END OF VOL. I.
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Œuv., xviii. 505.
[2] Œuv., xviii. 364.
[3] Ib. 379.
[4] Œuv., i. 30.
[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).
[6] Naigeon, p. 24.
[7] Œuv., xix. 162.
[8] Œuv., xix. 89.
[9] Œuv., xix. 93.
[10] Œuv., i. xlviii.
[11] Marmontel, Mém., vol. ii. b. vii. p. 315.
[12] Morellet, Mém., i. p. 29.
[13] Œuv., i. xlviii.
[14] Ib. xix. 55.
[15] Œuv., xviii. 376.
[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. (Œuv., xix. 85.)
[17] For an account of Madame de Puisieux in her later years, see Mdme. Roland's Memoirs, i. 156.
[18] Sainte Beuve, Causeries, ix. 136.
[19] Œuv., xix. 159. See also Salons, 1767, No, 118.
[20] Les Règnes de Claud et de Néron, § 79.
[21] Account of Diderot by Meister, printed in Grimm's Correspondence Littéraire xiii. 202-211.
[22] Grétry, quoted in Genin's Œuv. choisies de Diderot, 42.
[23] Marmontel, Mém., bk. vii. vol. ii. 312.
[24] Plato, Theages, 130, c.
[25] Art. Encyclopédie.
[26] See Barbier's Journal, iv. 166.
[27] The book was among those found in the possession of the unfortunate La Barre.
[28] Honegger's Kritische Geschichte der französischen Cultureinflüsse in den letzten Jahrhunderten, pp. 267-273.
[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.
[30] See Montgeron's La Verité des Miracles de M. de Pâris démontrée (1737)—an interesting contribution to the pathology of the human mind.
[31] Barbier, 168, 244, etc.
[32] Pensées Philosophiques, xviii.
[33] On this, see Lange, i. 294.
[34] Pensées Philosophiques. Œuv., i. 128, 129.
[35] Œuv., xix. 87. Grimm, Supp. 148.
[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 Œuv. de Volney, i. 109, etc.)
[37] See on this, Lange, ii. 308.
[38] De la Suffisance de la Religion Naturelle, § 5.
[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.)
[40] Lettres sur les Anglais, xxiii.
[41] Essai sur le Mérite, I. ii. § 3. Œue., i. 33.
[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.
[43] Œuv., i. xlvi.
[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.)
[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).
[46] Duclos, Mém. secrets sur le Règne de Louis XV., iii 306.
[47] Œuv., xix. 91.
[48] Ib. p. 130.
[49] Prom, du Sceptique. Œuv., i. 229.
[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.
[51] P. 182.
[52] P. 223.
[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.
[54] Naigeon.
[55] In my Rousseau, p. 243 (new ed.)
[56] Voltaire, p. 149 (new ed., Globe 8vo).
[57] Joubert.
[58] Hettner, Literaiurgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts, ii. 301.
[59] Œuv., ii. 260, etc.
[60] Œuv., 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.)
[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.
[62] Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances humaines, I. § 6.
[63] Let. sur les Aveugles, 323, 324. Condorcet attaches a higher value to Cheselden's operation. Œuv., ii. 121.
[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.)
[65] Confessions, II, vii.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[69] Œuv., i. 308.
[70] Pp. 309, 310.
[71] P. 311.
[72] Corr., June 1749.
[73] See Critical Miscellanies: First Series.
[74] Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. Œuv., xix. 421.
[75] Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. Œuv., xix. 421.
[76] P. 294.
[77] Lewes's Hist. Philos., ii. 342.
[78] Rosenkranz, i. 102.
[79] Tylor's Researches into the early history of mankind, chaps. ii. and iii.; Lubbock's Origin of Civilization, chap. ix.
[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.
[81] Barbier, iv. 337.
[82] There is a picture of Berryer, under the name of Orgon in that very curious book, L'Ecole de l'Homme, ii. 73.
[83] Pieces given in Diderot's Works, xx. 121-123.
[84] Naigeon, p. 131.
[85] Voltaire's Corr. July and Aug. 1749.
[86] Conf., II. viii.
[87] Michelet's Louis XV., p. 258.
[88] See the present author's Rousseau, vol. i. p. 134 (Globe 8vo ed.)
[89] For the two petitions of the booksellers to D'Argenson praying for Diderot's liberty, see M. Assézat's preliminary notice. Œuv., xiii. 112, etc.
[90] Jourdain's Recherches sur les traductions latines d'Aristote, p. 325.
[91] Lit. of Europe, pt. i. ch. ii. § 39.
[92] Whewell's Hist. Induc. Sci.. xii. c. 7.
[93] Fr. Roger Bacon; J.S. Brewer's Pref. pp 57, 63.
[94] Leibnitii, Opera v. 184.
[95] Œuv. de D'Alembert, i. 63.
[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.
[97] Biog. Universelle, s.v.
[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 (Œuv., 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.
[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.
[100] Œuv. de D'Alembert, iv. 367.
