., returned with his family to Phila- 

 delphia. Young Leslie, after receiving tbe usual school education, 

 was apprenticed to a bookseller, but eventually succeeded in obtaining 

 bis release from that uncongenial occupation, aud permission to follow 

 his own inclination and become an artist. 



He accordingly proceeded in 1813 to London, bearing introductions 

 to tbe two painters whom America regarded as specially her own 

 Benjamin West, then president of the Royal Academy, and Washington 

 Allston, then in the plenitude of bis European celebrity. By these 

 eminent artists the young man was received with great kindness, and 

 from both of them he continued to receive judicious advice and assist- 

 ance in his studies. West smoothed his entrance as a student into 

 the Royal Academy, and in the schools of that institution he laboured 

 with equal diligence and success. At the commencement of his 

 career as a painter Mr. Leslie essayed historical pictures on a large 

 scale, but he soon found that his strength lay in more homely subjects 

 and a smaller canvass, and he at once struck on the right path and 

 steadily pursued it. The first work, we believe, which obtained 

 notice, was bis ' Anne Page and Master Slender,' which was exhibited 

 at tbe British Institution in the spring of 1820. This was followed 

 by ' Roger de Coverley going to Church,' which appeared at the Royal 

 Academy exhibition in May of the same year, and met with decided and 

 well-deserved success. ' May-Day in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth ' 

 amply sustained the reputation which the previous pictures had ob- 

 tained; all these were engraved, and the artist was elected (1821) an 

 A^-o^j*** of the Royal Academy. We cannot follow closely bis subse- 

 quent career. The events of his life would be chiefly the completion 

 and exhibition of his pictures ; and of these it will suffice to say that 

 no English painter probably could be named whose course has been 

 marked by more conscientious devotion to his art, or more steady 

 improvement in it. Every work has been carefully elaborated both 

 in tbe preliminary study and in the execution, and while every one 

 carries with it evidence of original power and shrewd observation, it 

 exhibits also the most anxious endeavour to secure excellence by 

 patient labour. Mr. Leslie was elected R.A. in 1826. In 1833 he 

 surprised his friends by accepting the post of drawing-master to tbe 

 United States Military Academy ; but tbe trial of a very few mouths 

 sufficed to convince him that he had mistaken his vocation, and he 

 returned to England and to his accustomed labours. On the death 

 of Mr. Howard (October 1847) be was elected professor of painting 



at the Royal Academy, an office be bold till ]>.'.!, when be was 

 compelled by ill health to resign it. 



The paintings of Mr. Leslie have been chiefly illustrations of the 

 great humorous writers, but he has usually chosen a theme suggested 

 rather than described by them, so tint his own humour and imagina- 

 tion have found fair scope for their exercise. Slmkspere has furnished 

 him with Slender, Ann Page, and FalstaU", with Katbcriue and ivtru- 

 chio, with Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Beatrice, nnd to each he has 

 imparted characteristic form, giving as well as borrowing something 

 from the text, and interpreting it with a genial reverence. The Roger 

 de Coverley of Addison has certainly never l*cn better painted than 

 by Leslie, and perhaps never so well. Uncle Toby and Widow Wadman 

 too were depicted by him in a manner that would have delighted 

 Sterne. Pope, Goldsmith, Smollet, and Fielding, have each bu 

 pages really illustrated by Leslie's pencil; and in every case tbe 

 character has been rendered with admirable tact, grace, aud refinement, 

 as well as with real though delicate humour. And whilst so happy 

 in treating English subjects, Mr. Leslie has shown himself no less at 

 home with tho one or two older French and Spanish authors who have 

 become thoroughly familiar to the English reader. Perhaps it would 

 not be too much to say, that no pictorial representations of Moliera's 

 inimitable comedies have ever been so thoroughly enjoyed in this 

 country as those of Mr. Leslie : and yet if we were asked what character 

 Mr. Leslie bos made most entirely his own, we should have little 

 lie.-hation in answering the immortal Saucho Panza; and perhaps none 

 of his works have on the whole been so generally popular as his now 

 somewhat extended series from Don Quixote, in most of which Sancho 

 is the chief figure : it may be added as somewhat curious, th.it though 

 so many of his best pictures have been taken from ' Don Quixote,' he 

 has taken none (or rather we cannot recollect any) from ' Uil Bias.' 

