DIDEROT.

[FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW, 1833.]

of both sexes; or else, what were far better, sweep their Novel-fabric into the dust-cart, and betake them with such faculty as they have to understand and record what is true,— of which, surely, there is, and will for ever be, a whole Infinitude unknown to us, of infinite importance to us! Poetry, it will more and more come to be understood, is nothing but higher Knowledge; and the only genuine Romance (for grown persons) Reality. The Thinker is the Poet, the Seer: let him who

if deep and with inspired vision, then creatively, poetically; if common, and with only uninspired, every-day vision, let him at least be faithful in this and write Memoirs.

THE Acts of the Christian Apostles, on which, as we may say, the world has now for eighteen centuries had its foundation, are written in so small a compass, that they can be read in one little hour. The Acts of the French Philosophes, the importance of which is already fast exhausting itself, lie recorded in whole acres of typography, and would furnish reading for a lifetime. Nor is the stock, as we see, yet anywise complete, or within computable distance of completion. Here are Four quite new Octavos, recording the labours, voyages, victo-sees write down according to his gift of sight; ries, amours, and indigestions of the Apostle Denis: it is but a year or two since a new contribution on Voltaire came before us; since Jean Jacques had a new Life written for him; and then of those Feuilles de Grimm, what incalculable masses may yet lie dormant in the Petersburgh Library, waiting only to be awakened and let slip!-Reading for a lifetime? Thomas Parr might begin reading in long-clothes, and stop in his last hundred and fiftieth year without having ended. And then, as to when the process of addition will cease, and the Acts and Epistles of the Parisian Church of Antichrist will have completed themselves; except in so far as the quantity of paper written on, or even manufactured, in those days being finite and not infinite, the business one day or other must cease, and the Antichristian Canon close for the last time, we yet know nothing.

Meanwhile, let us nowise be understood as lamenting this stupendous copiousness, but rather as viewing it historically with patience, and indeed with satisfaction. Memoirs, so long as they are true, how stupid soever, can hardly be accumulated in excess. The stupider they are, let them simply be the sooner cast into the oven; if true, they will always instruct more or less, were it only in the way of confirmation and repetition; and, what is of vast moment, they do not mis-instruct. Day after day looking at the high destinies which yet await Literature, which Literature will ere long address herself with more decisiveness than ever to fulfil, it grows clearer to us that the proper task of Literature lies in the domain of BELIEF; within which "Poetic Fiction," as it is charitably named, will have to take a quite new figure, if allowed a settlement there. Whereby were it not reasonable to prophesy that this exceeding great multitude of Novel-writers, and such like, must (in a new generation) gradually do one of two things either retire into nurseries, and work for children, minors, and semi-fatuous persons

* 1. Mémoires, Correspondance, et Ouvrages inédits de Diderot; publiés d'après les manuscrits confiés, en mourante, par l'auteur à Grimm. 4 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1831.

2. Euvres de Denis Diderot; procédées de Mémoires

historiques et philosophiques sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages, historiques et philosophiques sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages, par J. A. Naigeon. 22 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1821.

On us still so near at hand, that Eighteenth century in Paris presenting itself nowise as portion of the magic web of Universal History, but only as the confused and ravelled mass of threads and thrums, ycleped Memoirs, in process of being woven into such,-imposes a rather complex relation. Of which, however, as of all such, the leading rules may be happily comprised in this very plain one, prescribed by Nature herself: to search in them, so far as they seem worthy, for whatsoever can help us forward on our own path, were it in the shape of intellectual instruction, of moral edification, nay of mere solacement and amusement. The Bourbons, indeed, took a shorter method, (the like of which has been often recommended elsewhere;) they shut up and hid the graves of the Philosophes, hoping that their lives and writings might likewise thereby go out of sight, and out of mind; and thus the whole business would be, so to speak, suppressed. Foolish Bourbons! These things were not done in a corner, but on high places, before the anxious eyes of all mankind: hidden they can in nowise be to conquer them, to resist them, our first indispensable preliminary is to see and comprehend them. To us, indeed, as their immediate successors, the right comprehension of them is of prime necessity; for, sent of God or of the Devil, they have plainly enough gone before us, and left us such and such a world: it is on ground of their tillage, with the stubble of their harvest standing on it, that we now have to plough. Before all things then, let us understand what ground it is; what manner of men and husbandmen these were. For which reason, be all authentic Philosophe-Memoirs welcome, each in its kind! For which reason, let us now, without the smallest reluctance, penetrate into this wondrous Gospel according to Denis Diderot, and expatiate there to see whe ther it will yield us aught.

