[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.