Chapter 16

RAMEAU'S NEPHEW.

In hypochondriacal moments, it has been said, the world, viewed from the æsthetic side, appears to many a one a cabinet of caricatures; from the intellectual side, a madhouse; and from the moral side, a harbouring place for rascals.[292] We might perhaps extend this saying beyond the accidents of hypochondriasis, and urge that the few wide, profound, and real observers of human life have all known, and known often, this fantastic consciousness of living in a strange distorted universe of lunatics, knaves, grotesques. It is an inevitable mood to any who dare to shake the kaleidoscopic fragments out of their conventional and accepted combination. Who does not remember deep traces of such a mood in Plato, Shakespeare, Pascal, Goethe? And Diderot, who went near to having something of the deep quality of those sovereign spirits, did not escape, any more than they, the visitation of the misanthropic spectre. The distinction of the greater minds is that they have no temptation to give the spectre a permanent home with them, as is done by theologians in order to prove the necessity of grace and another world, or by cynics in order to prove the wisdom of selfishness in this world. The greater minds accept the worse facts of character for what they are worth, and bring them into a right perspective with the better facts. They have no expectation of escaping all perplexities, nor of hitting on answers to all the moral riddles of the world. Yet are they ever drawn by an invincible fascination to the feet of the mighty Sphinx of society. She bewilders them with questions that are never overheard by common ears, and torments them with a mockery that is unobserved by common eyes. The energetic--a Socrates, a Diderot--cannot content themselves with merely recording her everlasting puzzles; still less with merely writing over again the already recorded answers. They insist on scrutinising the moral world afresh; they resolve the magniloquent vocabulary of abstract ethics into the small realities from which it has come; they break the complacent repose of opinion and usage by a graphic irony. "The definitions of moral beings," said Diderot, "are always made from what such beings ought to be, and never from what they are. People incessantly confound duty with the thing as it is."[293] We shall proceed to give a short account of one or two dialogues in which he endeavours to keep clear of this confusion.

By far the most important of these is _Rameau's Nephew_. The fortunes of this singular production are probably unique in literary history. In the year 1804 Schiller handed to Goethe the manuscript of a piece by Diderot, with the wish that he might find himself able to translate it into German. "As I had long," says Goethe, "cherished a great regard for this author, I cheerfully undertook the task, after looking through the original. People can see, I hope, that I threw my whole soul into it."[294] When he had done his work, he returned the manuscript to Schiller. Schiller died almost immediately (May 1805), and the mysterious manuscript disappeared. Goethe could never learn either whence it had come, or whither it went. He always suspected that the autograph original had been sent to the Empress Catherine at St. Petersburg, and that Schiller's manuscript was a copy from that. Though Goethe had executed his translation, as he says, "not merely with readiness but even with passion," the violent and only too just hatred then prevailing in Germany for France and for all that belonged to France, hindered any vogue which _Rameau's Nephew_ might otherwise have had. On the eve of Austerlitz and of Jena there might well be little humour for a satire from the French.

Thirteen years afterwards an edition of Diderot's works appeared in Paris (Belin's edition of 1818), but the editors were obliged to content themselves, for _Rameau's Nephew_, with an analysis of Goethe's translation. In 1821 a lively sensation was produced by the publication of what professed to be the original text of the missing dialogue. It was really a retranslation into French from Goethe. The fraud was not discovered for some time, until in 1823 Brière announced for his edition of Diderot's works a reprint from a genuine original. This original he had procured from Madame de Vandeul, Diderot's daughter, who still survived. She described it as a copy made in 1760 under the author's own eyes, and this may have been the case, though, if so, it must, from some of the references, have been revised after 1773. The two young men who had tried to palm off their retranslation from Goethe as Diderot's own text, at once had the effrontery to accuse Brière and Diderot's daughter of repeating their own fraud. A vivacious dispute followed between the indignant publisher and his impudent detractors. At length Brière appealed to the great Jove of Weimar. Goethe expressed his conviction that Brière's text was the genuine text of the original, and this was held to settle the question. Yet Goethe's voucher for its correspondence with the copy handed to him by Schiller was not really decisive evidence. He admits that he executed the translation very rapidly, and had no time to compare it closely with the French. An identification nearly twenty years afterwards of verbal resemblances and minute references, in a work that had been only a short time in his hands, cannot be counted testimony of the highest kind. We have thus the extraordinary circumstance that for a great number of years, down almost to the present decade, the text of the one masterpiece of a famous man who died so recently as 1784 rested on a single manuscript, and that a manuscript of disputed authenticity.[295]

Critics differ extremely in their answers to the question of the subject or object of Diderot's singular "farce-tragedy." One declares it to be merely a satirical picture of contemporary manners. Another insists that it is meant to be an ironical _reductio ad absurdum_ of the theory of self-interest, by exhibiting a concrete example of its working in all its grossness. A third holds that it was composed by way of rejoinder to Palissot's comedy _(Les Philosophes_), 1760, which had brought the chiefs of the rationalistic school upon the stage, and presented them as enemies of the human race. A fourth suspects that the personal and dramatic portions are no more than a setting for the discussion of the comparative merits of the French and Italian schools of music. The true answer is that the dialogue is all of these things, because it is none of them. It is neither more nor less than the living picture and account of an original, drawn by a man of genius who was accustomed to observe human nature and society with a free unblinking vision, and to meditate upon them deeply and searchingly.

Diderot goes to work with Rameau in some sort and to a certain extent as Shakespeare went to work with Falstaff. He is the artist, reproducing with the variety and perfection of art a whimsical figure that struck his fancy and stirred the creative impulse. Ethics, æsthetics, manners, satire, are all indeed to be found in the dialogue, but they are only there as incident to the central figure of the sketch, the prodigy of parasites. Diderot had no special fondness for these originals. Yet he had a keen and just sense of their interest. "Their character stands out from the rest of the world, it breaks that tiresome uniformity which our bringing up, our social conventions, and our arbitrary fashions have introduced. If one of them makes his appearance in a company, he is like leaven, fermenting and restoring to each person present a portion of his natural individuality. He stirs people up, moves them, provokes to praise or blame: he is a means of bringing out reality; gives honest people a chance of showing what they are made of, and unmasks the rogues."[296]

Hearing that the subject of Diderot's dialogue is the Parasite, the scholar will naturally think of that savage satire in which Juvenal rehearses the thousand humiliations that Virro inflicts on Trebius: how the wretched follower has to drink fiery stuff from broken crockery, while the patron quaffs of the costliest from splendid cups of amber and precious stones; how the host has fine oil of Venafrum, while the guest munches cabbage that has been steeped in rancid lamp-oil; one plays daintily with mullet and lamprey, while the other has his stomach turned by an eel as long as a snake, and bloated in the foul torrent of the sewers; Virro has apples that might have come from the gardens of the Hesperides, while Trebius gnaws such musty things as are tossed to a performing monkey on the town wall. But the distance is immeasurable between Juvenal's scorching truculence and Diderot's half-ironical, half-serious sufferance. Juvenal knows that Trebius is a base and abject being; he tells him what he is; and in the process blasts him. Diderot knows that Rameau too is base and abject, but he is so little willing to rest in the fat and easy paradise of conventions, that he seems to be all the time vaguely wondering in his own mind how far this genius of grossness and paradox and bestial sophism is a pattern of the many, with the mask thrown off. He seems to be inwardly musing whether it can after all be true, that if one draws aside a fold of the gracious outer robe of conformity, there is no comeliness of life shining underneath, but only this horror of the skeleton and the worm. He restrains exasperation at the brilliant effrontery of his man, precisely as an anatomist would suppress disgust at a pathological monstrosity, or an astonishing variation in which he hoped to surprise some vital secret. Rameau is not crudely analysed as a vile type: he is searched as exemplifying on a prodigious scale elements of character that lie furtively in the depths of characters that are not vile. It seems as if Diderot unconsciously anticipated that terrible, that woful, that desolating saying,--_There is in every man and woman something which, if you knew it, would make you hate them_. Rameau is not all parasite. He is your brother and mine, a product from the same rudimentary factors of mental composition, a figure cast equally with ourselves in one of the countless moulds of the huge social foundry.

