the late Charles James Lever, who remarked with reference to
his illustrations of the novel of "Jack Hinton," "Browne's sketches are
as usual _caricatures_; they make my scenes too riotous and
disorderly. The character of my books for uproarious people and incident
I owe mainly to Master Phiz."[172] When Samuel Lover was sent over to
Brussels by McGlashan, the publisher, to take a likeness of the
novelist, he was accompanied by Browne, the object of whose visit was to
confer with the author on the subject of these very illustrations. Lever
was so anxious to restrain him from caricaturing his countrymen, that he
even begged Browne to accompany him to Dublin for the purpose of seeing
the _natives_, instead of the wretched specimens of Milesian humanity to
be met with in London.

LACK OF VITALITY.

Another fault of this artist, which will be apparent to any one
acquainted with his work, is the weakness of his outline, and the
singular absence of solidity, stability, and even of _vitality_ in his
figures. There is no lack of powerful situations in Frank Smedley's
novel of "Lewis Arundel," but Browne's illustrations are characterised
by an utter absence of vitality, while shadow usurps the place of
substantial bone and muscle. There are the usual thread-paper men in
tail hats, with trousers so tightly strapped to their feet that they
must go through the tedium of existence in intolerable discomfort. In
one picture he shows us a fragile, attenuated man holding another
fragile, attenuated man over the well of a staircase by the waistband of
his trousers, a feat which, difficult of performance to a Hercules,
would be absolutely beyond the power of a person so fragile, so
absolutely destitute of bone and muscle, as the hero of this particular
episode.

The weakness of which we now speak becomes strikingly apparent when he
enables us to compare him with either of the distinguished trio to which
he himself belonged. Such an opportunity offers itself in Mr. R. W.
Surtees' novel of "Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds." Compare John Leech's
illustration, _Fresh as a Four-Year Old_ (the last he executed for the
novelist before his firm, free hand was paralysed by death), with Hablot
Knight Browne's first etching in the same book. A better subject,
surely, could scarcely have been selected: the hounds have just been
let out of the kennel, and in actual life would, of course, be
scampering over the place in all the exuberant consciousnes