'In Houghton's work, two things strike us especially, when we see it adequately to-day: its mastery of technique and style, and its temperament: the mastery so swift and spontaneous, so lavish of its audacities, so noble in its economies; the temperament so dramatic, so passionate, so satiric, and so witty. In many of his qualities, in vitality and movement, Houghton tops Millais. What is missing from his temperament, if it be a lack and not a quality, is the power to look at things coolly; he has not, as Millais, the deep mood of stoical statement, of tragedy grown calm. His tragic note is vindictive, a little shrill: when he sets himself to depict contemporary life, as in the _Graphic America_ series, he is sardonic, impatient, at times morose: his humour carries an edge of bitterness. But in whatever mood he looks at things, the mastery of his aim is certain.'[11] [Illustration: _Drawn by A. Boyd Houghton._ _Swan Electro-Engraving Co._ READING THE CHRONICLES] The mass of work accomplished in illustration alone, between his first appearance and his death in 1875, is amazing. There is scarce a periodical of any rank which has not at least one example from his pen. The curt attention given here to the man must be pardoned, as reference to his work is made on almost every page of this book. For an appreciative essay, that is a model of its class, one has but to turn to Mr. Laurence Housman's volume[12] which contains also five original drawings on wood (reproduced in photogravure) and eighty-three others from _Dalziel's Arabian Nights_ (Ward, Lock & Co., 1863-65 and Warne, 1866), _Don Quixote_, the two volumes of Mr. Robert Buchanan's Poems--_Ballad Stories of the Affections_ (1866), and _North Coast_ (1868), _Home Thoughts_ (1865), _National Nursery Rhymes_ (1871), and _The Graphic_ (1870). * * * * *