Such is the scientific attitude of mind towards character: It is not philanthropic nor pitiful: the fact that base characters exist and are of intelligible origin is no reason why we should not do our best to shun and to extirpate them. This assumption of the scientific point of view, this change from mere praise and blame to scrutiny, this comprehension that mere execration is not the last word, is a mark of the modern spirit. Besides Juvenal, another writer of genius has shown us the parasite of an ancient society. Lucian, whose fertility, wit, invention, mockery, freshness of spirit, and honest hatred of false gods, make him the Voltaire of the second century, has painted with all his native liveliness more than one picture of the parasite. The great man's creature at Rome endures exactly the same long train of affronts and humiliations as the great man's creature at Paris sixteen centuries later, beginning with the anguish of the mortified stomach, as savoury morsels of venison or boar are given to more important guests, and ending with the anguish of the mortified spirit, as he sees himself supplanted by a rival of shapelier person, a more ingenious versifier, a cleverer mountebank. The dialogue in which Lucian ironically proves that Parasitic, or the honourable craft of Spunging, has as many of the marks of a genuine art as Rhetoric, Gymnastic, or Music, is a spirited parody of Socratic catechising and Platonic mannerisms. Simo shows to Tychiades, as ingeniously as Rameau shows to Diderot, that the Spunger has a far better life of it, and is a far more rational and consistent person than the orator and the philosopher.[297] Lucian's satire is vivid, brilliant, and diverting. Yet every one feels that Diderot's performance, while equally vivid, is marked by greater depth of spirit; comes from a soil that has been more freely broken up, and has been enriched by a more copious experience. The ancient turned upon these masterpieces of depravation the flash of intellectual scorn; the modern eyes them with a certain moral patience, and something of that curious kind of interest, looking half like sympathy, which a hunter has for the object of his chase.

The Rameau of the dialogue was a real personage, and there is a dispute whether Diderot has not calumniated him. Evidence enough remains that he was at least a person of singular character and irregular disastrous life. Diderot's general veracity of temperament would make us believe that his picture is authentic, but the interest of the dialogue is exactly the same in either case. Juvenal's fifth satire would be worth neither more nor less, however much were found out about Trebius.

"Rameau is one of the most eccentric figures in the country, where God has not made them lacking. He is a mixture of elevation and lowness, of good sense and madness; the notions of good and bad must be mixed up together in strange confusion in his head, for he shows the good qualities that nature has bestowed on him without any ostentation, and the bad ones without the smallest shame. For the rest, he is endowed with a vigorous frame, a particular warmth of imagination, and an uncommon strength of lungs. If you ever meet him, unless you happen to be arrested by his originality, you will either stuff your fingers into your ears or else take to your heels. Heavens, what a monstrous pipe! Nothing is so little like him as himself. One time he is lean and wan, like a patient in the last stage of consumption: you could count his teeth through his cheeks; you would say he must have passed some days without tasting a morsel, or that he is fresh from La Trappe. A month after, he is stout and sleek as if he had been sitting all the time at the board of a financier, or had been shut up in a Bernardine monastery. To-day in dirty linen, his clothes torn and patched, with barely a shoe to his foot, he steals along with a bent head; one is tempted to hail him and toss him a shilling. To-morrow, all powdered, curled, in a good coat, he marches about with head erect and open mien, and you would almost take him for a decent worthy creature. He lives from day to day, from hand to mouth, downcast or sad, just as things may go. His first care of a morning when he gets up is to know where he will dine; after dinner, he begins to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings disquiets of its own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret he has, unless the landlady, weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away from him; or else he shrinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the town, where he waits for daybreak over a crust of bread and a mug of beer. When he has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes happens, he has recourse either to a hackney-carriage belonging to a friend, or to a coachman of some man of quality, who gives him a bed on the straw beside the horses. In the morning he still has bits of the mattress in his hair. If the weather is mild, he measures the Champs Elysées all night long. With the day he reappears in the town, dressed over night for the morrow, and from the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of the week."

Diderot is accosted by this curious being one afternoon on a bench in front of the Café de la Régence in the Palais Royal. They proceed in the thoroughly natural and easy manner of interlocutors in a Platonic dialogue. It is not too much to say that _Rameau's Nephew_ is the most effective and masterly use of that form of discussion since Plato. Diderot's vein of realism is doubtless in strong contrast with Plato's poetic and idealising touch. Yet imaginative strokes are not wanting to soften the repulsive theme, and to bring the sordid and the foul within the sphere of art. For an example. "Time has passed," says Rameau, "and that is always so much gained."

"_I._--So much lost, you mean.

"_He._--No, no; gained. People grow rich every moment; a day less to live, or a crown piece to the good, 'tis all one. When the last moment comes, one is as rich as another. Samuel Bernard, who by pillaging and stealing and playing bankrupt, leaves seven-and-twenty million francs in gold, is no better than Rameau, who leaves not a penny, and will be indebted to charity for a shroud to wrap about him. The dead man hears not the tolling of the bell; 'tis in vain that a hundred priests bawl dirges for him, in vain that a long file of blazing torches go before. His soul walks not by the side of the master of the funeral ceremonies. To moulder under marble, or to moulder under clay, 'tis still to moulder. To have around one's bier children in red and children in blue, or to have not a creature, what matters it?"

These are the gleams of the _mens divinior_, that relieve the perplexing moral squalor of the portrait. Even here we have the painful innuendo that a thought which is solemnising and holy to the noble, serves equally well to point a trait of cynical defiance in the ignoble.

Again, there is an indirectly imaginative element in the sort of terror which the thoroughness of the presentation inspires. For indeed it is an emotion hardly short of terror that seizes us, as we listen to the stringent unflinching paradox of this heterogeneous figure. Rameau is the squalid and tattered Satan of the eighteenth century. He is a Mephistopheles out at elbows, a Lucifer in low water; yet always diabolic, with the bright flash of the pit in his eye. Disgust is transformed into horror and affright by the trenchant confidence of his spirit, the daring thoroughness and consistency of his dialectic, the lurid sarcasm, the vile penetration. He discusses a horrible action, or execrable crime, as a virtuoso examines a statue or a painting. He has that rarest fortitude of the vicious, not to shrink from calling his character and conduct by their names. He is one of Swift's Yahoos, with the courage of its opinions. He seems to give one reason for hating and dreading oneself. The effect is of mixed fear and fascination, as of a magician whose miraculous crystal is to show us what and how we shall be twenty years from now; or as when a surgeon tells the tale of some ghastly disorder, that may at the very moment be stealthily preparing for us a doom of anguish.

