FROM MR. PEGRAM'S 'THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR.'
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. NISBET.
Mr. Townsend has illustrated Hawthorne and Peacock, as well as Charlotte Brontë and Scott. Hawthorne's men and women—embodiments always of some essential quality, rather than of the combination of qualities that make 'character'—lend themselves to fine illustration as regards gesture, and Mr. Townsend's drawings represent, not insensitively, the movement and suggestion of 'The Blithedale Romance' and 'The House of the Seven Gables.' In the Peacock illustrations the artist had to keep pace with an essentially un-English humour, an imagination full of shapes that are opinions and theories and sarcasms masquerading under fantastic human semblances. Mr. Townsend kept to humanity, and found occasions for representing the eccentrics engaged in cheerful open-air and society pursuits in the pauses of paradoxical discussion. One realizes in the drawings the pleasant aspect of life at Gryll Grange and at Crotchet Castle, the courtesies and amusements out of doors and within, while the subjects of 'Maid Marian,' of 'The Misfortunes of Elphin' and of 'Rhododaphne' declare themselves in excellent terms of romance and adventure. Mr. Townsend has humour, and he is in sympathy with the vigorous spirit in life; whether the vigour is intellectual as in Jane Eyre and in Shirley Keeldar, or muscular as in 'Rob Roy,' in drawings to a manual of fencing, and in Marryat's 'The King's Own,' or eccentric as in the fantasies of Peacock. His work is never languid and never formal; and if in technique he is sometimes experimental, and frequently content with ineffectual accessories to his figures, his conception of the situation, and of the characters that fulfil the situation, is direct and effective enough.
FROM MR. TOWNSEND'S 'SHIRLEY.'
BY LEAVE OF MESSRS. NISBET.
As an illustrator of current fiction, Mr. Townsend has also a considerable amount of dexterous work to his name, but a record of drawings contributed to the illustrated journals cannot even be attempted within present limits of space.
Mr. Shepperson in his book-illustrations generally represents affairs with picturesqueness, and with a nervous energy that takes the least mechanical way of expressing forms and substances. Illustrating the modern novel of adventure, he is happy in his intrigues and conspiracies, while in books of more weight, such as 'The Heart of Midlothian' or 'Lavengro,' he expresses graver issues of life with un-elaborate and suggestive effect. The energy of his line, the dramatic quality of his imagination, render him in his element as an illustrator of events, but the vigour that projects itself into subjects such as the murder of Sir George Staunton, or the fight with the Flaming Tinman, or the alarms and stratagems of Mr. Stanley Weyman, informs also his representation of moments when there is no action. Technically Mr. Shepperson represents very little that is traditional in English black and white, though the tradition seems likely to be there for future generations of English illustrators.