In any phenomenon, one of the most important moments is the end. Now this epoch of the Eighteenth or Philosophe-century was pro

As to this Diderot, had we once got so far that we could, in the faintest degree, personate him; take upon ourselves his character and his environment of circumstances, and act his Life over again in that small Private-Theatre of ours, (under our own Hat,) with moderate Illusiveness and histrionic effect, that were what, in conformity with common speech, we should name understanding him, and could be abundantly content with.

perly the End; the End of a Social System | reaches downwards and up vards, unsurveywhich for above a thousand years had been able, fading into the regions of Immensity and building itself together, and, after that, had of Eternity. Life everywhere, as woven on begun, for some centuries, (as human things that stupendous ever-marvellous "Loom of all do,) to moulder down. The mouldering Time," may be said to fashion itself of a woof down of a Social System is no cheerful busi- of light indeed, yet on a warp of mystic darkness either to form part of, or to look at: how-ness: only he that created it can understand it. ever, at length, in the course of it, there comes a time when the mouldering changes into a rushing; active hands drive in their wedges, set to their crowbars; there is a comfortable appearance of work going on. Instead of here and there a stone falling out, here and there a handful of dust, whole masses tumble down, who.e clouds and whirlwinds of dust: torches too are applied, and the rotten easily takes fire so what with flame-whirlwind, what with dust-whirlwind, and the crush of falling towers, the concern grows eminently interesting; and our assiduous craftsmen can encourage one another with Vivats, and cries of Speed the work. Add to this, that of all labourers, no one can see such rapid extensive fruit of his labour as the Destroyer can and does: it will not seem unreasonable that measuring from effect to cause, he should esteem his labour as the best and greatest and a Voltaire, for example, be by his guild-brethren and apprentices confidently accounted "not only the greatest man of this age, but of all past ages, and perhaps the greatest that Nature could produce." Worthy old Nature! She goes on producing whatsoever is needful in each season of her course; and produces, with perfect composure, that Encyclopedist opinion, that she can produce no more.