Hence our dialogue is assuredly no "meat for little people nor for fools." Some of it is revolting in its brutal indecency. Even Goethe's self-possession cannot make it endurable to him. But it is a study to be omitted by no one who judges the corruption of the old society in France an important historic subject. The picture is very like the corruption of the old society in Rome. We see the rotten material which the purifying flame of Jacobinism was soon to consume out of the land with fiery swiftness. We watch the very classes from which, as we have been so often told, the regeneration of France would have come, if only demagogues and rabble had not violently interposed. There is no gaiety in the style; none of that laughter which makes such a delineation of the manners of the time as we find in Collé's play of _Truth in Wine_, _naïf_, true to nature, and almost exhilarating. In _Rameau_ we are afflicted by the odour of deadly taint.

As the dialogue is not in every hand--nor could any one wish that it should be--I have thought it worth while to print an English rendering of a considerable part of it in an appendix. Mr. Carlyle told us long ago that it must be translated into English, and although such a piece of work is less simple than it may seem, it appears right to give the reader an opportunity of judging for himself of the flavour of the most characteristic of all Diderot's performances. Only let no reader turn to it who has any invincible repugnance to that curious turn for _wildbret_, which Goethe has described as the secret of some arts.

Dixeris hæc inter varicosos centuriones, Continuo crassum ridet Pulfenius ingens Et centum Græcos curto centusse licebit.

As I have already said, it must be judged as something more than a literary diversion. "You do not suspect, Sir Philosopher," says Rameau, "that at this moment I represent the most important part of the town and the court." As the painter of the picture says, Rameau confessed the vices that he had, and that most of the people about us have; but he was no hypocrite. He was neither more nor less abominable than they; he was only more frank and systematic and profound in his depravity. This is the social significance of the dialogue. This is what, apart from other considerations, makes _Rameau's Nephew_ so much more valuable a guide to the moral sentiment of the time than merely licentious compositions like those of Louvet or La Olos. Its instructiveness is immense to those who examine the conditions that prepared the Revolution. Rameau is not the [Greek: akolastos] of Aristotle, nor the creature of [Greek: aponoia] described by Theophrastus--the castaway by individual idiosyncrasy, the reprobate by accident. The men whom he represented, the courtiers, the financiers, the merchants, the shopkeepers, were immoral by formula and depraved on principle. Vice was a doctrine to them, and wretchlessness of unclean living was reduced to a system of philosophy. Any one, I venture to repeat, who realises the extent to which this had corroded the ruling powers in France, will perceive that the furious flood of social energy which the Jacobins poured over the country was not less indispensable to France than the flood of the barbarians was indispensable for the transformation of the Roman Empire.

Scattered among the more serious fragments of the dialogue is some excellent by-play of sarcasm upon Palissot, and one or two of the other assailants of the new liberal school. Palissot is an old story. The Palissots are an eternal species. The family never dies out, and it thrives in every climate. All societies know the literary dangler in great houses, and the purveyor to fashionable prejudices. Not that he is always servile. The reader, I daresay, remembers that La Bruyère described a curious being in Troilus, the despotic parasite. Palissot, eighteenth century or nineteenth century, is often like Troilus, parasite and tyrant at the same time. He usually happens to have begun life with laudable aspirations and sincere interests of his own; and when, alas, the mediocrity of his gifts proves too weak to bear the burden of his ambitions, the recollection of a generous youth only serves to sour old age.

Bel esprit abhorré de tous les bons esprits, Il pense par la haine échapper au mépris. A force d'attentats il se croit illustré; Et s'il n'était méchant, il serait ignoré.

Palissot began with a tragedy. He proceeded to an angry pamphlet against the Encyclopædists and the fury for innovation. Then he achieved immense vogue among fine ladies, bishops, and the lighter heads of the town, by the comedy in which he held Diderot, D'Alembert, and the others, up to hatred and ridicule. Finally, after coming to look upon himself as a serious personage, he disappeared into the mire of half-oblivious contempt and disgust that happily awaits all the poor Palissots and all their works. His name only survives in connection with the men whom he maligned. He lived to be old, as, oddly enough, Spite so often does. In the Terror he had a narrow escape, for he was brought before Chaumette. Chaumette apostrophised the assailant of Rousseau and Diderot with rude energy, but did not send him to the guillotine. In this the practical disciple only imitated the magnanimity of his theoretical masters. Rousseau had declined an opportunity of punishing Palissot's impertinences, and Diderot took no worse vengeance upon him than by making an occasional reference of contempt to him in a dialogue which he perhaps never intended to publish.

Another subject is handled in _Rameau's Nephew,_ which is interesting in connection with the mental activity of Paris in the eighteenth century. Music was the field of as much passionate controversy as theology and philosophy. The Bull Unigenitus itself did not lead to livelier disputes, or more violent cabals, than the conflict between the partisans of French music and the partisans of Italian music. The horror of a Jansenist for a Molinist did not surpass that of a Lullist for a Dunist, or afterwards of a Gluckist for a Piccinist.[298] Lulli and Rameau (the uncle of our parasite) had undisputed possession of Paris until the arrival, in 1752, of a company of Italian singers. The great quarrel at once broke out as to the true method and destination of musical composition. Is music an independent art, appealing directly to a special sense, or is it to be made an instrument for expressing affections of the mind in a certain deeper way? The Italians asked only for delicious harmonies and exquisite melodies. The French insisted that these should be subordinate to the work of the poet. The former were content with delight, the latter pressed for significance. The one declared that Italian music was no better than a silly tickling of the ears; the other that the overture to a French opera was like a prelude to a Miserere in plain-song. In 1772-73 the illustrious Gluck came to Paris. His art was believed to reconcile the two schools, to have more melody than the old French style, and more severity and meaning than the purely Italian style. French dignity was saved. But soon the old battle, which had been going on for twenty years, began to rage with greater violence than ever. Piccini was brought to Paris by the Neapolitan ambassador. The old cries were heard in a shriller key than before. Pamphlets, broadsheets, sarcasms flew over Paris from every side.

Was music only to flatter the ear, or was it to paint the passions in all their energy, to harrow the soul, to raise men's courage, to form citizens and heroes? The coffee-houses were thrown into dire confusion, and literary societies were rent by fatal discord. Even dinner-parties breathed only constraint and mistrust, and the intimacies of a lifetime came to cruel end. _Rameau's Nephew_ was composed in the midst of the first part of this long campaign of a quarter of a century, and its seems to have been revised by its author in the midst of the second great episode. Diderot declares against the school of Rameau and Lulli. That he should do so was a part of his general reaction in favour of what he called the natural, against the artifice and affectation. Goethe has pointed out the inconsistency between Diderot's sympathy for the less expressive kind of music, and his usual vehement passion for the expressive in art. He truly observes that Diderot's sympathy went in this way, because the novelty and agitation seemed likely to break up the old, stiff, and abhorred fashion, and to clear the ground afresh for other efforts.[299]

END OF VOL. I.

