shows to most advantage when he has to render
some startling effect of nature. But the power
of dealing with these is not his sole gift. His
work gives evidence at times of a certain feeling
for the humorous, all the more precious, in these
times, because of its rarity. The power of making
one laugh, does not belong to many of our
modern illustrators. The strong conviction that
he must, above all things, be accurate — that his
drawing must be correct, and the lines of his
composition agreeable — seems to repress his
sense of fun, just as it subdues his capability of
dealing with what is dramatic and striking.
Perhaps there is a certain incompatibility
between the humorous and the accurate. It is
certain that in this particular department of
wood-engraving some of the most successful
humorists have been inaccurate in their drawing,
and slight and unfinished. The drawings
of Töpffer, of Thackeray, and, often, of
Leech, may be given as instances strongly
corroborative of this assertion. It is, perhaps,
too much to say that a drawing must be
inaccurate and must be slight, if it is to be funny;
but it is certain that most of the funniest drawings
with which we are acquainted are both
slight and inaccurate.

This is particularly the case with Doré.
Those who come to the illustrated edition of
Don Quixote in search of amusement, must,
for the most part, seek among the small and
hastily executed woodcuts which appear upon
the printed pages, the head-pieces and tail-
pieces, rather than among the more ambitious
full-page engravings. Some of these minor
illustrations are decidedly droll. The little
sketch, near the commencement of the book,
of Don Quixote in his stable polishing up his
armour, the two greyhounds, and Rozinante
looking on solemnly, is very quaint; and a tail-
piece, showing the knight hermetically sealed
up in his helmet, and receiving drink through
a reed, exhibits a kind of grave humour which
is very Cervantesque. So is the rough drawing
of Don Quixote making his first attempt
to inoculate Sancho with a taste for knight-
errantry. The scene is in the yard of
Sancho's house, and the knight has withdrawn
his future squire out of Theresa's hearing,
in order that he may be beyond the reach
of any of those practical suggestions which
wives will sometimes put forward when their
husbands are going to do something foolish
and unprofitable. There is only a back view,
of Sancho; but it is the back of a man
gifted with a most inexhaustible power of
swallowing. He is drinking in his master's
promises, with an eagerness almost touching.
Theresa looks after the pair suspiciously.
There is a fair allowance in this volume
of such sketches. The drawing of Don
Quixote and Rozinante, after the two have
been specially maltreated, making ineffectual
efforts to get up from the ground; and that of
the knight left alone in the Sierra Morena, with
the rabbits coming out of their holes to stare at
him, and not a bit afraid; may be taken as
specimens. Sometimes, a good idea is
conveyed with half a dozen strokes of the
pencil. Sancho's regret at leaving the good
cheer which he had enjoyed on the occasion
of Camacho's wedding, is told thus, in the
roughest way; but effectually. The artist has
planted Sancho on the back of Dapple, riding
away from this scene of good living and
comfort; but with his face to the ass's tail. The
notion of Sancho's regret is conveyed
unmistakably. Don Quixote in a towering rage with
Sancho, for daring to laugh at the fulling-mills
adventure, the knight restraining his own laughter
with the utmost difficulty, or the tail-piece to the
chapter which describes the abdication of Sancho,
and in which the ex-governor of Barataria is
bonneted with his own crown. Sketches such
as these show with how very little labour
a man may give to the public the benefit of
an idea, if only he have got one. There is,
by-the-by, another of these tail-pieces which
should be specially dear to all those who say,
with Sancho, "A blessing on the man who
invented that self-same thing called sleep; it
covers a man all over like a cloak." This is a
sketch which shows Sancho, Rozinante, and
the ass, all stretched on the ground together,
fast asleep; Sancho being propped in a most
comfortable manner with his head against
Rozinante's body, and his legs over Dapple's back.

The artist enters with much zest into his
author's humour as displayed in the annals of
Rozinante and Dapple. The close friendship
between the horse and the ass is insisted on very
strongly by M. Doré, and he seems never weary
of dwelling upon the cordiality of their alliance.
When master and man make their night bivouac,
or enjoy their afternoon repose under the cork-
trees, or in the fresh water-meadows which
Cervantes loves to describe, Rozinante and
Dapple are never far off. Whether reposing side
by side, or rolling ecstatically on the grass, they
are always close together. They are powerfully
interested, too, in each other's adventures. When
Sancho fetters Rozinante, to prevent his master
from attacking the fulling-mills, the ass looks on
with intense feeling depicted in his very expressive
ears; and when Dapple is stolen and
Rozinante wakes to a consciousness that his
companion is no longer near him, his dismay is
almost as great as that of Sancho Panza himself.
The attachment of the two quadrupeds to their
respective masters, too, is shown in more than one
of these sketches; in the drawing, for instance,
which illustrates the embarkation of Don
Quixote and Sancho in the enchanted boat. The
horse and the jackass are left behind, and are
shown tugging at their halters in their desire to
follow their owners. The affection of Dapple
for his master is dwelt upon continually by
M. Doré. When Sancho is caught among the
boughs of a tree, and suspended to one of them
by the waistband of his breeches, Dapple,
though unable to assist his unfortunate master,
does not desert him, but stands beneath the
tree sniffing sympathetically at his pendent
proprietor; similarly, when Sancho is tossed in the