He was a painter of fantastic and grotesque subjects, and as far as we
know, he began his career when a boy. He made sketches before his
eighth year which attracted much attention, and he earned considerable
money while still at school. He was at that time engaged to illustrate
for journals, at a good round sum, and before he left the Lycee he had
made hundreds of drawings, somewhat after the satirical fashion of
Hogarth.

His work is very characteristic and once seen is likely to be always
recognised.

He first worked for the _Journal Pour Rire_, but then he undertook to
illustrate the work of Rabelais, the great satirist, whose text just
suited Dore's pencil. After Rabelais he illustrated Balzac, also the
"Wandering Jew," "Don Quixote," and Dante's "Divine Comedy."

He undertook to do things which he could not do well, simply for the
money there was in the commissions. He had but a poor idea of colour
and his work was coarse, but it had such marked peculiarities that it
became famous. He did a little sculpture as well, and even that showed
his eccentricities of thought.

PLATE--MOSES BREAKING THE TABLETS OF THE LAW

This is one of the illustrations of the Dore Bible, published in
1865-66. The story is well known of how Moses went up into the Mount
of the Lord to receive the laws for the Israelites, which were written
upon tables of stone. Upon his descent from the Mount he found that
his followers had set up a golden calf, which they were worshipping;
and in his wrath Moses broke the tablets on which the Law was