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Oeuv._, xviii. 505.]

[Footnote 2: _Oeuv._, xviii. 364.]

[Footnote 3: _Ib._ 379.]

[Footnote 4: _Oeuv._, i. 30.]

[Footnote 5: _Wahlverwandschaften_, pt. ii. ch. vii. The reader will do well to consult the philosophical estimate of the function of the man of letters given by Comte, _Philosophie Positive_, v. 512, vi. 192, 287. The best contemporary account of the principles and policy of the men of letters in the eighteenth century is to be found in Condorcet's _Esquisse d'un Tableau, etc._, pp. 187-189 (ed. 1847).]

[Footnote 6: Naigeon, p. 24.]

[Footnote 7: _Oeuv._, xix. 162.]

[Footnote 8: _Oeuv._, xix. 89.]

[Footnote 9: _Oeuv._, xix. 93.]

[Footnote 10: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.]

[Footnote 11: Marmontel, _Mém._, vol. ii. b. vii. p. 315.]

[Footnote 12: Morellet, _Mém._, i. p. 29.]

[Footnote 13: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.]

[Footnote 14: _Ib._ xix. 55.]

[Footnote 15: _Oeuv._, xviii. 376.]

[Footnote 16: Madame de Vandeul says 1744. But M. Jal (_Dict. Crit._, 495) reproduces the certificate of the marriage. Perhaps we may charitably hope that Diderot himself is equally mistaken, when in later years he sets down a disreputable adventure to 1744. (_Oeuv._, xix. 85.)]

[Footnote 17: For an account of Madame de Puisieux in her later years, see Mdme. Roland's _Memoirs_, i. 156.]

[Footnote 18: Sainte Beuve, _Causeries_, ix. 136.]

[Footnote 19: _Oeuv._, xix. 159. See also _Salons_, 1767, No, 118.]

[Footnote 20: _Les Règnes de Claud et de Néron, § 79.]

[Footnote 21: Account of Diderot by Meister, printed in Grimm's _Correspondence Littéraire_ xiii. 202-211.]

[Footnote 22: Grétry, quoted in Genin's _Oeuv. choisies de Diderot_, 42.]

[Footnote 23: Marmontel, _Mém_., bk. vii. vol. ii. 312.]

[Footnote 24: Plato, _Theages_, 130, c.]

[Footnote 25: Art. _Encyclopédie_.]

[Footnote 26: See Barbier's Journal, iv. 166.]

[Footnote 27: The book was among those found in the possession of the unfortunate La Barre.]

[Footnote 28: Honegger's _Kritische Geschichte der französischen Cultureinflüsse in den letzten Jahrhunderten_, pp. 267-273.]

[Footnote 29: "Es ist nicht gleichgültig ob eine Folge grosser Gedanken in frischer Ursprünglichkeit auf die Zeitgenossen wirkt, oder ob sie zu einer Mixtur mit reichlichem Zusatz überlieferter Vorurtheile verarbeitet ist. Ebensowenig ist est gleichgültig welcher Stimmung, welchem Zustande der Geister eine neue Lehre begegnet. Man darf aber kühn behaupten, das für die volle durchführung der von Newton angebahnten Weltanschauung weder eine günstigere Naturanlage, noch eine günstigere Stimmung getroffen werden konnte, als die der Franzosen im 18. Jahrhundert." (Lange's _Gesch. d. Materialismus_, i. 303.) But the writer, like most historians of opinion, does not dwell sufficiently on the co-operation of external social conditions with the progress of logical inference.]

[Footnote 30: See Montgeron's _La Verité des Miracles de M. de Pâris démontrée_ (1737)--an interesting contribution to the pathology of the human mind.]

[Footnote 31: Barbier, 168, 244, etc.]

[Footnote 32: _Pensées Philosophiques_, xviii.]

[Footnote 33: On this, see Lange, i. 294.]

[Footnote 34: _Pensées Philosophiques. Oeuv._, i. 128, 129.]

[Footnote 35: _Oeuv._, xix. 87. Grimm, Supp. 148.]

[Footnote 36: Volney, in a book that was famous in its day, _Les Ruines, ou Méditation sur les révolutions des empires_ (1791), resorted to a slight difference of method. Instead of leaving the pretensions of the various creeds to cancel one another, he invented a rather striking scene, in which the priests of each creed are made to listen to the professions of their rival, and then inveigh against his superstition and inconsistency. The assumption on which Diderot's argument rests is, that as so many different creeds all make the same exclusive claim, the claim is equally false throughout. Volney's argument turns more directly on the merits, and implies that all religions are equally morbid or pathological products, because they all lead to conduct condemned by their own most characteristic maxims. Volney's concrete presentation of comparative religion was highly effective for destructive purposes, though it would now be justly thought inadequate. (See _Oeuv. de Volney_, i. 109, etc.)]

[Footnote 37: See on this, Lange, ii. 308.]

[Footnote 38: _De la Suffisance de la Religion Naturelle_, § 5.]

[Footnote 39: It is well to remember that torture was not abolished in France until the Revolution. A Catholic writer makes the following judicious remark: "We cannot study the eighteenth century without being struck by the immoral consequences that inevitably followed for the population of Paris from the frequency and the hideous details of criminal executions. In reading the journals of the time, we are amazed at the place taken in popular life by the scenes of the Grève. It was the theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in slow agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by decapitation and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its heroes--the everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by seeing Damiens torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon limb from limb." (Carné, _Monarchie française au 18ième Siècle_, p. 493.)]

[Footnote 40: _Lettres sur les Anglais_, xxiii.]

[Footnote 41: _Essai sur le Mérite_, I. ii. § 3. _Oeue.,_ i. 33.]

[Footnote 42: "Shaftesbury is one of the most important apparitions of the eighteenth century. All the greatest spirits of that time, not only in England, but also Leibnitz, Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland, and Herder, drew the strongest nourishment from him." (Hettner, _Literaturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts: ler Theil_. 188.) See also Lange's _Gesch. des Materialismus,_ i. 306, etc. An excellent account of Shaftesbury is given by Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his _Essays on Free-thinking and Plain-speaking_.]

[Footnote 43: _Oeuv_., i. xlvi.]

[Footnote 44: Jobez, _France sous Louis XV_., ii. 373. There were, in 1725, 24,000 houses, 20,000 carriages, and 120,000 horses. (Martin's _Hist, de France_, xv. 116.)]

[Footnote 45: The records of Paris in this century contain more than one illustration of the turbulence of this odious army of lackeys. Barbier, i. 118. For the way in which their insolence was fostered, see Saint-Simon, xii. 354, etc. The number of lackeys retained seems to have been extraordinarily great in proportion to the total of annual expenditure, and this is a curious point in the manners of the time. See Voltaire, _Dict. Phil_, § v. Économie Domestique (liv. 182).]

[Footnote 46: Duclos, _Mém. secrets sur le Règne de Louis XV., iii 306.]

