to have from his pencil. Such is the vision of the Resurrection of Dry Bones in the Book of Ezekiel. This subject (full page size) is now required, and no one could do it so well as Doré, if he would undertake to avoid anything grotesque, and give sufficient solemnity to its weird figures. There may be a few more subjects before we get to the end of the Revelation, but this is the only one we can name at present for M. Doré, and if you will kindly arrange for it, some trouble will be saved."
Whether Doré toned down his style to meet the Art Editor's views, or the Art Editor plucked up his courage to swallow Doré's ideas, there is no record to show, but Doré's Bible was published in 1865-6, and the public welcomed his weirdness and his solemnity and never complained of his grotesquerie.
Another notable book undertaken by the firm was the English translation of the third Napoleon's "Vie de César." This work was done by arrangement with the French Emperor himself, and while the book was in course of printing, he visited the Yard and passed some of the sheets for press in the composing-room.
The announcement that Cassell's were to introduce the Imperial biographer to the English public created a flutter in the London dovecotes. The firm had made a speciality of "popular" literature, and that Napoleon III should have sought its help in bringing out his study was a cause of startled speculation in the Press. They sought any explanation of the phenomenon but the right one. Thus the Guardian:
"We understand that the English translation of the first volume of the Emperor Napoleon's 'Life of Julius Cæsar' has been entrusted to the hands of Mr. Thomas Wright, F.S.A., to which initials he will be entitled to add 'Knight of the Legion of Honour,' in addition to substantial pecuniary recompense. The work in its English dress is to be published, it seems, by Messrs. Cassell, a house for cheap publications, to whom the Imperial author was recommended to apply—somewhat strangely and eccentrically, we think—by Lord Brougham, who possibly forgot at the moment the existence of other publishers."