[101] Œuv. de J. Ph. Roland, i. 230 (ed. 1800).
[102] Essai sur la Société des Gens de Lettres et des Grands, etc. Œuv., 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 Mœurs, 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.
[103] Pensées Philos., § 26.
[104] Phil. Pos., v. 520. Polit. Pos., iii. 584.
[105] See Pref. to vol. iii.
[106] For instance, see Pref. to vol. vi.
[107] Siècle de Louis XV., ch. xliii.
[108] Grimm, Corr. Lit., i. 273. Diderot, Œuv., iv. 15.
[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.
[110] Condorcet's Vie de Turgot.
[111] Pref. to vol. iii. (1752), and to vol. vi. (1756).
[112] Pref. to vol. ii.
[113] Grimm, Corr. Lit., i. 130. Forbonnais's chief work is his Becherches et Considérations sur les finances de la France.
[114] Avert. to vol. ii.
[115] Nov. 10, 1760, xix. 24. Also, Oct. 7, 1761, xix. 35.
[116] See also Preface to vol. iii.
[117] Avert. to vol. vi., and s. v. Fontange. Grimm, i. 451.
[118] Corresp. avec D'Alembert (Œuv., lxxv.), Sept. 1755, Feb. 1757, etc.
[119] Dec. 22, 1757.
[120] May 24, 1757.
[121] Dec. 13, 1756; April 1756.
[122] July 21, 1757.
[123] Article Encyclopédie.
[124] To Voltaire, Feb. 15, 1757.
[125] Hettner's Literaturgesch, des 18ten Jahrhunderts, ii. 277.
[126] Art. Encyclopédie.
[127] Prospectus.
[128] Barbier, v. 151, 153.
[129] Diderot to Voland, Œuv., xviii. 361. Carlyle's Frederick, bk. xviii. ch. xi.
[130] Apologie de l' Abbe de Prades. Œuv., i. 482.
[131] See Jobez, i. 358.
[132] xix. 425.
[133] Barbier, v. 160.
[134] Ib. v. 169.
[135] Grimm, Corr. Lit., i. 81. Barbier, v. 170.
[136] Avert., to vol. iii. Œuv. de D'Alembert, iv. 410.
[137] Barbier, v. 170. Grimm, Corr. Lit., i. 201; Ib. ii. 197.
[138] Hardy, quoted by Aubertin, 407, 408.
[139] Corr. Lit., ii. 271.
[140] To D'Alembert, Dec. 29, 1757; Jan. 1758.
[141] For a short account of Helvétius's book, see a later chapter.
[142] Corr. Lit., ii. 292, 293.
[143] Barbier, vii. 125-142.
[144] Lacretelle's France pendant le 18ième Siècle, iii. 89.
[145] Jobez, ii. 464, 538.
[146] See Rousseau, vol. i. chaps, vii. and ix. (Globe 8vo ed.)
[147] Louis XV. et Louis XVI., p. 50.
[148] Jan. 11, 1758. Jan. 20, 1758. Diderot to Mdlle. Voland, Oct. 11, 1759. See the following chapter.
[149] Voltaire to D'Alembert, Jan. to May 1758. Voltaire to Diderot, Jan. 1758.
[150] Diderot to Voltaire, Feb. 19, 1758, xix. 452.
[151] To Voland, Œuv., xix. 146.
[152] Corr. Lit., vii. 146.
[153] Corr. Lit., vii. 146.
[154] Œuv. de Voltaire. Published sometimes among Facéties, sometimes among Mélanges.
[155] See Œuv. Choisies de Jean Reynaud, reprinted in 1866. The article on Encyclopèdie (vol. i.) is an interesting attempt to vindicate Cartesian principles of classification.
[156] See fly-leaf of vol. xxviii.
[157] Mém., ii. 115. Grimm, vii. 145.
[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."
[159] See above, p. 62, note.
[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, Œuv., v. 305.
[161] See Essay on Turgot in my Critical Miscellanies, Second Series.
[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.
[163] Ib. ch. xxi.
[164] Critical Miscellanies, Second Series, p. 202.
[165] Travels in France, p. 600.
[166] Travels in France, i. 63.
[167] Rosenkranz, i. 219.
[168] Avert. to vol. iii
[169] Diderot, Œuv., iv. 24.
[170] Diderot's Leben, i. 157.
[171] Œuv., xx. 132.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[175] xiv. 32.
[176] S.v. Sarrasins, xvii. 82. See also xviii. 429, for Diderot's admiration of Sadi.
[177] S. v. Pyrrhonienne.
[178] E.g. in the article on Plaisir, xvi. p. 298.
[179] To Damilaville, 1766, xix. 477.
[180] xx. 34.
[181] xvi. 280.
[182] See also article Indépendance.
[183] iv. 93.
[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.
[185] xvi. 491, 492.
[186] There are casual criticisms on Spinosa in the articles on Identity and Liberty.
[187] xv. 501.
[188] xix. 435, 436.
[189] See below, vol. ii.
[190] S.v. Luxe, xvi. 23.
[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."
[192] The younger sister of Diderot's Sophie.
[193] xviii. 454.
[194] See below, the chapter on Rameau's Nephew.
[195] Nov. 10, 1770; xix. 22.
[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.
[197] xviii. 293.
[198] xix. 46.
[199] xix. 84. See also 326.
[200] xix. 137, 341, etc.
[201] xviii. 535.
[202] xviii. 507, etc.
[203] xviii. 526, 531.
[204] Nov. 2, 1759; xviii. 431.
[205] xix. 82.
[206] xix. 139.
[207] xix. 107.
[208] xix. 181.
[209] xix. 81.
[210] xix. 149.
[211] xix. 90.
[212] xix. 163, 164.
[213] Sept. 20, 1765; xix. 179-187.
[214] xviii. 476, 478.
[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)
[216] xix. 233.
[217] Voltaire's Satire on the Economists.
[218] Oct. 8, 1768; xix. 832.
[219] xviii. 509.
[220] xviii. 513.
[221] xviii. 511-513.
[222] xix. 244.
[223] xviii. 459.
[224] xix. 259.
[225] Lettres de Mdlle. de Lespinasse, viii. p. 20. (Ed. Asse, 1876.)
[226] Aug. 1, 1769; xix. 365.
[227] (1765-69) xix. 381-412. Also p. 318.
[228] June 1756; xix. 433-436.
[229] Aug. 1762; xix. 112.
[230] In Rousseau, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo, ed.)
[231] Dec. 1757; xix. 446.
[232] xix. 449.
[233] Dec. 20, 1765; xix. 210.
[234] See Rousseau, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo. ed.)
[235] Oct. 9, 1759; xviii. 397.
[236] Nov. 6, 1760; xix. 17.
[237] Sept. 17, 1761; xix. 47.
[238] Sept. 17, 1769; xix. 320.
[239] Lettres sur le Commerce de la Librairie, xviii. 47.
[240] See Rousseau, vol. ii. ch. i. (Globe 8vo. ed.)
[241] Diderot's Lettre sur le Commerce de la Librairie (1767). Œuv., xviii.
[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.)
[243] Oct. 11, 1759; xviii. 401.
[244] xix. 319, 320.
[245] Miscellaneous Works, p. 73.
[246] Walpole to Selwyn. 1765. Jesse's Selwyn, ii. 9. See also Walpole to Mann, iv. 283.
[247] D'Epinay, ii. 4, 138, 153, etc.
[248] See Comte's Positive Polity, vol. iii.
[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.
[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.
[251] Hamburg. Dramaturgie, § 85. Werke, vi. 381. (Ed. 1873.)
[252] Diderot's Leben, i. 274, 277.
[253] Corr. Lit., ii. 103.
[254] See Grimm's account of the performance, Corr. Lit., vii. 313.
[255] Act IV. sc. 3.
[256] Act V. sc. 3.
[257] De la Poésie Dramatique, ch. xxi.
[258] vii. 107.
[259] Nov. 28, 1760; xix. 457.
[260] Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets, i. 359.
[261] Correspond. du Roi Stanislas-Auguste et de Mdme. Geoffrin, p. 466.
[262] Aug. 1769; xix. 314-323.
[263] Quoted in Mr. Sime's excellent Life of Lessing (Trübner and Co., 1877), p. 230.
[264] De la Poésie Dramatique, § 2, vii. 313.
[265] Lockhart's Life of Scott, iv. 177 (ed. 1837).
[266] Père de Famille, Act II. sc. 2, p. 211.
[267]xix. 474.
[268] Paradoxe sur le Comédien, p. 383.
[269] Journals, ii. 331. Also vi. 248; vii. 9.
[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 mœurs et sans goût. Les Italiens en sont réduits au drame burlesque."
[271] vii. 95.
[272] Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets, i. 355.
[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.
[274] Letter to Mdlle. Jodin, xix. 387.
[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.
[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.
[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."
[278] viii. 382.
[279] viii. 373, 376, etc.
[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."
[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.
[282] P. 395.
[283] Bijoux Indiscrets, ch. xxxviii.
[284] vii. 121. Lessing makes a powerful addition to this. Hamburg. Dram. vi. 261.
[285] Poésie Dramatique, §§ 20, 21.
[286] Sienne Entretien, vii. 138.
[287] Poés. Dram.., § 2. The Poetics of the Genre Sérieux are to be found, vii. 137, 138.
[288] i. 316.
[289] Hints for an Essay on the Drama, p. 155.
[290] Hist. du Romantisme, p. 93.
[291] Der Gegensatz des Classischen und des Romantischen, etc. By Conrad Hermann, p. 66.
[292] Schopenhauer, Ethik, 199
[293] Œuv., iv. 29.
[294] Werke, xxv. 291.
[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.
[296] v. 339.
[297] Lucian, Περι Παρασίτον, and Περι των επι μίσφω συνόντων.
[298] Grimm, ix. 349.
[299] Anmerkungen, Rameau's Neffe; Werke, xxv. 268.