[Footnote 47: _Oeuv_., xix. 91.]

[Footnote 48: _Ib_. p. 130.]

[Footnote 49: _Prom, du Sceptique. Oeuv_., i. 229.]

[Footnote 50: "If there is a God, he is infinitely incomprehensible, since, being without parts or limits, he has no relation to us: we are therefore incapable of knowing what he is, or if he is. That being so, who shall venture to undertake the solution of the question? Not we, at any rate, who have no relation to him." _Pensees_, II. iii. 1.]

[Footnote 51: P. 182.]

[Footnote 52: P. 223.]

[Footnote 53: Barbazan's _Fabliaux et Contes_, iii. 409 (ed. 1808). The learned Barbazan's first edition was published in 1756, and so Diderot may well have heard some of the contents of the work then in progress.]

[Footnote 54: Naigeon.]

[Footnote 55: In my _Rousseau_, p. 243 (new ed.)]

[Footnote 56: _Voltaire_, p. 149 (new ed., Globe 8vo).]

[Footnote 57: Joubert.]

[Footnote 58: Hettner, _Literaiurgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts_, ii. 301.]

[Footnote 59: _Oeuv._, ii. 260, etc.]

[Footnote 60: _Oeuv._, ii. 258, 259. _De l'Essai sur les Femmes, par Thomas_. See Grimm's _Corr. Lit._, vii. 451, where the book is disparaged; and viii. 1, where Diderot's view of it is given. Thomas (1732-85) belonged to the philosophical party, but not to the militant section of it. He was a serious and orderly person in his life, and enjoyed the closest friendship with Madame Necker. His enthusiasm for virtue, justice, and freedom, expressed with much magniloquence, made him an idol in the respectable circle which Madame Necker gathered round her. He has been justly, though perhaps harshly, described as a "valetudinarian Grandison." (Albert's _Lit. Française au 18ième Siècle_, p. 423.)]

[Footnote 61: _Elémens de la Philosophie de Newton_, Pt. II. ch. vii. Berkeley himself only refers once to Cheselden's case: _Theory of Vision vindicated_, § 71. Professor Fraser, in his important edition of Berkeley's works (i. 444), reproduces from the _Philosophical Transactions_ the original account of the operation, which is unfortunately much less clear and definite than Voltaire's emphasised version would make it, though its purport is distinct enough.]

[Footnote 62: _Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances humaines_, I. § 6.]

[Footnote 63: _Let. sur les Aveugles_, 323, 324. Condorcet attaches a higher value to Cheselden's operation. _Oeuv._, ii. 121.]

[Footnote 64: Dr. M'Cosh _(Exam. of J. S. Mill's Philosophy_, p. 163) quotes what seems to be the best reported case, by a Dr. Franz, of Leipsic; and Prof. Fraser, in the appendix to Berkeley (_loc. cit._), quotes another good case by Mr. Nunnely. See also Mill's _Exam. of Hamilton_, p. 288 (3d ed.)]

[Footnote 65: _Confessions_, II, vii.]

[Footnote 66: Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals_, c. xiii. p. 312, and also pp. 335-337. This fact, so far as it goes, seems to make against the theory of transmitted sentiments.]

[Footnote 67: Locke answered that the man would not distinguish the cube from the sphere, until he had identified by actual touch the source of his former tactual impression with the object making a given visual impression. Condillac, while making just objections to the terms in which Molyneux propounded the question, answered it different from Locke. Diderot expresses his own opinion thus: "I think that when the eyes of the born-blind are opened for the first time to the light, he will perceive nothing at all; that some time will be necessary for his eye to make experiments for itself; but that it will make these experiments itself, and in its own way, and without the help of touch." This is in harmony with the modern doctrine, that there is an inherited aptitude of structure (in the eye, for instance), but that experience is an essential condition to the development and perfecting of this aptitude.]

[Footnote 68: A very intelligent English translation of the _Letter on the Blind_ was published in 1773. For some reason or other, Diderot is described on the title-page as Physician to His most Christian Majesty.]

[Footnote 69: _Oeuv_., i. 308.]

[Footnote 70: Pp. 309, 310.]

[Footnote 71: P. 311.]

[Footnote 72: _Corr._, June 1749.]

[Footnote 73: See _Critical Miscellanies: First Series_.]

[Footnote 74: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]

[Footnote 75: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]

[Footnote 76: P. 294.]

[Footnote 77: Lewes's _Hist. Philos_., ii. 342.]

[Footnote 78: Rosenkranz, i. 102.]

[Footnote 79: Tylor's _Researches into the early history of mankind_, chaps. ii. and iii.; Lubbock's _Origin of Civilization_, chap. ix.]

[Footnote 80: Madame Dupré de Saint Maur, who had found favour in the eyes of the Count d'Argenson. D'Argenson, younger brother of the Marquis, who had been dismissed in 1747, was in power from 1743 to 1757. Notwithstanding his alleged share in Diderot's imprisonment, he was a tolerably steady protector of the philosophical party.]

[Footnote 81: Barbier, iv. 337.]

[Footnote 82: There is a picture of Berryer, under the name of Orgon in that very curious book, _L'Ecole de l'Homme_, ii. 73.]

[Footnote 83: Pieces given in Diderot's Works, xx. 121-123.]

[Footnote 84: Naigeon, p. 131.]

[Footnote 85: Voltaire's _Corr_. July and Aug. 1749.]

[Footnote 86: _Conf_., II. viii.]

[Footnote 87: Michelet's _Louis XV_., p. 258.]

[Footnote 88: See the present author's _Rousseau_, vol. i. p. 134 (Globe 8vo ed.)]

[Footnote 89: For the two petitions of the booksellers to D'Argenson praying for Diderot's liberty, see M. Assézat's preliminary notice. _Oeuv_., xiii. 112, etc.]

[Footnote 90: Jourdain's _Recherches sur les traductions latines d'Aristote_, p. 325.]

[Footnote 91: _Lit. of Europe_, pt. i. ch. ii. § 39.]

[Footnote 92: Whewell's _Hist. Induc. Sci._. xii. c. 7.]

[Footnote 93: Fr. Roger Bacon; J.S. Brewer's Pref. pp 57, 63.]

[Footnote 94: Leibnitii, Opera v. 184.]

[Footnote 95: _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, i. 63.]

[Footnote 96: _Mém._ pour J.P.F. Luneau de Boisjermain, 4to, Paris, 1771. See also Diderot's _Prospectus_, "La traduction entière de Chambers nous a passé sous les yeux," etc.]

[Footnote 97: Biog. Universelle, _s.v._]

[Footnote 98: Michelet, _Louis XV._, 258. D'Aguesseau (1668-1751) has left one piece which ought to be extricated from the thirteen quartos of his works--his memoir of his father (_Oeuv._, xiii.) This is one of those records of solid and elevated character, which do more to refresh and invigorate the reader than a whole library of religious or ethical exhortations can do. It has the loftiness, the refined austerity, the touching impressiveness of Tacitus's _Agricola_ or Condorcet's _Turgot_, together with a certain grave sweetness that was almost peculiar to the Jansenist school of the seventeenth century.]

