RAMEAU'S NEPHEW.
In hypochondriacal moments, it has been said, the world, viewed from the
æsthetic side, appears to many a one a cabinet of caricatures; from the
intellectual side, a madhouse; and from the moral side, a harbouring
place for rascals.[292] We might perhaps extend this saying beyond the
accidents of hypochondriasis, and urge that the few wide, profound, and
real observers of human life have all known, and known often, this
fantastic consciousness of living in a strange distorted universe of
lunatics, knaves, grotesques. It is an inevitable mood to any who dare
to shake the kaleidoscopic fragments out of their conventional and
accepted combination. Who does not remember deep traces of such a mood
in Plato, Shakespeare, Pascal, Goethe? And Diderot, who went near to
having something of the deep quality of those sovereign spirits, did not
escape, any more than they, the visitation of the misanthropic spectre.
The distinction of the greater minds is that they have no temptation to
give the spectre a permanent home with them, as is done by theologians
in order to prove the necessity of grace and another world, or by
cynics in order to prove the wisdom of selfishness in this world. The
greater minds accept the worse facts of character for what they are
worth, and bring them into a right perspective with the better facts.
They have no expectation of escaping all perplexities, nor of hitting on
answers to all the moral riddles of the world. Yet are they ever drawn
by an invincible fascination to the feet of the mighty Sphinx of
society. She bewilders them with questions that are never overheard by
common ears, and torments them with a mockery that is unobserved by
common eyes. The energetic--a Socrates, a Diderot--cannot content
themselves with merely recording her everlasting puzzles; still less
with merely writing over again the already recorded answers. They insist
on scrutinising the moral world afresh; they resolve the magniloquent
vocabulary of abstract ethics into the small realities from which it has
come; they break the complacent repose of opinion and usage by a graphic
irony. "The definitions of moral beings," said Diderot, "are always made
from what such beings ought to be, and never from what they are. People
incessantly confound duty with the thing as it is."[293] We shall
proceed to give a short account of one or two dialogues in which he
endeavours to keep clear of this confusion.
By far the most important of these is _Rameau's Nephew_. The fortunes
of this singular production are probably unique in literary history. In
the year 1804 Schiller handed to Goethe the manuscript of a piece by
Diderot, with the wish that he might find himself able to translate it
into German. "As I had long," says Goethe, "cherished a great regard
for this author, I cheerfully undertook the task, after looking through
the original. People can see, I hope, that I threw my whole soul into
it."[294] When he had done his work, he returned the manuscript to
Schiller. Schiller died almost immediately (May 1805), and the
mysterious manuscript disappeared. Goethe could never learn either
whence it had come, or whither it went. He always suspected that the
autograph original had been sent to the Empress Catherine at St.
Petersburg, and that Schiller's manuscript was a copy from that. Though
Goethe had executed his translation, as he says, "not merely with
readiness but even with passion," the violent and only too just hatred
then prevailing in Germany for France and for all that belonged to
France, hindered any vogue which _Rameau's Nephew_ might otherwise have
had. On the eve of Austerlitz and of Jena there might well be little
humour for a satire from the French.
Thirteen years afterwards an edition of Diderot's works appeared in
Paris (Belin's edition of 1818), but the editors were obliged to content
themselves, for _Rameau's Nephew_, with an analysis of Goethe's
translation. In 1821 a lively sensation was produced by the publication
of what professed to be the original text of the missing dialogue. It
was really a retranslation into French from Goethe. The fraud was not
discovered for some time, until in 1823 Brière announced for his edition
of Diderot's works a reprint from a genuine original. This original he
had procured from Madame de Vandeul, Diderot's daughter, who still
survived. She described it as a copy made in 1760 under the author's own
eyes, and this may have been the case, though, if so, it must, from some
of the references, have been revised after 1773. The two young men who
had tried to palm off their retranslation from Goethe as Diderot's own
text, at once had the effrontery to accuse Brière and Diderot's daughter
of repeating their own fraud. A vivacious dispute followed between the
indignant publisher and his impudent detractors. At length Brière
appealed to the great Jove of Weimar. Goethe expressed his conviction
that Brière's text was the genuine text of the original, and this was
held to settle the question. Yet Goethe's voucher for its correspondence
with the copy handed to him by Schiller was not really decisive
evidence. He admits that he executed the translation very rapidly, and
had no time to compare it closely with the French. An identification
nearly twenty years afterwards of verbal resemblances and minute
references, in a work that had been only a short time in his hands,
cannot be counted testimony of the highest kind. We have thus the
extraordinary circumstance that for a great number of years, down almost
to the present decade, the text of the one masterpiece of a famous man
who died so recently as 1784 rested on a single manuscript, and that a
manuscript of disputed authenticity.[295]
Critics differ extremely in their answers to the question of the subject
or object of Diderot's singular "farce-tragedy." One declares it to be
merely a satirical picture of contemporary manners. Another insists that
it is meant to be an ironical _reductio ad absurdum_ of the theory of
self-interest, by exhibiting a concrete example of its working in all
its grossness. A third holds that it was composed by way of rejoinder to
Palissot's comedy _(Les Philosophes_), 1760, which had brought the
chiefs of the rationalistic school upon the stage, and presented them as
enemies of the human race. A fourth suspects that the personal and
dramatic portions are no more than a setting for the discussion of the
comparative merits of the French and Italian schools of music. The true
answer is that the dialogue is all of these things, because it is none
of them. It is neither more nor less than the living picture and account
of an original, drawn by a man of genius who was accustomed to observe
human nature and society with a free unblinking vision, and to meditate
upon them deeply and searchingly.
Diderot goes to work with Rameau in some sort and to a certain extent
as Shakespeare went to work with Falstaff. He is the artist, reproducing
with the variety and perfection of art a whimsical figure that struck
his fancy and stirred the creative impulse. Ethics, æsthetics, manners,
satire, are all indeed to be found in the dialogue, but they are only
there as incident to the central figure of the sketch, the prodigy of
parasites. Diderot had no special fondness for these originals. Yet he
had a keen and just sense of their interest. "Their character stands out
from the rest of the world, it breaks that tiresome uniformity which our
bringing up, our social conventions, and our arbitrary fashions have
introduced. If one of them makes his appearance in a company, he is like
leaven, fermenting and restoring to each person present a portion of his
natural individuality. He stirs people up, moves them, provokes to
praise or blame: he is a means of bringing out reality; gives honest
people a chance of showing what they are made of, and unmasks the
rogues."[296]
Hearing that the subject of Diderot's dialogue is the Parasite, the
scholar will naturally think of that savage satire in which Juvenal
rehearses the thousand humiliations that Virro inflicts on Trebius: how
the wretched follower has to drink fiery stuff from broken crockery,
while the patron quaffs of the costliest from splendid cups of amber and
precious stones; how the host has fine oil of Venafrum, while the guest
munches cabbage that has been steeped in rancid lamp-oil; one plays
daintily with mullet and lamprey, while the other has his stomach turned
by an eel as long as a snake, and bloated in the foul torrent of the
sewers; Virro has apples that might have come from the gardens of the
Hesperides, while Trebius gnaws such musty things as are tossed to a
performing monkey on the town wall. But the distance is immeasurable
between Juvenal's scorching truculence and Diderot's half-ironical,
half-serious sufferance. Juvenal knows that Trebius is a base and abject
being; he tells him what he is; and in the process blasts him. Diderot
knows that Rameau too is base and abject, but he is so little willing to
rest in the fat and easy paradise of conventions, that he seems to be
all the time vaguely wondering in his own mind how far this genius of
grossness and paradox and bestial sophism is a pattern of the many, with
the mask thrown off. He seems to be inwardly musing whether it can after
all be true, that if one draws aside a fold of the gracious outer robe
of conformity, there is no comeliness of life shining underneath, but
only this horror of the skeleton and the worm. He restrains exasperation
at the brilliant effrontery of his man, precisely as an anatomist would
suppress disgust at a pathological monstrosity, or an astonishing
variation in which he hoped to surprise some vital secret. Rameau is not
crudely analysed as a vile type: he is searched as exemplifying on a
prodigious scale elements of character that lie furtively in the depths
of characters that are not vile. It seems as if Diderot unconsciously
anticipated that terrible, that woful, that desolating saying,--_There
is in every man and woman something which, if you knew it, would make
you hate them_. Rameau is not all parasite. He is your brother and mine,
a product from the same rudimentary factors of mental composition, a
figure cast equally with ourselves in one of the countless moulds of the
huge social foundry.
Such is the scientific attitude of mind towards character: It is not
philanthropic nor pitiful: the fact that base characters exist and are
of intelligible origin is no reason why we should not do our best to
shun and to extirpate them. This assumption of the scientific point of
view, this change from mere praise and blame to scrutiny, this
comprehension that mere execration is not the last word, is a mark of
the modern spirit. Besides Juvenal, another writer of genius has shown
us the parasite of an ancient society. Lucian, whose fertility, wit,
invention, mockery, freshness of spirit, and honest hatred of false
gods, make him the Voltaire of the second century, has painted with all
his native liveliness more than one picture of the parasite. The great
man's creature at Rome endures exactly the same long train of affronts
and humiliations as the great man's creature at Paris sixteen centuries
later, beginning with the anguish of the mortified stomach, as savoury
morsels of venison or boar are given to more important guests, and
ending with the anguish of the mortified spirit, as he sees himself
supplanted by a rival of shapelier person, a more ingenious versifier, a
cleverer mountebank. The dialogue in which Lucian ironically proves
that Parasitic, or the honourable craft of Spunging, has as many of the
marks of a genuine art as Rhetoric, Gymnastic, or Music, is a spirited
parody of Socratic catechising and Platonic mannerisms. Simo shows to
Tychiades, as ingeniously as Rameau shows to Diderot, that the Spunger
has a far better life of it, and is a far more rational and consistent
person than the orator and the philosopher.[297] Lucian's satire is
vivid, brilliant, and diverting. Yet every one feels that Diderot's
performance, while equally vivid, is marked by greater depth of spirit;
comes from a soil that has been more freely broken up, and has been
enriched by a more copious experience. The ancient turned upon these
masterpieces of depravation the flash of intellectual scorn; the modern
eyes them with a certain moral patience, and something of that curious
kind of interest, looking half like sympathy, which a hunter has for the
object of his chase.
The Rameau of the dialogue was a real personage, and there is a dispute
whether Diderot has not calumniated him. Evidence enough remains that he
was at least a person of singular character and irregular disastrous
life. Diderot's general veracity of temperament would make us believe
that his picture is authentic, but the interest of the dialogue is
exactly the same in either case. Juvenal's fifth satire would be worth
neither more nor less, however much were found out about Trebius.
"Rameau is one of the most eccentric figures in the country, where God
has not made them lacking. He is a mixture of elevation and lowness, of
good sense and madness; the notions of good and bad must be mixed up
together in strange confusion in his head, for he shows the good
qualities that nature has bestowed on him without any ostentation, and
the bad ones without the smallest shame. For the rest, he is endowed
with a vigorous frame, a particular warmth of imagination, and an
uncommon strength of lungs. If you ever meet him, unless you happen to
be arrested by his originality, you will either stuff your fingers into
your ears or else take to your heels. Heavens, what a monstrous pipe!
Nothing is so little like him as himself. One time he is lean and wan,
like a patient in the last stage of consumption: you could count his
teeth through his cheeks; you would say he must have passed some days
without tasting a morsel, or that he is fresh from La Trappe. A month
after, he is stout and sleek as if he had been sitting all the time at
the board of a financier, or had been shut up in a Bernardine monastery.
To-day in dirty linen, his clothes torn and patched, with barely a shoe
to his foot, he steals along with a bent head; one is tempted to hail
him and toss him a shilling. To-morrow, all powdered, curled, in a good
coat, he marches about with head erect and open mien, and you would
almost take him for a decent worthy creature. He lives from day to day,
from hand to mouth, downcast or sad, just as things may go. His first
care of a morning when he gets up is to know where he will dine; after
dinner, he begins to think where he may pick up a supper. Night brings
disquiets of its own. Either he climbs to a shabby garret he has, unless
the landlady, weary of waiting for her rent, has taken the key away from
him; or else he shrinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the town,
where he waits for daybreak over a crust of bread and a mug of beer.
When he has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes happens, he has
recourse either to a hackney-carriage belonging to a friend, or to a
coachman of some man of quality, who gives him a bed on the straw beside
the horses. In the morning he still has bits of the mattress in his
hair. If the weather is mild, he measures the Champs Elysées all night
long. With the day he reappears in the town, dressed over night for the
morrow, and from the morrow sometimes dressed for the rest of the week."
Diderot is accosted by this curious being one afternoon on a bench in
front of the Café de la Régence in the Palais Royal. They proceed in the
thoroughly natural and easy manner of interlocutors in a Platonic
dialogue. It is not too much to say that _Rameau's Nephew_ is the most
effective and masterly use of that form of discussion since Plato.
Diderot's vein of realism is doubtless in strong contrast with Plato's
poetic and idealising touch. Yet imaginative strokes are not wanting to
soften the repulsive theme, and to bring the sordid and the foul within
the sphere of art. For an example. "Time has passed," says Rameau, "and
that is always so much gained."
"_I._--So much lost, you mean.
"_He._--No, no; gained. People grow rich every moment; a day less to
live, or a crown piece to the good, 'tis all one. When the last moment
comes, one is as rich as another. Samuel Bernard, who by pillaging and
stealing and playing bankrupt, leaves seven-and-twenty million francs in
gold, is no better than Rameau, who leaves not a penny, and will be
indebted to charity for a shroud to wrap about him. The dead man hears
not the tolling of the bell; 'tis in vain that a hundred priests bawl
dirges for him, in vain that a long file of blazing torches go before.
His soul walks not by the side of the master of the funeral ceremonies.
To moulder under marble, or to moulder under clay, 'tis still to
moulder. To have around one's bier children in red and children in blue,
or to have not a creature, what matters it?"
These are the gleams of the _mens divinior_, that relieve the perplexing
moral squalor of the portrait. Even here we have the painful innuendo
that a thought which is solemnising and holy to the noble, serves
equally well to point a trait of cynical defiance in the ignoble.
Again, there is an indirectly imaginative element in the sort of terror
which the thoroughness of the presentation inspires. For indeed it is an
emotion hardly short of terror that seizes us, as we listen to the
stringent unflinching paradox of this heterogeneous figure. Rameau is
the squalid and tattered Satan of the eighteenth century. He is a
Mephistopheles out at elbows, a Lucifer in low water; yet always
diabolic, with the bright flash of the pit in his eye. Disgust is
transformed into horror and affright by the trenchant confidence of his
spirit, the daring thoroughness and consistency of his dialectic, the
lurid sarcasm, the vile penetration. He discusses a horrible action, or
execrable crime, as a virtuoso examines a statue or a painting. He has
that rarest fortitude of the vicious, not to shrink from calling his
character and conduct by their names. He is one of Swift's Yahoos, with
the courage of its opinions. He seems to give one reason for hating and
dreading oneself. The effect is of mixed fear and fascination, as of a
magician whose miraculous crystal is to show us what and how we shall
be twenty years from now; or as when a surgeon tells the tale of some
ghastly disorder, that may at the very moment be stealthily preparing
for us a doom of anguish.
Hence our dialogue is assuredly no "meat for little people nor for
fools." Some of it is revolting in its brutal indecency. Even Goethe's
self-possession cannot make it endurable to him. But it is a study to be
omitted by no one who judges the corruption of the old society in France
an important historic subject. The picture is very like the corruption
of the old society in Rome. We see the rotten material which the
purifying flame of Jacobinism was soon to consume out of the land with
fiery swiftness. We watch the very classes from which, as we have been
so often told, the regeneration of France would have come, if only
demagogues and rabble had not violently interposed. There is no gaiety
in the style; none of that laughter which makes such a delineation of
the manners of the time as we find in Collé's play of _Truth in Wine_,
_naïf_, true to nature, and almost exhilarating. In _Rameau_ we are
afflicted by the odour of deadly taint.
As the dialogue is not in every hand--nor could any one wish that it
should be--I have thought it worth while to print an English rendering
of a considerable part of it in an appendix. Mr. Carlyle told us long
ago that it must be translated into English, and although such a piece
of work is less simple than it may seem, it appears right to give the
reader an opportunity of judging for himself of the flavour of the most
characteristic of all Diderot's performances. Only let no reader turn to
it who has any invincible repugnance to that curious turn for
_wildbret_, which Goethe has described as the secret of some arts.
Dixeris hæc inter varicosos centuriones,
Continuo crassum ridet Pulfenius ingens
Et centum Græcos curto centusse licebit.
As I have already said, it must be judged as something more than a
literary diversion. "You do not suspect, Sir Philosopher," says Rameau,
"that at this moment I represent the most important part of the town and
the court." As the painter of the picture says, Rameau confessed the
vices that he had, and that most of the people about us have; but he was
no hypocrite. He was neither more nor less abominable than they; he was
only more frank and systematic and profound in his depravity. This is
the social significance of the dialogue. This is what, apart from other
considerations, makes _Rameau's Nephew_ so much more valuable a guide to
the moral sentiment of the time than merely licentious compositions like
those of Louvet or La Olos. Its instructiveness is immense to those who
examine the conditions that prepared the Revolution. Rameau is not the
[Greek: akolastos] of Aristotle, nor the creature of [Greek: aponoia]
described by Theophrastus--the castaway by individual idiosyncrasy, the
reprobate by accident. The men whom he represented, the courtiers, the
financiers, the merchants, the shopkeepers, were immoral by formula and
depraved on principle. Vice was a doctrine to them, and wretchlessness
of unclean living was reduced to a system of philosophy. Any one, I
venture to repeat, who realises the extent to which this had corroded
the ruling powers in France, will perceive that the furious flood of
social energy which the Jacobins poured over the country was not less
indispensable to France than the flood of the barbarians was
indispensable for the transformation of the Roman Empire.
Scattered among the more serious fragments of the dialogue is some
excellent by-play of sarcasm upon Palissot, and one or two of the other
assailants of the new liberal school. Palissot is an old story. The
Palissots are an eternal species. The family never dies out, and it
thrives in every climate. All societies know the literary dangler in
great houses, and the purveyor to fashionable prejudices. Not that he is
always servile. The reader, I daresay, remembers that La Bruyère
described a curious being in Troilus, the despotic parasite. Palissot,
eighteenth century or nineteenth century, is often like Troilus,
parasite and tyrant at the same time. He usually happens to have begun
life with laudable aspirations and sincere interests of his own; and
when, alas, the mediocrity of his gifts proves too weak to bear the
burden of his ambitions, the recollection of a generous youth only
serves to sour old age.
Bel esprit abhorré de tous les bons esprits,
Il pense par la haine échapper au mépris.
A force d'attentats il se croit illustré;
Et s'il n'était méchant, il serait ignoré.
Palissot began with a tragedy. He proceeded to an angry pamphlet
against the Encyclopædists and the fury for innovation. Then he achieved
immense vogue among fine ladies, bishops, and the lighter heads of the
town, by the comedy in which he held Diderot, D'Alembert, and the
others, up to hatred and ridicule. Finally, after coming to look upon
himself as a serious personage, he disappeared into the mire of
half-oblivious contempt and disgust that happily awaits all the poor
Palissots and all their works. His name only survives in connection with
the men whom he maligned. He lived to be old, as, oddly enough, Spite so
often does. In the Terror he had a narrow escape, for he was brought
before Chaumette. Chaumette apostrophised the assailant of Rousseau and
Diderot with rude energy, but did not send him to the guillotine. In
this the practical disciple only imitated the magnanimity of his
theoretical masters. Rousseau had declined an opportunity of punishing
Palissot's impertinences, and Diderot took no worse vengeance upon him
than by making an occasional reference of contempt to him in a dialogue
which he perhaps never intended to publish.
Another subject is handled in _Rameau's Nephew,_ which is interesting in
connection with the mental activity of Paris in the eighteenth century.
Music was the field of as much passionate controversy as theology and
philosophy. The Bull Unigenitus itself did not lead to livelier
disputes, or more violent cabals, than the conflict between the
partisans of French music and the partisans of Italian music. The
horror of a Jansenist for a Molinist did not surpass that of a Lullist
for a Dunist, or afterwards of a Gluckist for a Piccinist.[298] Lulli
and Rameau (the uncle of our parasite) had undisputed possession of
Paris until the arrival, in 1752, of a company of Italian singers. The
great quarrel at once broke out as to the true method and destination of
musical composition. Is music an independent art, appealing directly to
a special sense, or is it to be made an instrument for expressing
affections of the mind in a certain deeper way? The Italians asked only
for delicious harmonies and exquisite melodies. The French insisted that
these should be subordinate to the work of the poet. The former were
content with delight, the latter pressed for significance. The one
declared that Italian music was no better than a silly tickling of the
ears; the other that the overture to a French opera was like a prelude
to a Miserere in plain-song. In 1772-73 the illustrious Gluck came to
Paris. His art was believed to reconcile the two schools, to have more
melody than the old French style, and more severity and meaning than the
purely Italian style. French dignity was saved. But soon the old battle,
which had been going on for twenty years, began to rage with greater
violence than ever. Piccini was brought to Paris by the Neapolitan
ambassador. The old cries were heard in a shriller key than before.
Pamphlets, broadsheets, sarcasms flew over Paris from every side.
Was music only to flatter the ear, or was it to paint the passions in
all their energy, to harrow the soul, to raise men's courage, to form
citizens and heroes? The coffee-houses were thrown into dire confusion,
and literary societies were rent by fatal discord. Even dinner-parties
breathed only constraint and mistrust, and the intimacies of a lifetime
came to cruel end. _Rameau's Nephew_ was composed in the midst of the
first part of this long campaign of a quarter of a century, and its
seems to have been revised by its author in the midst of the second
great episode. Diderot declares against the school of Rameau and Lulli.
That he should do so was a part of his general reaction in favour of
what he called the natural, against the artifice and affectation. Goethe
has pointed out the inconsistency between Diderot's sympathy for the
less expressive kind of music, and his usual vehement passion for the
expressive in art. He truly observes that Diderot's sympathy went in
this way, because the novelty and agitation seemed likely to break up
the old, stiff, and abhorred fashion, and to clear the ground afresh for
other efforts.[299]
END OF VOL. I.
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: _Oeuv._, xviii. 505.]
[Footnote 2: _Oeuv._, xviii. 364.]
[Footnote 3: _Ib._ 379.]
[Footnote 4: _Oeuv._, i. 30.]
[Footnote 5: _Wahlverwandschaften_, pt. ii. ch. vii. The reader will do
well to consult the philosophical estimate of the function of the man of
letters given by Comte, _Philosophie Positive_, v. 512, vi. 192, 287.
The best contemporary account of the principles and policy of the men of
letters in the eighteenth century is to be found in Condorcet's
_Esquisse d'un Tableau, etc._, pp. 187-189 (ed. 1847).]
[Footnote 6: Naigeon, p. 24.]
[Footnote 7: _Oeuv._, xix. 162.]
[Footnote 8: _Oeuv._, xix. 89.]
[Footnote 9: _Oeuv._, xix. 93.]
[Footnote 10: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.]
[Footnote 11: Marmontel, _Mém._, vol. ii. b. vii. p. 315.]
[Footnote 12: Morellet, _Mém._, i. p. 29.]
[Footnote 13: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.]
[Footnote 14: _Ib._ xix. 55.]
[Footnote 15: _Oeuv._, xviii. 376.]
[Footnote 16: Madame de Vandeul says 1744. But M. Jal (_Dict. Crit._,
495) reproduces the certificate of the marriage. Perhaps we may
charitably hope that Diderot himself is equally mistaken, when in later
years he sets down a disreputable adventure to 1744. (_Oeuv._, xix.
85.)]
[Footnote 17: For an account of Madame de Puisieux in her later years,
see Mdme. Roland's _Memoirs_, i. 156.]
[Footnote 18: Sainte Beuve, _Causeries_, ix. 136.]
[Footnote 19: _Oeuv._, xix. 159. See also _Salons_, 1767, No, 118.]
[Footnote 20: _Les Règnes de Claud et de Néron, § 79.]
[Footnote 21: Account of Diderot by Meister, printed in Grimm's
_Correspondence Littéraire_ xiii. 202-211.]
[Footnote 22: Grétry, quoted in Genin's _Oeuv. choisies de Diderot_,
42.]
[Footnote 23: Marmontel, _Mém_., bk. vii. vol. ii. 312.]
[Footnote 24: Plato, _Theages_, 130, c.]
[Footnote 25: Art. _Encyclopédie_.]
[Footnote 26: See Barbier's Journal, iv. 166.]
[Footnote 27: The book was among those found in the possession of the
unfortunate La Barre.]
[Footnote 28: Honegger's _Kritische Geschichte der französischen
Cultureinflüsse in den letzten Jahrhunderten_, pp. 267-273.]
[Footnote 29: "Es ist nicht gleichgültig ob eine Folge grosser Gedanken
in frischer Ursprünglichkeit auf die Zeitgenossen wirkt, oder ob sie zu
einer Mixtur mit reichlichem Zusatz überlieferter Vorurtheile
verarbeitet ist. Ebensowenig ist est gleichgültig welcher Stimmung,
welchem Zustande der Geister eine neue Lehre begegnet. Man darf aber
kühn behaupten, das für die volle durchführung der von Newton
angebahnten Weltanschauung weder eine günstigere Naturanlage, noch eine
günstigere Stimmung getroffen werden konnte, als die der Franzosen im
18. Jahrhundert." (Lange's _Gesch. d. Materialismus_, i. 303.) But the
writer, like most historians of opinion, does not dwell sufficiently on
the co-operation of external social conditions with the progress of
logical inference.]
[Footnote 30: See Montgeron's _La Verité des Miracles de M. de Pâris
démontrée_ (1737)--an interesting contribution to the pathology of the
human mind.]
[Footnote 31: Barbier, 168, 244, etc.]
[Footnote 32: _Pensées Philosophiques_, xviii.]
[Footnote 33: On this, see Lange, i. 294.]
[Footnote 34: _Pensées Philosophiques. Oeuv._, i. 128, 129.]
[Footnote 35: _Oeuv._, xix. 87. Grimm, Supp. 148.]
[Footnote 36: Volney, in a book that was famous in its day, _Les Ruines,
ou Méditation sur les révolutions des empires_ (1791), resorted to a
slight difference of method. Instead of leaving the pretensions of the
various creeds to cancel one another, he invented a rather striking
scene, in which the priests of each creed are made to listen to the
professions of their rival, and then inveigh against his superstition
and inconsistency. The assumption on which Diderot's argument rests is,
that as so many different creeds all make the same exclusive claim, the
claim is equally false throughout. Volney's argument turns more directly
on the merits, and implies that all religions are equally morbid or
pathological products, because they all lead to conduct condemned by
their own most characteristic maxims. Volney's concrete presentation of
comparative religion was highly effective for destructive purposes,
though it would now be justly thought inadequate. (See _Oeuv. de
Volney_, i. 109, etc.)]
[Footnote 37: See on this, Lange, ii. 308.]
[Footnote 38: _De la Suffisance de la Religion Naturelle_, § 5.]
[Footnote 39: It is well to remember that torture was not abolished in
France until the Revolution. A Catholic writer makes the following
judicious remark: "We cannot study the eighteenth century without being
struck by the immoral consequences that inevitably followed for the
population of Paris from the frequency and the hideous details of
criminal executions. In reading the journals of the time, we are amazed
at the place taken in popular life by the scenes of the Grève. It was
the theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost
periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in slow
agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by decapitation
and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its heroes--the
everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by seeing Damiens
torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon limb from limb."
(Carné, _Monarchie française au 18ième Siècle_, p. 493.)]
[Footnote 40: _Lettres sur les Anglais_, xxiii.]
[Footnote 41: _Essai sur le Mérite_, I. ii. § 3. _Oeue.,_ i. 33.]
[Footnote 42: "Shaftesbury is one of the most important apparitions of
the eighteenth century. All the greatest spirits of that time, not only
in England, but also Leibnitz, Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Mendelssohn,
Wieland, and Herder, drew the strongest nourishment from him." (Hettner,
_Literaturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts: ler Theil_. 188.) See also
Lange's _Gesch. des Materialismus,_ i. 306, etc. An excellent account of
Shaftesbury is given by Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his _Essays on
Free-thinking and Plain-speaking_.]
[Footnote 43: _Oeuv_., i. xlvi.]
[Footnote 44: Jobez, _France sous Louis XV_., ii. 373. There were, in
1725, 24,000 houses, 20,000 carriages, and 120,000 horses. (Martin's
_Hist, de France_, xv. 116.)]
[Footnote 45: The records of Paris in this century contain more than one
illustration of the turbulence of this odious army of lackeys. Barbier,
i. 118. For the way in which their insolence was fostered, see
Saint-Simon, xii. 354, etc. The number of lackeys retained seems to have
been extraordinarily great in proportion to the total of annual
expenditure, and this is a curious point in the manners of the time. See
Voltaire, _Dict. Phil_, § v. Économie Domestique (liv. 182).]
[Footnote 46: Duclos, _Mém. secrets sur le Règne de Louis XV., iii 306.]
[Footnote 47: _Oeuv_., xix. 91.]
[Footnote 48: _Ib_. p. 130.]
[Footnote 49: _Prom, du Sceptique. Oeuv_., i. 229.]
[Footnote 50: "If there is a God, he is infinitely incomprehensible,
since, being without parts or limits, he has no relation to us: we are
therefore incapable of knowing what he is, or if he is. That being so,
who shall venture to undertake the solution of the question? Not we, at
any rate, who have no relation to him." _Pensees_, II. iii. 1.]
[Footnote 51: P. 182.]
[Footnote 52: P. 223.]
[Footnote 53: Barbazan's _Fabliaux et Contes_, iii. 409 (ed. 1808). The
learned Barbazan's first edition was published in 1756, and so Diderot
may well have heard some of the contents of the work then in progress.]
[Footnote 54: Naigeon.]
[Footnote 55: In my _Rousseau_, p. 243 (new ed.)]
[Footnote 56: _Voltaire_, p. 149 (new ed., Globe 8vo).]
[Footnote 57: Joubert.]
[Footnote 58: Hettner, _Literaiurgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts_, ii.
301.]
[Footnote 59: _Oeuv._, ii. 260, etc.]
[Footnote 60: _Oeuv._, ii. 258, 259. _De l'Essai sur les Femmes, par
Thomas_. See Grimm's _Corr. Lit._, vii. 451, where the book is
disparaged; and viii. 1, where Diderot's view of it is given. Thomas
(1732-85) belonged to the philosophical party, but not to the militant
section of it. He was a serious and orderly person in his life, and
enjoyed the closest friendship with Madame Necker. His enthusiasm for
virtue, justice, and freedom, expressed with much magniloquence, made
him an idol in the respectable circle which Madame Necker gathered round
her. He has been justly, though perhaps harshly, described as a
"valetudinarian Grandison." (Albert's _Lit. Française au 18ième Siècle_,
p. 423.)]
[Footnote 61: _Elémens de la Philosophie de Newton_, Pt. II. ch. vii.
Berkeley himself only refers once to Cheselden's case: _Theory of Vision
vindicated_, § 71. Professor Fraser, in his important edition of
Berkeley's works (i. 444), reproduces from the _Philosophical
Transactions_ the original account of the operation, which is
unfortunately much less clear and definite than Voltaire's emphasised
version would make it, though its purport is distinct enough.]
[Footnote 62: _Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances humaines_, I. § 6.]
[Footnote 63: _Let. sur les Aveugles_, 323, 324. Condorcet attaches a
higher value to Cheselden's operation. _Oeuv._, ii. 121.]
[Footnote 64: Dr. M'Cosh _(Exam. of J. S. Mill's Philosophy_, p. 163)
quotes what seems to be the best reported case, by a Dr. Franz, of
Leipsic; and Prof. Fraser, in the appendix to Berkeley (_loc. cit._),
quotes another good case by Mr. Nunnely. See also Mill's _Exam. of
Hamilton_, p. 288 (3d ed.)]
[Footnote 65: _Confessions_, II, vii.]
[Footnote 66: Darwin, _The Expression of the Emotions in Men and
Animals_, c. xiii. p. 312, and also pp. 335-337. This fact, so far as it
goes, seems to make against the theory of transmitted sentiments.]
[Footnote 67: Locke answered that the man would not distinguish the cube
from the sphere, until he had identified by actual touch the source of
his former tactual impression with the object making a given visual
impression. Condillac, while making just objections to the terms in
which Molyneux propounded the question, answered it different from
Locke. Diderot expresses his own opinion thus: "I think that when the
eyes of the born-blind are opened for the first time to the light, he
will perceive nothing at all; that some time will be necessary for his
eye to make experiments for itself; but that it will make these
experiments itself, and in its own way, and without the help of touch."
This is in harmony with the modern doctrine, that there is an inherited
aptitude of structure (in the eye, for instance), but that experience is
an essential condition to the development and perfecting of this
aptitude.]
[Footnote 68: A very intelligent English translation of the _Letter on
the Blind_ was published in 1773. For some reason or other, Diderot is
described on the title-page as Physician to His most Christian Majesty.]
[Footnote 69: _Oeuv_., i. 308.]
[Footnote 70: Pp. 309, 310.]
[Footnote 71: P. 311.]
[Footnote 72: _Corr._, June 1749.]
[Footnote 73: See _Critical Miscellanies: First Series_.]
[Footnote 74: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]
[Footnote 75: Diderot to Voltaire, 1749. _Oeuv_., xix. 421.]
[Footnote 76: P. 294.]
[Footnote 77: Lewes's _Hist. Philos_., ii. 342.]
[Footnote 78: Rosenkranz, i. 102.]
[Footnote 79: Tylor's _Researches into the early history of mankind_,
chaps. ii. and iii.; Lubbock's _Origin of Civilization_, chap. ix.]
[Footnote 80: Madame Dupré de Saint Maur, who had found favour in the
eyes of the Count d'Argenson. D'Argenson, younger brother of the
Marquis, who had been dismissed in 1747, was in power from 1743 to 1757.
Notwithstanding his alleged share in Diderot's imprisonment, he was a
tolerably steady protector of the philosophical party.]
[Footnote 81: Barbier, iv. 337.]
[Footnote 82: There is a picture of Berryer, under the name of Orgon in
that very curious book, _L'Ecole de l'Homme_, ii. 73.]
[Footnote 83: Pieces given in Diderot's Works, xx. 121-123.]
[Footnote 84: Naigeon, p. 131.]
[Footnote 85: Voltaire's _Corr_. July and Aug. 1749.]
[Footnote 86: _Conf_., II. viii.]
[Footnote 87: Michelet's _Louis XV_., p. 258.]
[Footnote 88: See the present author's _Rousseau_, vol. i. p. 134 (Globe
8vo ed.)]
[Footnote 89: For the two petitions of the booksellers to D'Argenson
praying for Diderot's liberty, see M. Assézat's preliminary notice.
_Oeuv_., xiii. 112, etc.]
[Footnote 90: Jourdain's _Recherches sur les traductions latines
d'Aristote_, p. 325.]
[Footnote 91: _Lit. of Europe_, pt. i. ch. ii. § 39.]
[Footnote 92: Whewell's _Hist. Induc. Sci._. xii. c. 7.]
[Footnote 93: Fr. Roger Bacon; J.S. Brewer's Pref. pp 57, 63.]
[Footnote 94: Leibnitii, Opera v. 184.]
[Footnote 95: _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, i. 63.]
[Footnote 96: _Mém._ pour J.P.F. Luneau de Boisjermain, 4to, Paris,
1771. See also Diderot's _Prospectus_, "La traduction entière de
Chambers nous a passé sous les yeux," etc.]
[Footnote 97: Biog. Universelle, _s.v._]
[Footnote 98: Michelet, _Louis XV._, 258. D'Aguesseau (1668-1751) has
left one piece which ought to be extricated from the thirteen quartos of
his works--his memoir of his father (_Oeuv._, xiii.) This is one of
those records of solid and elevated character, which do more to refresh
and invigorate the reader than a whole library of religious or ethical
exhortations can do. It has the loftiness, the refined austerity, the
touching impressiveness of Tacitus's _Agricola_ or Condorcet's _Turgot_,
together with a certain grave sweetness that was almost peculiar to the
Jansenist school of the seventeenth century.]
[Footnote 99: A short estimate of D'Alembert's principal scientific
pieces, by M. Bertram, is to be found in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
for October 1865.]
[Footnote 100: _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, iv. 367.]
[Footnote 101: _Oeuv. de J. Ph. Roland_, i. 230 (ed. 1800).]
[Footnote 102: _Essai sur la Société des Gens de Lettres et des Grands_,
etc. _Oeuv_., iv. 372. "Write," he says, "as if you loved glory; in
conduct, act as if it were indifferent to you." Compare, with reference
to the passage in the text, Duclos's remark (_Consid. sur les Moeurs_,
ch. xi.): "The man in power commands, but the intelligent govern,
because in time they form public opinion, and that sooner or later
subjugates every kind of despotism." Only partially true.]
[Footnote 103: _Pensées Philos._, § 26.]
[Footnote 104: _Phil. Pos._, v. 520. _Polit. Pos._, iii. 584.]
[Footnote 105: See Pref. to vol. iii.]
[Footnote 106: For instance, see Pref. to vol. vi.]
[Footnote 107: _Siècle de Louis XV_., ch. xliii.]
[Footnote 108: Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 273. Diderot, _Oeuv_., iv. 15.]
[Footnote 109: _Avertissement_ to vol. vi.; also to vol. vii. Turgot's
articles were Etymiologie, Existence, Expansibilité, Foires, Fondations.
The text of these is wrongly inserted among Diderot's contributions to
the Encyclopædia, in the new edition of his Works, xv. 12.]
[Footnote 110: Condorcet's _Vie de Turgot_.]
[Footnote 111: Pref. to vol. iii. (1752), and to vol. vi. (1756).]
[Footnote 112: Pref. to vol. ii.]
[Footnote 113: Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 130. Forbonnais's chief work is
his _Becherches et Considérations sur les finances de la France_.]
[Footnote 114: _Avert._ to vol. ii.]
[Footnote 115: Nov. 10, 1760, xix. 24. Also, Oct. 7, 1761, xix. 35.]
[Footnote 116: See also Preface to vol. iii.]
[Footnote 117: _Avert._ to vol. vi., and _s. v. Fontange_. Grimm, i.
451.]
[Footnote 118: _Corresp. avec D'Alembert_ (_Oeuv._, lxxv.), Sept.
1755, Feb. 1757, etc.]
[Footnote 119: Dec. 22, 1757.]
[Footnote 120: May 24, 1757.]
[Footnote 121: Dec. 13, 1756; April 1756.]
[Footnote 122: July 21, 1757.]
[Footnote 123: Article _Encyclopédie_.]
[Footnote 124: To Voltaire, Feb. 15, 1757.]
[Footnote 125: Hettner's _Literaturgesch, des 18ten Jahrhunderts_, ii.
277.]
[Footnote 126: Art. _Encyclopédie_.]
[Footnote 127: _Prospectus_.]
[Footnote 128: Barbier, v. 151, 153.]
[Footnote 129: Diderot to Voland, _Oeuv_., xviii. 361. Carlyle's
_Frederick,_ bk. xviii. ch. xi.]
[Footnote 130: _Apologie de l' Abbe de Prades. Oeuv.,_ i. 482.]
[Footnote 131: See Jobez, i. 358.]
[Footnote 132: xix. 425.]
[Footnote 133: Barbier, v. 160.]
[Footnote 134: _Ib_. v. 169.]
[Footnote 135: Grimm, _Corr. Lit_., i. 81. Barbier, _v_. 170.]
[Footnote 136: _Avert._, to vol. iii. _Oeuv. de D'Alembert_, iv. 410.]
[Footnote 137: Barbier, v. 170. Grimm, _Corr. Lit._, i. 201; _Ib._ ii.
197.]
[Footnote 138: Hardy, quoted by Aubertin, 407, 408.]
[Footnote 139: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 271.]
[Footnote 140: To D'Alembert, Dec. 29, 1757; Jan. 1758.]
[Footnote 141: For a short account of Helvétius's book, see a later
chapter.]
[Footnote 142: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 292, 293.]
[Footnote 143: Barbier, vii. 125-142.]
[Footnote 144: Lacretelle's _France pendant le 18ième Siècle_, iii. 89.]
[Footnote 145: Jobez, ii. 464, 538.]
[Footnote 146: See _Rousseau_, vol. i. chaps, vii. and ix. (Globe 8vo
ed.)]
[Footnote 147: _Louis XV. et Louis XVI._, p. 50.]
[Footnote 148: Jan. 11, 1758. Jan. 20, 1758. Diderot to Mdlle. Voland,
Oct. 11, 1759. See the following chapter.]
[Footnote 149: Voltaire to D'Alembert, Jan. to May 1758. Voltaire to
Diderot, Jan. 1758.]
