may (especially in countries where "indecent | to become a Philosophe-Sentimentalist. Most exposure" is cognised at police-offices) be wearisome, accordingly, is the perpetual clatconsidered superfluous. The only question ter kept up here about vertu, honnéteté, grandeur, is one in Natural History: Whence comes it? sensibilité, ames-nobles; how unspeakably good it What may a man, not otherwise without ele- is to be virtuous, how pleasant, how sublime: vation of mind, of kindly character, of immense "In the Devil and his grandmother's name, be professed philanthropy; and doubtless of ex- virtuous; and let us have an end of it!" In traordinary insight, mean thereby? To us it such sort (we will nevertheless joyfully recogis but another illustration of the fearless, all-nise) does great Nature in spite of all contrafor-logic, thoroughly consistent, Mechanical dictions, declare her royalty, her divineness; Thinker. It coheres well enough with Diderot's and, for the poor Mechanical Philosophe, has theory of man; that there is nothing of sacred prepared since the substance is hidden from either in man or around man; and that chime- him, a shadow wherewith he can be cheered. ras are chimerical. How shall he for whom In fine, to our ill-starred Mechanical Phinothing, that cannot be jargoned of in debating-losophe-Sentimentalist, with his loud preaching clubs, exists, have any faintest forecast of the and rather poor performing, shall we not, in depth, significance, divineness of SILENCE; of various respects, "thankfully stretch out the the sacredness of "Secrets known to all ?" hand?" In all ways, "it was necessary that Nevertheless, Nature is great; and Denis the logical side of things should likewise be was among her nobler productions. To a made available." On the whole, wondrous soul of his sort something like what we call higher developments of much, of Morality Conscience could nowise be wanting: the among the rest, are visible in the course of the feeling of Moral Relation, of the Infinite charac- world's doings, at this day. A plausible preter thereof, (as the essence and soul of all else diction were that the Ascetic System is not to that can be felt or known,) must assert itself regain its exclusive dominancy. Ever, indeed, in him. Yet how assert itself? An Infini- must Self-denial, "Annihilation of Self, be the tude to one, in whose whole Synopsis of the beginning of all moral action:" meanwhile, he Universe no Infinite stands marked? Won- that looks well, may discern filaments of a derful enough is Diderot's method; and yet nobler System, wherein this lies included as not wonderful, for we see it, and have always one harmonious element. Who knows what seen it, daily. Since there is nothing sacred new unfoldings and complex adjustments await in the Universe, whence this sacredness of us, before, (for example,) the true relation of what you call Virtue? Whence or how comes moral Greatness to moral Correctness, and it that you, Denis Diderot, must not do a wrong their proportional value, can be established? thing; could not, without some qualm, speak, How, again, is perfect tolerance for the Wrong for example, one Lie, to gain Mohammed's to co-exist with ever-present conviction that Paradise with all its houris? There is no re- Right stands related to it, as a God does to a source for it, but to get into that interminable Devil,-an Infinite to an opposite Infinite? ravelment of Reward and Approval, virtue How, in a word, through what tumultuous vibeing its own reward; and assert louder and cissitudes, after how many false partial efforts, louder, contrary to the stern experience of all deepening the confusion, shall it, at length, be men, from the Divine Man, expiring with made manifest, and kept continually manifest agony of bloody sweat on the accursed tree, to the hearts of men, that the Good is not prodown to us two, O reader (if we have ever perly the highest, but the Beautiful; that the done one Duty)-that Virtue is synonymous true Beautiful (differing from the false, as with Pleasure. Alas! was Paul, an apostle Heaven does from Vauxhall,) comprehends in of the Gentiles, virtuous; and was virtue its it the Good?-In some future century, it may own reward, when his approving conscience be found that Denis Diderot, acting and protold him that he was "the chief of sinners," fessing, in wholeness and with full conviction, and (bounded to this life alone) "of all men what the immense multitude act in halfness the most miserable?" Or has that same so and without conviction,-has, though by strange sublime Virtue, at bottom, little to do with inverse methods, forwarded the result. It was Pleasure, if with far other things? Are long ago written, the Omnipotent" maketh the Eudoxia, and Eusebeia, and Euthanasia, and wrath of the wicked" (the folly of the foolish) all the rest of them, of small account to Eubo-" to praise Him." In any case, Diderot acted sia and Eupepsia; and the pains of any it, and not we; Diderot bears it, and not we: moderately-paced Career of Vice (Denis him- peace be with Diderot ! self being judge) as a drop in the bucket to the "Career of Indigestions?" This is what Denis never in this world will grant.

The other branch of his renown is excellence as a Talker. Or in wider view, (think But what then will he do? One of two his admirers,) his philosophy was not more things admit, with Grimm, that there are surpassing than his delivery thereof. What "two justices," which may be called by many his philosophy amounts to we have been exhandsome names, but properly are nothing amining: but now, that in this other conversabut the pleasant justice, and the unpleasant; tional province he was eminent, is easily bewhereof only the former is binding. Herein, lieved. A frank, ever-hoping, social character; however, Nature has been unkind to Denis; a mind full of knowledge, full of fervour; of he is not a literary court-toad-eater; but a free, great compass, of great depth, ever on the genial, even poetic creature. There remains, alert: such a man could not have other thar. therefore, nothing but the second expedient; a "mouth of gold." It is still plain, whatto "assert louder and louder;" in other words, soever thing imaged itself before him, was

ment, in his sort: he did the work of many men, yet nothing, or little, which many could not have done.

Accordingly, his Literary Works, now lying finished some fifty years, have already, to the most surprising degree, sunk in importance. Perhaps no man so much talked of is so little known; to the great majority he is no longer a Reality, but a Hearsay. Such, indeed, partly, is the natural fate of Works Polemical, which almost all Diderot's are. The Polemic annihilates his opponent; but in so doing annihilates himself too, and both are swept away to make room for something other and farther. Add to this, the slight-textured transitory cha

imaged in the most lucent clearness; was rendered back, with light labour, in corresponding clearness. Whether, at the same time, Diderot's conversation, relatively so superior, deserved the intrinsic character of supreme, may admit of question. The worth of words spoken depends, after all, on the wisdom that resides in them; and in Diderot's words there was often too little of this. Vivacity, far-darting brilliancy, keenness of theoretic vision, paradoxical ingenuity, gayety, even touches of humour; all this must have been here; whosoever had preferred sincerity, earnestness, depth of practical rather than theoretic insight, with not less of impetuosity, of clearness and sureness, with humour, em-racter of Diderot's style, and the fact is well phasis, or such other melody or rhythm as that utterance demanded,—must have come over to London; and (with forbearant submissiveness) listened to our Johnson. Had we the stronger man, then? Be it rather, as in that Duel of Coeur-de-Leon with the light, nimble, yet also invincible Saladin, that each nation had the strength which most befitted it.

Closely connected with this power of conversation is Diderot's facility of composition. A talent much celebrated; numerous really surprising proofs whereof are on record; how he wrote long works within the week; sometimes within almost the four-and-twenty hours. Unhappily, enough still remains to make such feats credible. Most of Diderot's Works bear the clearest traces of extemporaneousness; stans pede in uno! They are much liker printed talk, than the concentrated well-considered utterance, which, from a man of that weight, we expect to see set in types. It is said, "he wrote good pages, but could not write a good book." Substitute did not for could not; and there is some truth in the saying. Clearness, as has been observed, comprehensibility at a glance, is the character of whatever Diderot wrote: a clearness which, in visual objects, rises into the region of the Artistic, and resembles that of Richardson or Defoe. Yet, grant that he makes his meaning clear, what is the nature of that meaning itself? Alas, for most part, only a hasty, flimsy, superficial meaning, with gleams of a deeper vision peering through. More or less of Disorder reigns in all Works that Diderot wrote; not order, but the plausible appearance of such: the true heart of the matter is not found; "he skips deftly along the radii, and skips over the centre, and misses it.'

Thus may Diderot's admired Universality and admired facility have both turned to disadvantage for him. We speak not of his reception by the world: this indeed is the "age of specialities;" yet, owing to other causes, Inderot the Encyclopedist had success enough. But, what is of far more importance, his inward growth was marred: the strong tree shot not up in any one noble stem, (bearing boughs, and fruit, and shade all round;) but spread out horizontally, after a very moderate height, into innumerable branches, not useless, yet of quite secondary use. Diderot could have been an Artist; and he was little better than an Encyclopedic Artisan. No smatterer indeed; a faithful artisan; of really universal equip

enough explained. Meanwhile, let him, to whom it applies, consider it; him among whose gifts it was to rise into the Perennial, and who dwelt rather low down in the Ephemeral, and ephemerally fought and scrambled there! Diderot the great has contracted into Diderot the easily-measurable: so must it be with others of the like.

