This "Discourse" is appreciably more puckish in tone than the earlier two-thirds of Chambers' published "Chinese" work. The half-title here, page [109] of the second edition, heaps Chambers' own initialed honors[17] upon the Canton "Gent." Chet-qua, and with the ironies of his Preface and elaborate courtesies of the Introduction, the fun has begun. Identification of a Chinese alter ego enables Chambers to claim a kind of diplomatic immunity for both his enthusiasms and his judgments against the English style. By half-heartedly ascribing the preceding 107 pages of _Dissertation_ also to Chet-qua, and receding as mere "Editor" of the lovable old gourmet's remarks (page 148n), he trusts to keep one step ahead of his Whig adversaries. With exemplary tolerance such as had enhanced the European stereotype of the Chinese sage throughout the century, Chet-qua finds more to commend in French and Italian gardens, more to tease disarmingly in the Dutch, than Chambers had earlier. Finally, since an actual Chinese artist-about-town usually known as Chitqua had only recently returned to Canton, Chambers may have hoped his masquerade could stir British hospitality for his ideas. Within weeks of reaching London in August 1769, Chitqua had had a royal audience. The miniature portrait busts he modelled in clay at ten guineas apiece, as well as his delicate manners and physique ("the eyelashes almost always in motion") earned the admiration of Wedgwood's friend Thomas Bentley. One of his busts was shown in the 1770 Royal Academy exhibition, and during that year he visited Oxford, met Chambers and Bishop Percy, and sat down with Horace Walpole among others at the first official Academy dinner. Lashes and all, he figures in Zoffany's "Life School of the Royal Academy," painted in 1771. But what peculiarly recommends Chitqua to Chambers' purposes here is perhaps a mob's intervention at the start of his homeward voyage to Canton that spring, when xenophobia and "the superstitious fears of the mariners" forced him to return to London for another ship. On page 141 Chambers differs from the _Gentleman's Magazine_ reporter who had Chitqua "accidentally ... fall overboard" at Gravesend, but whatever the facts, the parallel to Jonah at Joppa might be as clear to Chet-qua's adversaries as it was to that reporter and win the "Discourse" a more candid hearing than the _Dissertation_ had enjoyed.[18] To an unidentified reader of his first edition Chambers had justified such artfulness, and his entire "Chinese" myth for the promotion of a change in landscaping-style, this way: "I thought it necessary to move in an exalted sphere. Our Gardeners, and I fear our Connoisseurs too, are such _tame_ animals, that much sparring is necessary to keep them properly on their haunches."[19] Such quixotic energy even Mason had to salute, in the last line of his _Heroic Epistle_. Douglass College Rutgers University NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION