In 1781 one of his daughters was married. Her father was now fifty-eight years old. Did philosophy, as Galiani inquired (Galiani had returned to Italy in 1769), still eat at his table with its old appetite? Grimm said—in Grimm’s caustic fashion—that the guests fell off somewhat when the Baron had to retrench his expenses to establish his children. Some of the convives had gone before that, to solve for themselves those questions on a future world, and the existence of the soul, which they had discussed so often. In 1771 died Helvétius; in 1778 Voltaire himself. In 1783, d’Alembert, who had indeed long ceased to frequent the Baron’s society, or any society, laid down the burden of his life. In the next year, Diderot, the friend of his heart, the fruitful inspiration of his work, was called away from d’Holbach’s side for ever.
It must have been with this society, as it is with all societies at last: the sight of vacant chairs stops the mirth, and among the living guests glide others, dear and dead. When one has more memories than hopes, the time has come to give up such gatherings. That time came even to the Host of his generation. By his own fireside he had to the end the wife he loved. She long survived him. He had, too, that tranquil and even disposition which is surely one of the best of assets—a possession indeed.
The Baron was as prudent in the time of his death as he had been in the conduct of his life. He died on January 21 of that annus mirabilis, 1789. Five years more, and he would have seen his own principles enthroned with the Goddess of Reason at Notre-Dame, and as, in part at least, the consequence of her reign, the streets of Paris running with blood. Directly after his death, the secret of his authorship became public property.
It is permissible only to think of d’Holbach now as his guests and friends thought of him in life—not as the author of ‘The System of Nature’ at all, but as the liberal patron of letters, the best and kindliest of good, easy men. One may be permitted to hate as bitterly as Voltaire did the unreasonableness of his philosophy of pure reason; and yet to regard the philosopher with gratitude and appreciation, as the man who played in the great intellectual revival of his time one of the homeliest, yet one of the most necessary of parts.
For d’Holbach provided the rendez-vous.
VI
GRIMM: THE JOURNALIST
The great Encyclopædia of Diderot and d’Alembert was to bring light to the people; the ‘Literary Correspondence’ of Melchior Grimm was to bring light to kings. The Encyclopædia was the conception of those who knew that they were preparing mighty changes, but who did not live to see them; the ‘Literary Correspondence’ was the work of a man whose shrewd eyes foresaw little, but who lived to see all. The Encyclopædia is dead, as a great man dies, having finished his work. The ‘Correspondence’—which could not cure those royal maladies, blindness, ignorance, and hardness of heart—still lives a gay little life as the most perfect contemporary record of any literary epoch in history.
In 1753, the sensibilities of sentimental Paris were most agreeably touched by the pathetic story of a young gentleman who, having had his suit rejected by a charming opera-dancer, Mademoiselle
