t they
didn't. They set themselves to supply a demand. And all this keenness,
combined with good taste and tireless energy, would have brought a like
success in any one of a dozen different professions.

And these are the men who give plausibility to that stern half-truth: a
man can succeed in anything he undertakes--it is all a matter of will.

But you can not count Gustave Dore in any such category. He stands alone:
he had no predecessors, and he left no successors. We say that the artist
has his prototype; but every rule has its exception--even this one.

Gustave Dore drew pictures because he could do nothing else. He never had
a lesson in his life, never drew from a model, could not sketch from
Nature; accepted no one's advice; never retouched or considered his work
after it was done; never cudgeled his brains for a subject; could read a
book by turning the leaves; grasped all knowledge; knew all languages;
found an immediate market for his wares and often earned a thousand
dollars before breakfast; lived fifty years and produced over one hundred
thousand sketches--an average of six a day; made two million dollars by
the labor of his own hands; was knighted, flattered, proclaimed, adored,
lauded, scorned, scoffed, hooted, maligned, and died broken-hearted.

Surely you can not dispose of a man like this with a "bon mot"!

Comets may be good or ill, but wise men nevertheless make note of them,
and the fact that they once flashed their blinding light upon us must
live in the history of things that were.

* * * * *

An Alsatian by birth, and a Parisian by environment, Dore is spoken of as
of the French School, but if ever an artist belonged to no "school" it
was Gustave Dore.

His early years were spent in Strassburg, within the shadow of the
cathedral. His father was a civil engineer--methodical, calculating,
prosperous. The lad was the second of three sons: strong, bright,
intelligent boys.

In his travels up and down the Rhine the father often took little Gustave
with him, and the lad came to know each wild crag, and crowning fortress,
and bend in the river where strong men with spears and bows and arrows
used to lie in wait. In imagination Gustave repeopled the ruins and
filled the weird forests with curious, haunting shapes. The Rhine reeks
with history that merges off into misty song and fable; and this folklore
of the storied river filled the day-dreams and night-dreams of