[Footnote 99: A short estimate of D'Alembert's principal scientific pieces, by M. Bertram, is to be found in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for October 1865.]

[Footnote 100: _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, iv. 367.]

[Footnote 101: _Oeuv. de J. Ph. Roland_, i. 230 (ed. 1800).]

[Footnote 102: _Essai sur la Société des Gens de Lettres et des Grands_, etc. _Oeuv_., iv. 372. "Write," he says, "as if you loved glory; in conduct, act as if it were indifferent to you." Compare, with reference to the passage in the text, Duclos's remark (_Consid. sur les Moeurs_, ch. xi.): "The man in power commands, but the intelligent govern, because in time they form public opinion, and that sooner or later subjugates every kind of despotism." Only partially true.]

[Footnote 103: _Pensées Philos._, § 26.]

[Footnote 104: _Phil. Pos._, v. 520. _Polit. Pos._, iii. 584.]

[Footnote 105: See Pref. to vol. iii.]

[Footnote 106: For instance, see Pref. to vol. vi.]

[Footnote 107: _Siècle de Louis XV_., ch. xliii.]

[Footnote 108: Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 273. Diderot, _Oeuv_., iv. 15.]

[Footnote 109: _Avertissement_ to vol. vi.; also to vol. vii. Turgot's articles were Etymiologie, Existence, Expansibilité, Foires, Fondations. The text of these is wrongly inserted among Diderot's contributions to the Encyclopædia, in the new edition of his Works, xv. 12.]

[Footnote 110: Condorcet's _Vie de Turgot_.]

[Footnote 111: Pref. to vol. iii. (1752), and to vol. vi. (1756).]

[Footnote 112: Pref. to vol. ii.]

[Footnote 113: Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 130. Forbonnais's chief work is his _Becherches et Considérations sur les finances de la France_.]

[Footnote 114: _Avert._ to vol. ii.]

[Footnote 115: Nov. 10, 1760, xix. 24. Also, Oct. 7, 1761, xix. 35.]

[Footnote 116: See also Preface to vol. iii.]

[Footnote 117: _Avert._ to vol. vi., and _s. v. Fontange_. Grimm, i. 451.]

[Footnote 118: _Corresp. avec D'Alembert_ (_Oeuv._, lxxv.), Sept. 1755, Feb. 1757, etc.]

[Footnote 119: Dec. 22, 1757.]

[Footnote 120: May 24, 1757.]

[Footnote 121: Dec. 13, 1756; April 1756.]

[Footnote 122: July 21, 1757.]

[Footnote 123: Article _Encyclopédie_.]

[Footnote 124: To Voltaire, Feb. 15, 1757.]

[Footnote 125: Hettner's _Literaturgesch, des 18ten Jahrhunderts_, ii. 277.]

[Footnote 126: Art. _Encyclopédie_.]

[Footnote 127: _Prospectus_.]

[Footnote 128: Barbier, v. 151, 153.]

[Footnote 129: Diderot to Voland, _Oeuv_., xviii. 361. Carlyle's _Frederick,_ bk. xviii. ch. xi.]

[Footnote 130: _Apologie de l' Abbe de Prades. Oeuv.,_ i. 482.]

[Footnote 131: See Jobez, i. 358.]

[Footnote 132: xix. 425.]

[Footnote 133: Barbier, v. 160.]

[Footnote 134: _Ib_. v. 169.]

[Footnote 135: Grimm, _Corr. Lit_., i. 81. Barbier, _v_. 170.]

[Footnote 136: _Avert._, to vol. iii. _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, iv. 410.]

[Footnote 137: Barbier, v. 170. Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 201; _Ib._ ii. 197.]

[Footnote 138: Hardy, quoted by Aubertin, 407, 408.]

[Footnote 139: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 271.]

[Footnote 140: To D'Alembert, Dec. 29, 1757; Jan. 1758.]

[Footnote 141: For a short account of Helvétius's book, see a later chapter.]

[Footnote 142: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 292, 293.]

[Footnote 143: Barbier, vii. 125-142.]

[Footnote 144: Lacretelle's _France pendant le 18ième Siècle_, iii. 89.]

[Footnote 145: Jobez, ii. 464, 538.]

[Footnote 146: See _Rousseau_, vol. i. chaps, vii. and ix. (Globe 8vo ed.)]

[Footnote 147: _Louis XV. et Louis XVI._, p. 50.]

[Footnote 148: Jan. 11, 1758. Jan. 20, 1758. Diderot to Mdlle. Voland, Oct. 11, 1759. See the following chapter.]

[Footnote 149: Voltaire to D'Alembert, Jan. to May 1758. Voltaire to Diderot, Jan. 1758.]

[Footnote 150: Diderot to Voltaire, Feb. 19, 1758, xix. 452.]

[Footnote 151: To Voland, _Oeuv._, xix. 146.]

[Footnote 152: _Corr. Lit._, vii. 146.]

[Footnote 153: _Corr. Lit._, vii. 146.]

[Footnote 154: _Oeuv. de Voltaire_. Published sometimes among _Facéties_, sometimes among _Mélanges_.]

[Footnote 155: See _Oeuv. Choisies de Jean Reynaud_, reprinted in 1866. The article on _Encyclopèdie_ (vol. i.) is an interesting attempt to vindicate Cartesian principles of classification.]

[Footnote 156: See fly-leaf of vol. xxviii.]

[Footnote 157: _Mém._, ii. 115. Grimm, vii. 145.]

[Footnote 158: De Maistre says that the reputation of Bacon does not really go farther back than the Encyclopædia, and that no true discoverer either knew him or leaned on him for support. (_Examen de la Phil. de Bacon_, ii. 110.) Diderot says: "I think I have taught my fellow-citizens to esteem and read Bacon; people have turned over the pages of this profound author more since the last five or six years than has ever been the case before" (xiv. 494). In Professor Fowler's careful and elaborate edition of the Novum Organum (_Introduct._, p. 104), he disputes the statement of Montuola and others, that the celebrity of Bacon dates from the Encyclopædia. All turns upon what we mean by celebrity. What the Encyclopædists certainly did was to raise Bacon, for a time, to the popular throne from which Voltaire's Newtonianism had pushed Descartes. Mr. Fowler traces a chain of Baconian tradition, no doubt, but he perhaps surrenders nearly as much as is claimed when he admits that "the patronage of Voltaire and the Encyclopædists did much to extend the study of Bacon's writings, besides producing a considerable controversy as to his true meaning on many questions of philosophy and theology."]

[Footnote 159: See above, p. 62, _note_.]

[Footnote 160: D'Alembert was not afraid to contend against the great captain of the age, that the military spirit of Lewis XIV. had been a great curse to Europe. He showed a true appreciation of Frederick's character and conception of his duties as a ruler, in believing that the King of Prussia would rather have had a hundred thousand labourers more, and as many soldiers fewer, if his situation had allowed it. _Corresp. avec le roi de Prusse_, _Oeuv._, v. 305.]

[Footnote 161: See Essay on Turgot in my _Critical Miscellanies_, _Second Series_.]