In how many sentences can the net-product of all that tumultuous Atheism, printed over many volumes, be comprised! Nay, the whole Encyclopédie, that world's wonder of the eighteenth century, the Belus' Tower of an age of refined Illumination, what has it become! Alas! no stone-tower, that will stand there as our strength and defence through all times : but, at best, a wooden Helepolis, (City-taker,) wherein stationed, the Philosophus Policaster has burnt and battered down many an old ruinous Sorbonne; and which now, when that work is pretty well over, may, in turn, be taken asunder, and used as firewood. The famed Encyclopedical Tree itself has proved an artificial one, and borne no fruit. We mean that, in its nature, it is mechanical only; one of those attempts to parcel out the invisible mystical Soul of Man, with its infinitude of phases and character, into shop-lists of what are called "faculties," "motives," and such like; which attempts may indeed be made with all degrees of insight, from that of a Doctor Spurzheim to that of Denis Diderot, or Jeremy Bentham; and prove useful for a day, but for a day only.

Nevertheless it were false to regard Diderot as a Mechanist and nothing more; as one working and grinding blindly in the mill of mechanical Logic, joyful with his lot there, and unconscious of any other. Call him one rather who contributed to deliver us therefrom: both by his manful whole spirit as a Mechanist, which drove all things to their ultimatum and crisis; and even by a dim-struggling faculty, which virtually aimed beyond this. Diderot, we said, was gifted by Nature for an Artist: strangely flashing through his mechanical encumbrances, are rays of thought, which belong to the Poet, to the Prophet; which, in other environment, could have revealed the deepest to us. Not to seek far, consider this one little sentence, which he makes the last of the dying Sanderson: Le temps, la matière, et l'espace ne sont peut-être qu'un point (Time, Mat ter, and Space are perhaps but a point!)

So too, in Art, both as a speaker and a doer, he is to be reckoned as one of those who

one looks a sunny Elysium, through the other a sulphurous Erebus: both hold of the Infinite. This Jacques, perhaps, was not quite so hastily put together: yet there too haste is manifest: the Author finishes it off, not by working out the figures and movements, but by dashing his brush against the canvas; a manoeuvre which in this case has not succeeded. The Rameau's Nephew, which is the shorter, is also the better; may pass for decidedly the best of all Diderot's Compositions. It looks like a Sibylline utterance froin a heart all in fusion: no ephemeral thing (for it was written as a Satire on Palissot) was ever more perennially treated. Strangely enough, too, it lay some fifty years, in German and Russian Libraries; came out first in the masterly version of Goethe, in 1805; and only (after a deceptive re-translation by a M. Saur, a courageous mystifier otherwise,) reached the Paris public, in 1821,-when perhaps all, for whom, and against whom it was written, were no more! It is a farce-tragedy; and its fate has corresponded to its purport. One day it must also be translated into English; but will require to be done by head; the common steammachinery will not meet it.

We here (con la bocca dolce) take leave of Diderot in his intellectual aspect, as Artist and Thinker: a richly endowed, unfavourably situated nature; whose effort, much marred, yet not without fidelity of aim, can triumph, on rare occasions; is perhaps nowhere utterly fruitless. In the moral aspect, as Man, he makes a somewhat similar figure; as indeed, in all men, in him especially, the Opinion and the Practice stand closely united; and as a wise man has remarked, "the speculative principles are often but a supplement (or excuse) to the

