In the first place, we have to remember that it was a work of genius—whatever its faults—that was brought under Diderot’s notice; in the second, that as at least a majority, if not a consensus, of competent critics has long ago decided, it was an example or collection of examples of genius applied in a new way—that without going to the pedantic extremes to which some have gone in their definition of the novel, it has been found impossible to discover before Richardson the necessary mixture of incident and character-interest, the unity (not necessarily a dramatic or even an epic unity) of plot, the mingled appeal to, and play upon, passions and manners. Then let us ask ourselves whether the systems of criticism and the critics, with which and with whom we are up to this point familiar, have as a rule proved themselves equal to cope with new geniuses and new kinds of composition—whether their tendency has not rather been distinctly to frown upon such things; at any rate, to give them the coldest and most distrustful welcome. Let us remember that Hurd, about the same time as Diderot,[[164]] and in the very act of defending the older and more poetical romance, was throwing cold water on prose fiction as a clumsy upstart. And finally, let us ask ourselves whether all Diderot’s exaggerations are not, after all, exaggerations of the truth—owing their weak points to an excitable nature and a prevalent fashion of expression, their strong ones to a genius, and a perception of truth itself, not unfairly comparable in their way to Richardson’s own in his.
The Reflections on Terence.
Side by side in the Works with this effusion there are some Reflections on Terence[[165]] written within a year of the other. In the famous Roman dramatist there is neither novelty, nor intense sentiment, nor multiplicity of individual character, nor volume of story. He was the darling of those critics from whom Diderot differed most. His faults—at least his shortcomings—are obvious to infinitely less acute, restless, and rapid judgments than that of the great Encyclopædist. His excellences are of the kind which might seem least likely to appeal to Diderot. Yet Diderot is not merely just to him, not merely bountiful, but not in the least clumsy or haphazard in his bounty. He will not have the time-honoured (or dishonoured) putting off of the praise of Terence on Scipio and Lælius. Admitting his “lack of verve,” he gives him full credit for its compensation of even humanity, for his “statuesque” and quiet perfection. He adds remarks on translation which are excellent; and if he may have taken the idea of holding up Terence and Molière together for admiration from La Bruyère,[[166]] he escapes La Bruyère’s mistake of suggesting the mixture of the immiscible.
The Review of the Lettres d’Amabed.
Take a third example of a very different kind. We have a short review[[167]] by Diderot (first extracted by M. Assézat from MS.) of Voltaire’s Lettres d’Amabed. This book, it is hardly necessary to say, is anti-religious: and Diderot was violently anti-religious himself. It is saturated with Voltaire’s sniggering indecency: and Diderot was the author of Les Bijoux Indiscrets.[[168]] Lastly, it was by Voltaire, of whom Diderot, though an independent, was an eager and faithful champion. But it is “without taste, without finesse, without invention; a botching up of stale blackguardisms about Moses and Christ and the rest; it has no interest, no fire, no verisimilitude, but plenty of dirt and of clumsy fun.” This is the plain critical truth about the Letters of Amabed, and it is Diderot who says it in so many words, and says it moreover in MS.—which could curry no favour with, and obtain none from, public hypocrisy and cant.
The Examination of Seneca.
Turn the examining instrument from these short pieces to the long critical examination of Seneca,[[169]] which forms the second part of the Essai sur les Règnes de Claude et de Néron. It is open to any one to agree or disagree with Diderot’s uncompromising, though by no means indiscriminate, championship of the usurious philosopher-statesman; as a matter of fact, though it is a matter of only argumentative importance, I am, except on the head of style, one of those who disagree with it. But agree or disagree as he may with the conclusion, no competent critic, I should suppose, can fail to admire the thoroughness with which Diderot has taken in and digested his complicated literary subject, the range and extent of literary knowledge with which he illustrates it, the readiness of his argumentation and exposition, and, above all, the craftsmanlike and attractive fashion in which he combines analysis and criticism. Again, I doubt whether there is an earlier example of what we may call “freehand” criticism—the criticism which is not tethered to the necessity of applying or expounding rules in reference to its subject, but can take that subject in, can deal with it on its own plan and specification—can, in fact, appreciate, without being bound to refer to and obey some official book of prices. There are some two hundred pages of this appreciation, and one’s only reason (itself rather uncritical) for qualified satisfaction with it is that it does not handle some writer of greater intrinsic value and wider artistic appeal.