entertainments increasing in splendour with the young artist's
vogue--and means.

The history of the next twenty years reads like a page from the _Arabian
Nights_. Although dazzling is the record from first to last, and despite
the millions of francs earned during those two decades, the artist's
ambition was never satisfied. We are always conscious of bitterness and
disillusion. As an illustrator, no longer of cheap comic papers but of
literary masterpieces brought out in costly fashion, Dore reached the
first rank at twenty, his _Rabelais_ setting the seal on his renown. So
immense was the success of this truly colossal undertaking and of its
successors, the _Don Quixote_, the _Contes de fees_ of Perrault
and the rest, that he meditated nothing less than the illustration of
cosmopolitan _chefs 'd' oeuvre, en bloc_, a series which should include
every great imaginative work of the Western world! Thus in 1855 we find
him noting the following projects, to be carried out in ten years'
time:--illustrations of AEschylus, Lucan, Ovid, Shakespeare, Goethe
_(Faust)_, Lamartine _(Meditations)_, Racine, Corneille, Schiller,
Boccaccio, Montaigne, Plutarch's Lives--these names among others. The
jottings in question were written for a friend who had undertaken to
write the artist's biography.


The _Rabelais, Don Quixote, The Inferno_, and several more of these
sumptuous volumes were brought out in England. Forty years ago Dore's
bold and richly imaginative work was in great favour here; indeed,
throughout his life he was much more appreciated by ourselves than by
his countrymen. All the drawings were done straight upon wood. Lavish in
daily life, generous of the generous, Dore showed the same lavishness in
his procedure. Some curious particulars are given upon this head.