 Besides the pictures of the class just noticed, Mr. Leslie has pain led a 

 good many portraits, and some that may be called fancy portraits, of 

 which his ' Mother and Child,' so well-known by tbe engraving, is an 

 admirable example; and as already stated, several historical and 

 scriptural subjects. He also painted as a commission, ' The Queen 

 receiving the Sacrament after her Coronation ;' and a fresco, ' acme 

 from Comus,' for tbe summer-house at Buckingham Palace. 



Mr. Leslie has added a couple of books to the somewhat scanty 

 library of English art-literature. The first, ' Memoirs of the Life of 

 John Constable, R.A.,' 4to, 1843 (subsequently reprinted in 8vo without 

 the engravings), is chiefly compiled from the letters of Constable, 

 and is a work which affords a good insight into the mental character 

 aud artistic views of that remarkable landscape-painter. Mr. Li-she's 

 other work is entitled 'A Handbook for Young Painters,' 12ino, 

 1855, and consists of a remodelling of the materials supplied by his 

 Lectures delivered to the students of the Royal Academy wbii 

 fessor of painting at that institution; and as the result of the observa- 

 tion, reflection, and experience of a painter of Mr. Leslie's standing 

 and ability cannot be too carefully considered by the young painter, 

 while most old painters even would find its study not unserviceable : 

 there is also in it matter which will bo found of use to the student of 

 the history of English art. 



The celebrated collection of English pictures formed by Mr. Sheep- 

 shanks is especially rich in tbe works of Mr. Leslie. In the Vernon 

 Gallery there are two paintings by him : his well-known ' Uncle Toby 

 and tho Widow' (pointed in 1831) and 'Sancho Panza and the 

 Duchess ' (1849), a repetition with improvements (as all his repetitions 

 are) of the original 1'etworth. 



* ELIZA LESLIE, the elder sister of the painter, was born in Phila- 

 delphia, and is a favourite American writer, though little known on 

 this side the Atlantic. She commenced her literary life by writing a 

 book of ' Household Receipts,' which had on extraordinary sale in the 

 States, and followed it up by a series of children's books, while her 

 latest work we believe has been a ' Behaviour Book ' a work appa- 

 rently much required in some parts of America. But her more 

 important writings have consisted of 'Pencil Sketches, or Outlines of 

 Character and Manners,' chiefly satirical, which were so popular that 

 a second and subsequently a third scries was required ; ' Althea 

 Vernon,' a novel, and some volumes of ' Tales and Sketches.' 



LESLIE, SIR JOHN, was born on the 16th of April 1766, nt 

 Largo, a village on tho coast of Fifeshire. When a child he was 

 weak and sickly, which occasioned frequent interruptions in his 

 elementary education. He however evinced at on early age a decided 

 partiality for geometrical exercises, and a proportional dislike to tho 

 study of languages, more particularly of the Latin, although in this 

 ho subsequently attained considerable proficiency. With the assist- 

 ance of his elder brother Alexander, ho soon made sufficient progress 

 in arithmetic and geometry to attract the attention of the parochial 

 minister, through whose instrumentality he was probably presented 

 to Professors Kobison and Stuart, and by their suggestion*, in 1779, 

 sent to the University of St. Andrews. Hero his abilities introduced 

 him to the patronage of the Earl of Kiunoul, the then chancellor of 

 the university, who proposed to defray the expenses of his education 

 on the condition tbat his. father would consent to his being educated 

 for the church. After prosecuting his studies at this university 

 during six sessions, he removed in 1783-84 in company with James 

 Ivory I IVOBT, JAMES] to Edinburgh, where he attended the courses of 

 several of tbe professors for three years, iu which time bo was engaged 