[Footnote 150: Diderot to Voltaire, Feb. 19, 1758, xix. 452.]
[Footnote 151: To Voland, _Oeuv._, xix. 146.]
[Footnote 152: _Corr. Lit._, vii. 146.]
[Footnote 153: _Corr. Lit._, vii. 146.]
[Footnote 154: _Oeuv. de Voltaire_. Published sometimes among
_Facéties_, sometimes among _Mélanges_.]
[Footnote 155: See _Oeuv. Choisies de Jean Reynaud_, reprinted in
1866. The article on _Encyclopèdie_ (vol. i.) is an interesting attempt
to vindicate Cartesian principles of classification.]
[Footnote 156: See fly-leaf of vol. xxviii.]
[Footnote 157: _Mém._, ii. 115. Grimm, vii. 145.]
[Footnote 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."]
[Footnote 159: See above, p. 62, _note_.]
[Footnote 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_, _Oeuv._, v. 305.]
[Footnote 161: See Essay on Turgot in my _Critical Miscellanies_,
_Second Series_.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 163: _Ib._ ch. xxi.]
[Footnote 164: _Critical Miscellanies_, _Second Series_, p. 202.]
[Footnote 165: _Travels in France_, p. 600.]
[Footnote 166: _Travels in France_, i. 63.]
[Footnote 167: Rosenkranz, i. 219.]
[Footnote 168: _Avert_. to vol. iii]
[Footnote 169: Diderot, _Oeuv._, iv. 24.]
[Footnote 170: Diderot's _Leben_, i. 157.]
[Footnote 171: _Oeuv._, xx. 132.]
[Footnote 172: The writer was one Romilly, who had been elected a
minister of one of the French Protestant churches in London. See
_Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly_, vol. i.]
[Footnote 173: I have no space to quote an interesting page in this
article on the characteristics and the varying destinies of genius. "We
must rank in this class Pindar, Æschylus, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mahomet,
Shakespeare, Roger Bacon, and Paracelsus." xvii. 265-267.]
[Footnote 174: The same idea is found still more ardently expressed in
one of his letters to Mdlle. de Voland (Oct. 15, 1759, xviii. 408),
where he defends the eagerness of those who have loved one another
during life, to be placed side by side after death.]
[Footnote 175: xiv. 32.]
[Footnote 176: _S.v._ Sarrasins, xvii. 82. See also xviii. 429, for
Diderot's admiration of Sadi.]
[Footnote 177: _S.v. Pyrrhonienne_.]
[Footnote 178: _E.g._ in the article on _Plaisir_, xvi. p. 298.]
[Footnote 179: To Damilaville, 1766, xix. 477.]
[Footnote 180: xx. 34.]
[Footnote 181: xvi. 280.]
[Footnote 182: See also article _Indépendance_.]
[Footnote 183: iv. 93.]
[Footnote 184: The reader will find abundant information and criticism
upon the Wolffian Philosophy in Professor Edward Caird's _Critical
Account of the Philosophy of Kant_, recently published at Glasgow.]
[Footnote 185: xvi. 491, 492.]
[Footnote 186: There are casual criticisms on Spinosa in the articles on
_Identity_ and _Liberty_.]
[Footnote 187: xv. 501.]
[Footnote 188: xix. 435, 436.]
[Footnote 189: See below, vol. ii.]
[Footnote 190: S.v. _Luxe_, xvi. 23.]
[Footnote 191: As an illustration how much these ideas were in the air,
the reader may refer to a passage in Sédaine's popular comedy, _The
Philosopher without knowing it_ (1765), Act II. sc. 4. Vanderk, among
other things, says of the merchant: "Ce n'est pas un temple, ce n'est
pas une seule nation qu'il sert; il les sert toutes, et en est servi:
c'est l'homme de l'univers. Quelques particuliers audacieux font armer
les rois, la guerre s'allume, tout s'embrase, l'Europe est divisée: mais
ce négociant anglais, hollandais, russe ou chinois, n'en est pas moins
l'ami de mon coeur: nous sommes sur la superficie de la terre autant de
fils de soie qui lient ensemble les nations, et les ramènent à la paix
par la nécessité du commerce; voila, mon fils, ce que c'est qu'un
honnête négociant."]
[Footnote 192: The younger sister of Diderot's Sophie.]
[Footnote 193: xviii. 454.]
[Footnote 194: See below, the chapter on _Rameau's Nephew_.]
[Footnote 195: Nov. 10, 1770; xix. 22.]
[Footnote 196: See, for instance, xix. 81, 91, 129, 133, 145,
etc.--passages which Mr. Carlyle and Rosenkranz have either overlooked,
or else, without any good reason, disbelieved.]
[Footnote 197: xviii. 293.]
[Footnote 198: xix. 46.]
[Footnote 199: xix. 84. See also 326.]
[Footnote 200: xix. 137, 341, etc.]
[Footnote 201: xviii. 535.]
[Footnote 202: xviii. 507, etc.]
[Footnote 203: xviii. 526, 531.]
[Footnote 204: Nov. 2, 1759; xviii. 431.]
[Footnote 205: xix. 82.]
[Footnote 206: xix. 139.]
[Footnote 207: xix. 107.]
[Footnote 208: xix. 181.]
[Footnote 209: xix. 81.]
[Footnote 210: xix. 149.]
[Footnote 211: xix. 90.]
[Footnote 212: xix. 163, 164.]
[Footnote 213: Sept. 20, 1765; xix. 179-187.]
[Footnote 214: xviii. 476, 478.]
[Footnote 215: xviii. 479. Comte writes more seriously somewhat in the
same sense: "For thirty centuries the priestly castes of China, and
still more of India, have been watching our Western transition; to them
it must appear mere agitation, as puerile as it is tempestuous, with
nothing to harmonise its different phases but their common inroad upon
unity." _Positive Polity_, iv. 11 (English Translation)]
[Footnote 216: xix. 233.]
[Footnote 217: Voltaire's Satire on the Economists.]
[Footnote 218: Oct. 8, 1768; xix. 832.]
[Footnote 219: xviii. 509.]
[Footnote 220: xviii. 513.]
[Footnote 221: xviii. 511-513.]
[Footnote 222: xix. 244.]
[Footnote 223: xviii. 459.]
[Footnote 224: xix. 259.]
[Footnote 225: _Lettres de Mdlle. de Lespinasse_, viii. p. 20. (Ed.
Asse, 1876.)]
[Footnote 226: Aug. 1, 1769; xix. 365.]
[Footnote 227: (1765-69) xix. 381-412. Also p. 318.]
[Footnote 228: June 1756; xix. 433-436.]
[Footnote 229: Aug. 1762; xix. 112.]
[Footnote 230: In _Rousseau_, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo, ed.)]
[Footnote 231: Dec. 1757; xix. 446.]
[Footnote 232: xix. 449.]
[Footnote 233: Dec. 20, 1765; xix. 210.]
[Footnote 234: See _Rousseau_, vol. i. ch. vii. (Globe 8vo. ed.)]
