ists. The last plate had just been finished when the Count was
recalled, and appointed Prime Minister and Governor to the Crown Prince,
a place he filled with great honour; and in emulation of Fenelon,
composed letters on the education of a Prince, which have been
translated. He left behind him in France all the plates in the hands of
Boucher, who, having shown them to Du Clos for their singular invention,
regretted that he had bestowed so much fancy on a fairy tale, which was
not to be had; Du Clos, to relieve his regrets, offered to invent a
tale to correspond with these grotesque subjects. This seemed not a
little difficult. In the first plate, the author appears in his
morning-gown, writing in his study, surrounded by apes, rats,
butterflies, and smoke. In another, a Prince is drest in the French
costume of 1740, strolling full of thought "in the shady walk of ideas."
In a third plate, the Prince is conversing with a fairy who rises out of
a gooseberry which he has plucked: two dwarfs, discovered in another
gooseberry, give a sharp fillip to the Prince, who seems much
embarrassed by their tiny maliciousness. In another walk he eats an
apricot, which opens with the most beautiful of faces, a little
melancholy, and leaning on one side. In another print, he finds the body
of his lovely face and the hands, and he adroitly joins them together.
Such was the set of these incomprehensible and capricious inventions,
which the lighter fancy and ingenuity of Du Clos converted into a fairy
story, full of pleasantry and satire.[174]

Among the novelties of this small volume, not the least remarkable is
the dedication of this fairy romance to the public, which excited great
attention, and charmed and provoked our author's fickle patron. Du Clos
here openly ridicules, and dares his protector and his judge. This
hazardous attack was successful, and the author soon acquired the
reputation which he afterwards maintained, of being a writer who little
respected the common prejudices of the world. Freron replied by a long
criticism, entitled "Reponse du Public a l'Auteur d'Acajou;" but its
severity was not discovered in its length; so that the public, who had
been so keenly ridiculed, and so hardily braved in the light and
sparkling page of the haughty Du Clos, preferred the caustic truths and
the pleasant insult.

In this "Epistle to the Public," the author informs us that, "excited by
example, and encouraged by the success he had oft