pressed forward irresistibly out of the artificial barren sphere of that time, into a truer genial one. His Dramas, the Fils Naturel, the Père de Famille, have indeed ceased to live; yet is the attempt towards great things visible in them; the attempt remains to us, and seeks otherwise, and has found, and is finding, fulfilment. Not less in his Salons, (Judgments of Art-Exhibitions,) written hastily for Grimm, and by ill chance, on artists of quite secondary character, do we find the freest recognition of whatever excellence there is; nay, an impetuous endeavour, not critically but even creatively, towards something more excellent. Indeed, what with their unrivalled clearness, painting the picture over again for us, so that we too see it, and can judge it; what with their sunny fervour, inventiveness, real artistic genius, (which only cannot manipulate,) they are, with some few exceptions in the German tongue, the only Pictorial Criticisms we know of worth reading. Here too, as by his own practice in the Dramatic branch of art, Diderot stands forth as the main originator (almost the sole one in his own country) of that manysided struggle towards what is called Nature, and copying of Nature, and faithfulness to Nature; a deep indispensable truth, subversive of the old error; yet under that figure, only a halftruth, for Art too is Art, as surely as Nature is Nature; which struggle, meanwhile, either as half-truth or working itself into a whole truth, may be seen (in countries that have any Art) still forming the tendency of all artistic endeavour. In which sense, Diderot's Essay on Painting has been judged worth translation by the greatest modern Judge of Art, and greatest modern Artist, in the highest kind of Art; and may be read anew, with argumentative commentary and exposition, in Goethe's Works. Nay, let us grant, with pleasure, that for Di-practical manner of life." In conduct, Didederot himself the realms of Art were not rot can nowise seem admirable to us; yet wholly unvisited; that he too, so heavily im- neither inexcusable; on the whole, not at all prisoned, stole Promethean fire. Among these quite worthless. Lavater traced in his physimultitudinous, most miscellaneous Writings ognomy" something timorous;" which reading of his, in great part a manufactured farrago his friends admitted to be a correct one. Diof Philosophism no longer saleable, and now derot, in truth, is no hero: the earnest soul, looking melancholy enough,-are two that we wayfaring and warfaring in the complexities can almost call Poems; that have something of a World like to overwhelm him, yet whereperennially poetic in them: Jacques le Fata-in he by Heaven's grace will keep faithfully liste; in a still higher degree, the Neveu de Rameau. The occasional blueness of both; even that darkest indigo in some parts of the former, shall not altogether affright us. As it were, a loose straggling sunbeam flies here over Man's Existence in France, now nigh a century behind us: "from the height of luxurious ele-impulses, which at best he had fashioned into gance to the depths of shamelessness;" all is here. Slack, careless seems the combination of the picture; wriggling, disjointed, like a bundle of flails; yet strangely united in the painter's in ward unconscious feeling. Wearisomely crackling wit gets silent; a grim, taciturn, dare-devil, almost Hogarthian humour, rises in the background. Like this there is nothing that we know of in the whole range of French Literature: La Fontaine is shallow in comparision; the La Bruyère wit-species not to be named. It resembles Don Quixote, rather; of somewhat similar stature; yet of complexion altogether different; through the

warfaring, prevailing or not, can derive small solacement from this light, fluctuating, not to say flimsy existence of Diderot: no Gospel in that kind has he left us. The man, in fact, with all his high gifts, had rather a female character. Susceptible, sensitive, living by

some show of principles; with vehemence enough, with even a female uncontrollableness; with little of manful steadfastness, considerateness, invincibility. Thus, too, we find him living mostly in the society of women, or of men who, like women, flattered him, and made life easy for him; recoiling with horror from an earnest Jean Jacques, who understood not the science of walking in a vain show; but imagined (poor man) that truth was there as a thing to be told, as a thing to be acted.

We call Diderot, then, not a coward; yet not in any sense a brave man. Neither towards himself, nor towards others, was he

brave. All the virtues, says M. de Meister, which require not "a great suite (sequency) of ideas," were his: all that do require such a suite were not his. In other words, what duties were easy for him, he did: happily Nature had rendered several easy. His spiritual aim, moreover, seemed not so much to be enforcement, exposition of Duty, as discovery of a Duty-made-easy. Natural enough that he should strike into that province of sentiment, cœur-noble, and so forth. Alas, to declare that the beauty of virtue is beautiful, costs comparatively little; to win it, and wear it, is quite another enterprise,-wherein the loud braggart, we know, is not the likeliest to succeed. On the whole, peace be with sentiment, for that also lies behind us!-For the rest, as hinted, what duties were difficult our Diderot left undone. How should he, the caur sensible, front such a monster as Pain? And now, since misgivings cannot fail in that course, what is to be done but fill up all asperities with floods of Sensibilité, and so voyage more or less smoothly along? Est-il bon? Est-il méchant? is his own account of himself. At all events, he was no voluntary hypocrite; that great praise can be given him. And thus with Mechanical Philosophism, and passion vive; working, flirting; "with more of softness than of true affection, sometimes with the malice and rage of a child, but on the whole an inex-est theme of the World's and Man's History,' haustible fund of goodnatured simplicity," has he come down to us for better for worse: and what can we do but receive him?