[Footnote 235: Oct. 9, 1759; xviii. 397.]
[Footnote 236: Nov. 6, 1760; xix. 17.]
[Footnote 237: Sept. 17, 1761; xix. 47.]
[Footnote 238: Sept. 17, 1769; xix. 320.]
[Footnote 239: _Lettres sur le Commerce de la Librairie_, xviii. 47.]
[Footnote 240: See _Rousseau_, vol. ii. ch. i. (Globe 8vo. ed.)]
[Footnote 241: Diderot's _Lettre sur le Commerce de la Librairie_
(1767). _Oeuv._, xviii.]
[Footnote 242: Those who are interested in the history of authorship may
care to know the end of the matter. Copyright is no modern practice, and
the perpetual right of authors, or persons to whom they had ceded it,
was recognised in France through the whole of the seventeenth century
and three-quarters of the eighteenth. The perpetuity of the right had
produced literary properties of considerable value; for example,
Boudot's Dictionary was sold by his executors for 24,000 livres;
Prévot's Manual Lexicon and two Dictionaries for 115,000 livres. But in
1777--ten years after Diderot's plea--the Council decreed that copyright
was a privilege and an exercise of the royal grace. The motives for this
reduction of an author's right from a transferable property to a
terminable privilege seem to have been, first, the general mania of the
time for drawing up the threads of national life into the hands of the
administration, and second, the hope of making money by a tariff of
permissions. The Constituent Assembly dealt with the subject with no
intelligence nor care, but the Convention passed a law recognising in
the author an exclusive right for his life, and giving a property for
ten years after his death to heirs or _cessionaires_. The whole history
is elaborately set forth in the collection of documents entitled _La
Propriété littéraire au 18ième siècle_. (Hachette, 1859.)]
[Footnote 243: Oct. 11, 1759; xviii. 401.]
[Footnote 244: xix. 319, 320.]
[Footnote 245: _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 73.]
[Footnote 246: Walpole to Selwyn. 1765. Jesse's _Selwyn_, ii. 9. See
also Walpole to Mann, iv. 283.]
[Footnote 247: D'Epinay, ii. 4, 138, 153, etc.]
[Footnote 248: See Comte's _Positive Polity_, vol. iii.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 251: _Hamburg. Dramaturgie_, § 85. Werke, vi. 381. (Ed.
1873.)]
[Footnote 252: Diderot's _Leben_, i. 274, 277.]
[Footnote 253: _Corr. Lit._, ii. 103.]
[Footnote 254: See Grimm's account of the performance, _Corr. Lit._,
vii. 313.]
[Footnote 255: Act IV. sc. 3.]
[Footnote 256: Act V. sc. 3.]
[Footnote 257: _De la Poésie Dramatique_, ch. xxi.]
[Footnote 258: vii. 107.]
[Footnote 259: Nov. 28, 1760; xix. 457.]
[Footnote 260: _Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets_, i. 359.]
[Footnote 261: _Correspond. du Roi Stanislas-Auguste et de Mdme.
Geoffrin, _p. 466.]
[Footnote 262: Aug. 1769; xix. 314-323.]
[Footnote 263: Quoted in Mr. Sime's excellent _Life of Lessing_ (Trübner
and Co., 1877), p. 230.]
[Footnote 264: _De la Poésie Dramatique_, § 2, vii. 313.]
[Footnote 265: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 177 (ed. 1837).]
[Footnote 266: xix. 474.]
[Footnote 267: _Père de Famille_, Act II. sc. 2, p. 211.]
[Footnote 268: _Paradoxe sur le Comédien_, p. 383.]
[Footnote 269: _Journals_, ii. 331. Also vi. 248; vii. 9.]
[Footnote 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 moeurs et sans goût. Les Italiens en sont réduits au
drame burlesque."]
[Footnote 271: vii. 95.]
[Footnote 272: _Lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets_, i. 355.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 274: Letter to Mdlle. Jodin, xix. 387.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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:
"You have doubtless heard much of his extraordinary power of change of
face. Here is one example of it. When he played the part of Sir John
Brute, I was close to the stage, and could observe him narrowly. He
entered with the corners of his mouth so turned down, as to give to his
whole countenance the expression of habitual sottishness and debauchery.
And this artificial form of the mouth he retained, unaltered, from the
beginning to the end of the play, with the exception only that, as the
play went on, the lips gaped and hung more and more in proportion to the
gradually increasing drunkenness of the character represented. This
made-up face was not produced by stage-paint, but solely by muscular
contraction; and it must be so identified by Garrick with his idea of
Sir John Brute as to be spontaneously assumed by him whenever he plays
that part; otherwise, his retention of such a mask, without even once
dropping it either from fatigue or surprise, even in the most boisterous
action of his part, would be quite inexplicable."]
[Footnote 278: viii. 382.]
[Footnote 279: viii. 373, 376, etc.]
[Footnote 280: As Hamlet to his players: "Nor do not saw the air too
much with your hand thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent,
tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire
and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness."]
[Footnote 281: To Jodin, xix, 382. "Point de hoquets, point de cris, de
la dignité vraie, un jeu ferme, sensé, raisonné, juste, mâle; la plus
grande sobriété de gestes. C'est de la contenance, c'est du maintien,
qu'il faut déclamer les trois quarts du temps."--P. 390.]
[Footnote 282: P. 395.]
[Footnote 283: _Bijoux Indiscrets_, ch. xxxviii.]
[Footnote 284: vii. 121. Lessing makes a powerful addition to this.
_Hamburg. Dram._ vi. 261.]
[Footnote 285: _Poésie Dramatique_, §§ 20, 21.]
[Footnote 286: _Sienne Entretien_, vii. 138.]
[Footnote 287: _Poés. Dram._., § 2. The Poetics of the Genre Sérieux are
to be found, vii. 137, 138.]
[Footnote 288: i. 316.]
[Footnote 289: _Hints for an Essay on the Drama_, p. 155.]
[Footnote 290: _Hist. du Romantisme_, p. 93.]
[Footnote 291: _Der Gegensatz des Classischen und des Romantischen,
etc._ By Conrad Hermann, p. 66.]
[Footnote 292: Schopenhauer, _Ethik_, 199]
[Footnote 293: _Oeuv._, iv. 29.]
[Footnote 294: _Werke_, xxv. 291.]
[Footnote 295: The original of the text, published in the Assézat
edition of Diderot's works, was a manuscript found, with other waifs and
strays of the eighteenth century, in a chest that had belonged to
Messrs. Würtel and Treutz, the publishers at Strasburg. Its authenticity
is corroborated by the fact that in the places where Goethe has marked
an omission, we find stories or expressions from which we understand
only too well why Goethe forbore to reproduce them.]
[Footnote 296: v. 339.]
[Footnote 297: Lucian, [Greek: Peri Parasitou], and [Greek: Peri tôn epi
misthô sunontôn.]]
[Footnote 298: Grimm, ix. 349.]
[Footnote 299: _Anmerkungen, Rameau's Neffe; Werke_, xxv. 268.]