Mr. Townsend has illustrated Hawthorne and Peacock, as well as
Charlotte Bronte 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.
[Illustration: FROM MR. TOWNSEND'S 'SHIRLEY.'