Diderot and the Encyclopædists (Vol. 1 of 2)

by John Morley

[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: