[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.