Allegory is, as I stated in Chapter iv., more frequent and more wild in French book-plates than in those of England. The follies of his own countrymen in this respect are fully recognised by M. Poulet Malassis, who, in most amusing style, deals with some of the more pronounced examples; as for instance the rollicking allegory displayed in the book-plate of M. Hénault, President of the French Academy. The date of this remarkable production may be fixed at 1750; it is designed by Boucher and engraved by Count de Caylus, and we see that Minerva has honoured M. le Président by placing his family arms upon her shield. Very wonderful, too, is the book-plate of the Abbé de Gricourt, whose arms are borne heavenwards by a vast company of angels. This example, which is approximately of the same date as the last, is the work of the Abbé's brother, A. T. Ceys, who was himself an ecclesiastic. Often the allegory displayed has allusion to the owner's business or his tastes, as on that of M. Gueullette, a French novelist and dramatist of the first half of the last century, the popularity of whose writings, although those writings are numerous, has not outlived him. This book-plate is the work of H. Becat, and is inscribed after the Pirckheimer manner, 'Ex libris Thomæ Gueullette et Amicorum.' The family arms are supported by an Italian harlequin, a Chinese mandarin, a Cyclops holding an infant, and a Tartar. Now the presence of these strange inhabitants of a book-plate is accounted for thus. Gueullette wrote farces for the Paris stage, and he also wrote 'Contes Tartares' and 'Les Aventures du Mandarin Fum Hoam.' Below the shield water pours from a satyr's mouth into a basin containing a mermaid, and above soars Cupid in clouds, bearing aloft a scroll and motto. This, says 'W. H.' in the _Ex Libris Journal_, is probably one of the earliest book-plates on which appear allegoric allusions to its owner's tastes and literary labours. The _Typical_ or _Personal_ book-plate is also found in France in that of the Chevalier de Fleurieu, described by Mr. Egerton Castle. During the _ancien régime_ he was a naval officer, who, whilst still low in the service, was intrusted with the testing of various new marine appliances. On the book-plate we get the bird's-eye view of an island, on which are strewn the said marine appliances, and behind them stands the Chevalier's coat of arms. A recent writer on French book-plates, M. Henri Bouchot, goes so far as to think a book-plate may be of service as exhibiting a man's character. It may be so with regard to Frenchmen and French book-plates, but if this principle of argument be applied to English book-plates, all I can say is, that the possessors of English book-plates in the closing years of the seventeenth century and the opening years of the eighteenth must have been singularly alike in their personal characteristics! [Illustration]