not done what lay at our hand towards reducing that same Memoirism of the Eighteenth Century into History, and "weaving" a thread or two thereof nearer to the condition of a "web?” But finally, if we rise with this matter (as we should try to do with all) into the proper region of Universal History, and look on it with the eye not of this time, or of that time, but of Time at large, perhaps the prediction might stand here, that intrinsically, essentially little lies in it; that one day when the netresult of our European way of life comes to be summed up, this whole as yet so boundless concern of French Philosophism will dwindle into the thinnest of fractions, or vanish into nonentity! Alas, while the rude History and Thoughts of those same "Juifs miserables,” the barbaric War-song of a Deborah and Barak, the rapt prophetic Utterance of an unkempt Isaiah, last now (with deepest significance) say only these three thousand years,-what has the thrice resplendent Encyclopédie shrivelled into within these three-score! This is a fact which, explain it, express it, in which way he will, your Encyclopedist should actually consider. Those were tones caught from the sacred Melody of the All, and having harmony and meaning for ever; these of his are but outer discords, and their jangling dies away without result. "The special, sole, and deep

If now we and our reader, reinterpreting for our present want that Life and Performance of Diderot, have brought it clearer before us, be the hour spent thereon, were it even more wearisome, no profitless one! Have we not striven to unite our own brief present moment more and more compactly with the Past and with the Future; have we

says the Thinker of our time, "whereto all other themes are subordinated, remains the Conflict of UNBELIEF and BELIEF. All epochs wherein Belief prevails, under what form it may, are splendid, heart-elevating, fruitful for contemporaries and posterity. All epochs, on the contrary, wherein Unbelief, under wha form soever, maintains its sorry victory, should they even for a moment glitter with a sham splendour, vanish from the eyes of posterity; because no one chooses to burden himself with study of the unfruitful.

ON HISTORY AGAIN.

[FRASER'S MAGAZINE, 1833.]

The following singular fragment on History forms part, as may be recognised, of the Inaugural Discourse delivered by our assiduous "D. T." at the opening of the Society for the Diffusion of Common Honesty. The Discourse, if one may credit the Morning Papers, "touched in the most wonderful manner, didactically, poetically, almost prophetically, on all things in this world and the next, in a strain of sustained or rather of suppressed passionate eloquence rarely witnessed in Parliament or out of it: the chief bursts were received with profound silence," interrupted, we fear, by snuff

taking. As will be seen, it is one of the didactic passages that we introduce here. The Editor of this Magazine is responsible for its accuracy, and publishes, if not with leave given, then with leave taken.-O. Y.]

** HISTORY recommends itself as the most profitable of all studies: and truly, for such a being as Man, who is born, and has to learn and work, and then after a measured term of years to depart, leaving descendants and performself as vital portion of a Mankind, no study ances, and so, in all ways, to vindicate himcould be fitter. History is the Letter of Instructions, which the old generations write and posthumously transmit to the new; nay

it may be called, more generally still, the Mes- | what the given world was, what it had and what sage, verbal or written, which all Mankind it wanted, how might his clear effort strike in delivers to every man; it is the only articulate at the right time and the right point; wholly communication (when the inarticulate and increasing the true current and tendency, nomute, intelligible or not, lie round us and in where cancelling itself in opposition thereto! us, so strangely through every fibre of our Unhappily, such smooth-running, ever-accelebeing, every step of our activity) which the rated course is nowise the one appointed us; Past can have with the Present, the Distant cross currents we have, perplexed back floods; with what is Here. All Books, therefore, innumerable efforts (every new man is a new were they but Song-books or treatises on Ma- effort) consume themselves in aimless eddies: thematics, are in the long run historical doc- thus is the River of Existence so wild-flowing, uments, as indeed all Speech itself is thus wasteful; and whole multitudes, and whole might we say, History is not only the fittest generations, in painful unreason, spend and study, but the only study, and includes all are spent on what can never profit. Of all others whatsoever. The Perfect in History, which, does not one half originate in this which he who understood, and saw and knew within we have named want of Perfection in History; himself, all that the whole Family of Adam-the other half, indeed, in another want still had hitherto been and hitherto done, were per- deeper, still more irremediable?

fect in all learning extant or possible; needed Here, however, let us grant that Nature, in not henceforth to study any more; and hence-regard to such historic want, is nowise blamaforth nothing left but to be and to do something himself, and others might make History of it, and learn of him.