[Footnote 162: Such, as that their feudal rights should be confirmed; that none but nobles should carry arms, or be eligible for the army; that _lettres-de-cachet_ should continue; that the press should not be free; that the wine trade should not be free internally or for export; that breaking up wastes and enclosing commons should be prohibited; that the old arrangement of the militia should remain.--Arthur Young's _France_, ch. xxi. p. 607.]

[Footnote 163: _Ib._ ch. xxi.]

[Footnote 164: _Critical Miscellanies_, _Second Series_, p. 202.]

[Footnote 165: _Travels in France_, p. 600.]

[Footnote 166: _Travels in France_, i. 63.]

[Footnote 167: Rosenkranz, i. 219.]

[Footnote 168: _Avert_. to vol. iii]

[Footnote 169: Diderot, _Oeuv._, iv. 24.]

[Footnote 170: Diderot's _Leben_, i. 157.]

[Footnote 171: _Oeuv._, xx. 132.]

[Footnote 172: The writer was one Romilly, who had been elected a minister of one of the French Protestant churches in London. See _Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly_, vol. i.]

[Footnote 173: I have no space to quote an interesting page in this article on the characteristics and the varying destinies of genius. "We must rank in this class Pindar, Æschylus, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mahomet, Shakespeare, Roger Bacon, and Paracelsus." xvii. 265-267.]

[Footnote 174: The same idea is found still more ardently expressed in one of his letters to Mdlle. de Voland (Oct. 15, 1759, xviii. 408), where he defends the eagerness of those who have loved one another during life, to be placed side by side after death.]

[Footnote 175: xiv. 32.]

[Footnote 176: _S.v._ Sarrasins, xvii. 82. See also xviii. 429, for Diderot's admiration of Sadi.]

[Footnote 177: _S.v. Pyrrhonienne_.]

[Footnote 178: _E.g._ in the article on _Plaisir_, xvi. p. 298.]

[Footnote 179: To Damilaville, 1766, xix. 477.]

[Footnote 180: xx. 34.]

[Footnote 181: xvi. 280.]

[Footnote 182: See also article _Indépendance_.]

[Footnote 183: iv. 93.]

[Footnote 184: The reader will find abundant information and criticism upon the Wolffian Philosophy in Professor Edward Caird's _Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant_, recently published at Glasgow.]

[Footnote 185: xvi. 491, 492.]

[Footnote 186: There are casual criticisms on Spinosa in the articles on _Identity_ and _Liberty_.]

[Footnote 187: xv. 501.]

[Footnote 188: xix. 435, 436.]

[Footnote 189: See below, vol. ii.]

[Footnote 190: S.v. _Luxe_, xvi. 23.]

[Footnote 191: As an illustration how much these ideas were in the air, the reader may refer to a passage in Sédaine's popular comedy, _The Philosopher without knowing it_ (1765), Act II. sc. 4. Vanderk, among other things, says of the merchant: "Ce n'est pas un temple, ce n'est pas une seule nation qu'il sert; il les sert toutes, et en est servi: c'est l'homme de l'univers. Quelques particuliers audacieux font armer les rois, la guerre s'allume, tout s'embrase, l'Europe est divisée: mais ce négociant anglais, hollandais, russe ou chinois, n'en est pas moins l'ami de mon coeur: nous sommes sur la superficie de la terre autant de fils de soie qui lient ensemble les nations, et les ramènent à la paix par la nécessité du commerce; voila, mon fils, ce que c'est qu'un honnête négociant."]

[Footnote 192: The younger sister of Diderot's Sophie.]

[Footnote 193: xviii. 454.]

[Footnote 194: See below, the chapter on _Rameau's Nephew_.]

[Footnote 195: Nov. 10, 1770; xix. 22.]

[Footnote 196: See, for instance, xix. 81, 91, 129, 133, 145, etc.--passages which Mr. Carlyle and Rosenkranz have either overlooked, or else, without any good reason, disbelieved.]

[Footnote 197: xviii. 293.]

[Footnote 198: xix. 46.]

[Footnote 199: xix. 84. See also 326.]

[Footnote 200: xix. 137, 341, etc.]

[Footnote 201: xviii. 535.]

[Footnote 202: xviii. 507, etc.]

[Footnote 203: xviii. 526, 531.]

[Footnote 204: Nov. 2, 1759; xviii. 431.]

[Footnote 205: xix. 82.]

[Footnote 206: xix. 139.]

[Footnote 207: xix. 107.]

[Footnote 208: xix. 181.]

[Footnote 209: xix. 81.]

[Footnote 210: xix. 149.]

[Footnote 211: xix. 90.]

[Footnote 212: xix. 163, 164.]

[Footnote 213: Sept. 20, 1765; xix. 179-187.]

[Footnote 214: xviii. 476, 478.]

[Footnote 215: xviii. 479. Comte writes more seriously somewhat in the same sense: "For thirty centuries the priestly castes of China, and still more of India, have been watching our Western transition; to them it must appear mere agitation, as puerile as it is tempestuous, with nothing to harmonise its different phases but their common inroad upon unity." _Positive Polity_, iv. 11 (English Translation)]

[Footnote 216: xix. 233.]

[Footnote 217: Voltaire's Satire on the Economists.]

[Footnote 218: Oct. 8, 1768; xix. 832.]

[Footnote 219: xviii. 509.]

[Footnote 220: xviii. 513.]

[Footnote 221: xviii. 511-513.]

[Footnote 222: xix. 244.]

[Footnote 223: xviii. 459.]

[Footnote 224: xix. 259.]

[Footnote 225: _Lettres de Mdlle. de Lespinasse_, viii. p. 20. (Ed. Asse, 1876.)]

[Footnote 226: Aug. 1, 1769; xix. 365.]

[Footnote 227: (1765-69) xix. 381-412. Also p. 318.]

[Footnote 228: June 1756; xix. 433-436.]

[Footnote 229: Aug. 1762; xix. 112.]

[Footnote 230: In _Rousseau_, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo, ed.)]

[Footnote 231: Dec. 1757; xix. 446.]

[Footnote 232: xix. 449.]

[Footnote 233: Dec. 20, 1765; xix. 210.]

[Footnote 234: See _Rousseau_, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo. ed.)]

[Footnote 235: Oct. 9, 1759; xviii. 397.]

[Footnote 236: Nov. 6, 1760; xix. 17.]

[Footnote 237: Sept. 17, 1761; xix. 47.]

[Footnote 238: Sept. 17, 1769; xix. 320.]

[Footnote 239: _Lettres sur le Commerce de la Librairie_, xviii. 47.]

[Footnote 240: See _Rousseau_, vol. ii. ch. i. (Globe 8vo. ed.)]

[Footnote 241: Diderot's _Lettre sur le Commerce de la Librairie_ (1767). _Oeuv._, xviii.]

[Footnote 242: Those who are interested in the history of authorship may care to know the end of the matter. Copyright is no modern practice, and the perpetual right of authors, or persons to whom they had ceded it, was recognised in France through the whole of the seventeenth century and three-quarters of the eighteenth. The perpetuity of the right had produced literary properties of considerable value; for example, Boudot's Dictionary was sold by his executors for 24,000 livres; Prévot's Manual Lexicon and two Dictionaries for 115,000 livres. But in 1777--ten years after Diderot's plea--the Council decreed that copyright was a privilege and an exercise of the royal grace. The motives for this reduction of an author's right from a transferable property to a terminable privilege seem to have been, first, the general mania of the time for drawing up the threads of national life into the hands of the administration, and second, the hope of making money by a tariff of permissions. The Constituent Assembly dealt with the subject with no intelligence nor care, but the Convention passed a law recognising in the author an exclusive right for his life, and giving a property for ten years after his death to heirs or _cessionaires_. The whole history is elaborately set forth in the collection of documents entitled _La Propriété littéraire au 18ième siècle_. (Hachette, 1859.)]

[Footnote 243: Oct. 11, 1759; xviii. 401.]

[Footnote 244: xix. 319, 320.]

[Footnote 245: _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 73.]

[Footnote 246: Walpole to Selwyn. 1765. Jesse's _Selwyn_, ii. 9. See also Walpole to Mann, iv. 283.]

[Footnote 247: D'Epinay, ii. 4, 138, 153, etc.]

[Footnote 248: See Comte's _Positive Polity_, vol. iii.]

[Footnote 249: "_That virtue of originality that men so strain after is not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new), it is only genuineness._"--Ruskin.]

[Footnote 250: Lessing: 1729-81. Diderot: 1713-84. As De Quincey puts it, Lessing may be said to have begun his career precisely in the middle of the last century.]

[Footnote 251: _Hamburg. Dramaturgie_, § 85. Werke, vi. 381. (Ed. 1873.)]

[Footnote 252: Diderot's _Leben_, i. 274, 277.]

[Footnote 253: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 103.]

[Footnote 254: See Grimm's account of the performance, _Corr. Lit._, vii. 313.]

[Footnote 255: Act IV. sc. 3.]

[Footnote 256: Act V. sc. 3.]

[Footnote 257: _De la Poésie Dramatique_, ch. xxi.]

[Footnote 258: vii. 107.]

[Footnote 259: Nov. 28, 1760; xix. 457.]

[Footnote 260: _Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets_, i. 359.]

[Footnote 261: _Correspond. du Roi Stanislas-Auguste et de Mdme. Geoffrin, _p. 466.]

[Footnote 262: Aug. 1769; xix. 314-323.]

[Footnote 263: Quoted in Mr. Sime's excellent _Life of Lessing_ (Trübner and Co., 1877), p. 230.]

[Footnote 264: _De la Poésie Dramatique_, § 2, vii. 313.]

[Footnote 265: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 177 (ed. 1837).]

[Footnote 266: xix. 474.]

[Footnote 267: _Père de Famille_, Act II. sc. 2, p. 211.]

[Footnote 268: _Paradoxe sur le Comédien_, p. 383.]

[Footnote 269: _Journals_, ii. 331. Also vi. 248; vii. 9.]

[Footnote 270: _Réflexions sur Térence_, v. 228-238. In another place (_De la Poésie Dram._, 370) he says: "Nous avons des comédies. Les Anglais n'ont que des satires, à la vérité pleines de force et de gaieté, mais sans moeurs et sans goût. Les Italiens en sont réduits au drame burlesque."]

[Footnote 271: vii. 95.]

[Footnote 272: _Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets_, i. 355.]

[Footnote 273: _Paradoxe_, viii. 384. The criticism on the detestable rendering of _Hamlet_ by Ducis (viii. 471) makes one doubt whether Diderot knew much about Shakespeare.]

[Footnote 274: Letter to Mdlle. Jodin, xix. 387.]

[Footnote 275: Johnson one day said to John Kemble: "Are you, sir, one of those enthusiasts who believe yourself transformed into the very character you represent?" Kemble answered that he had never felt so strong a persuasion himself. _Boswell_, ch. 77.]

[Footnote 276: Lessing makes this a starting-point of his criticism of the art of acting, though he uses it less absolutely than Diderot would do. _Hamburg. Dramaturgie_, § 3, vol. vi. 19.]

[Footnote 277: In Lichtenberg's _Briefe aus England_ (1776) there is a criticism of the most admirably intelligent kind on Garrick. Lord Lytton gave an account of it to English readers in the _Fortnightly Review_ (February 1871). The following passage confirms what Diderot says above:

"You have doubtless heard much of his extraordinary power of change of face. Here is one example of it. When he played the part of Sir John Brute, I was close to the stage, and could observe him narrowly. He entered with the corners of his mouth so turned down, as to give to his whole countenance the expression of habitual sottishness and debauchery. And this artificial form of the mouth he retained, unaltered, from the beginning to the end of the play, with the exception only that, as the play went on, the lips gaped and hung more and more in proportion to the gradually increasing drunkenness of the character represented. This made-up face was not produced by stage-paint, but solely by muscular contraction; and it must be so identified by Garrick with his idea of Sir John Brute as to be spontaneously assumed by him whenever he plays that part; otherwise, his retention of such a mask, without even once dropping it either from fatigue or surprise, even in the most boisterous action of his part, would be quite inexplicable."]

[Footnote 278: viii. 382.]

[Footnote 279: viii. 373, 376, etc.]

[Footnote 280: As Hamlet to his players: "Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness."]

[Footnote 281: To Jodin, xix, 382. "Point de hoquets, point de cris, de la dignité vraie, un jeu ferme, sensé, raisonné, juste, mâle; la plus grande sobriété de gestes. C'est de la contenance, c'est du maintien, qu'il faut déclamer les trois quarts du temps."--P. 390.]

[Footnote 282: P. 395.]

[Footnote 283: _Bijoux Indiscrets_, ch. xxxviii.]

[Footnote 284: vii. 121. Lessing makes a powerful addition to this. _Hamburg. Dram._ vi. 261.]

[Footnote 285: _Poésie Dramatique_, §§ 20, 21.]

[Footnote 286: _Sienne Entretien_, vii. 138.]

[Footnote 287: _Poés. Dram._., § 2. The Poetics of the Genre Sérieux are to be found, vii. 137, 138.]

[Footnote 288: i. 316.]

[Footnote 289: _Hints for an Essay on the Drama_, p. 155.]

[Footnote 290: _Hist. du Romantisme_, p. 93.]

[Footnote 291: _Der Gegensatz des Classischen und des Romantischen, etc._ By Conrad Hermann, p. 66.]

[Footnote 292: Schopenhauer, _Ethik_, 199]

[Footnote 293: _Oeuv._, iv. 29.]

[Footnote 294: _Werke_, xxv. 291.]

[Footnote 295: The original of the text, published in the Assézat edition of Diderot's works, was a manuscript found, with other waifs and strays of the eighteenth century, in a chest that had belonged to Messrs. Würtel and Treutz, the publishers at Strasburg. Its authenticity is corroborated by the fact that in the places where Goethe has marked an omission, we find stories or expressions from which we understand only too well why Goethe forbore to reproduce them.]

[Footnote 296: v. 339.]

[Footnote 297: Lucian, [Greek: Peri Parasitou], and [Greek: Peri tôn epi misthô sunontôn.]]

[Footnote 298: Grimm, ix. 349.]

[Footnote 299: _Anmerkungen, Rameau's Neffe; Werke_, xxv. 268.]