In his manner of appearance before the world, Diderot has been, perhaps to an extreme degree, unfortunate. His literary productions were invariably dashed off in hottest haste, and left generally, (on the waste of Accident,) with an ostrich-like indifference. He had to live, in France, in the sour days of a Journal des Trevoux; of a suspicious, decaying Sorbonne. He was too poor to set foreign presses, at Kehl, or elsewhere, in motion; too headlong and quick of temper to seek help from those that could: thus must he, if his pen was not to lie idle, write much of which there was no publishing. His Papers accordingly are found flying about, like Sybil's leaves, in all corners of the world: for many years no tolerable collection of his Writings was attempted; to this day there is none that in any sense can be called perfect. Two spurious, surreptitious Such a torch-and-crowbar period of quick Amsterdam Editions," or rather formless, blunrushing down and conflagration, was this of dering Agglomerations," were all that the the Siècle de Louis Quinze when the Social world saw during his life. Diderot did not System having all fallen to rottenness, rain- hear of these for several years, and then only, holes, and noisome decay, the shivering na- it is said, "with peals of laughter," and no tives resolved to cheer their dull abode by the other practical step whatever. Of the four questionable step of setting it on fire. Ques- that have since been printed, (or reprinted, for tionable we call their Manner of procedure; Naigeon's of 1798, is the great original,) no the thing itself, as all men may now see, was one so much as pretends either to be complete inevitable; one way or other, whether by or selected on any system. Brière's, the latest, prior burning or milder methods, the old of which alone we have much personal knowhouse must needs be new-built. We behold ledge, is a well-printed book, perhaps better the business of pulling down, or at least of as- worth buying than any of the others; yet sorting the rubbish, still go resolutely on, all without arrangement, without coherence, purover Europe: here and there some traces of | port; often lamentably in need of commentary: new foundation, of new building up, may now on the whole, in reference to the wants and also, to the eye of Hope, disclose themselves.specialities of this time, as good as unedited. To get acquainted with Denis Diderot and Brière seems, indeed, to have hired some his life were to see the significant epitome of person, or thing, to play the part of Editor: or all this, as it works on the thinking and acting rather more things than one, for they sign soul of a man, fashions for him a singular themselves Editors in the plural number; and element of existence, gives himself therein a from time to time, throughout the work, some peculiar hue and figure. Unhappily, after all asterisk attracts us to the bottom of the leaf, that has been written, the matter still is not and to some printed matter subscribed luminous: to us strangers, much in that foreign "EDITS.": but unhappily the journey is for economy, and method of working and living, most part in vain; in the course of a volume remains obscure; much in the man himself, or two, we learn two well that nothing is to be and his inward nature and structure. But, gained there; that the Note, whatever it proindeed, it is several years since the present fessedly treat of, will, in strict logical speech, Reviewer gave up the idea of what could be mean only as much as to say: "Reader! thou called understanding any Man whatever, even perceivest that we Editors, to the number of himself. Every Man, within that inconsider- at least two, are alive, and if we had any in able figure of his. contains a whole spirit- formation would impart it to thee.-EDITS.” kingdom and Keflex of the ALL; and though | For the rest, these "EDITS." are polite people; to the eye but some six standard feet in size, and with this uncertainty (as to their being

or remembered not as Man, but merely as Philosophic-Atheistic Logic-Mill? Did not Diderot live, as well as think? An amateur reporter in some of the Biographical Dictionaries declares that he heard him talk one day, in nightgown and slippers, for the space of two hours, concerning earth, sea, and air, with a fulgorous impetuosity almost beyond human, rising from height to height, and at length finish the climax by " dashing his nightcap against the wall." Most readers will admit this to be biography; we, alas, must say, it comprises nearly all about the Man Diderot that hitherto would abide with us.

persons or things) clearly before them, continue, to all appearance, in moderately good spirits. One service they, or Brière for them, (if, indeed, Brière is not himself they, as we sometimes surmise,) have accomplished for us: sought out and printed the long-looked-for, long-lost Life of Diderot by Naigeon. The lovers of biography had for years sorrowed over this concealed Manuscript, with a wistfulness from which hope had nigh fled. A certain Naigeon, the beloved disciple of Diderot, had (if his own word, in his own editorial Preface, was to be credited) written a Life of him; and, alas! whither was it now vanished? Surely all that was dark in Denis the Fatalist had there been illuminated; nay, was there not, probably, a glorious "Light-street" carried through that whole Literary Eighteenth Cen-years; unhappily only love-letters, and from a tury? And was not Diderot, long belauded as "the most encyclopedical head that perhaps ever existed," now to show himself as such in,—the new Practical Encyclopedia, philosophic, economic, speculative, digestive, of LIFE, -in three score and ten Years, or Volumes? Diderot too was known as the vividest, noblest talker of his time: considering all that Boswell, with his slender opportunities, had made of Johnson, what was there we had not a right to expect!

Here, however, comes Paulin, PublishingBookseller," with a quite new contribution: a long series of Letters, extending over fifteen.

married sexagenarian; yet still letters from his own hand. Amid these insipid floods of tendresse, sensibilité, and so forth, vapid, like longdecanted small-beer, many a curious biographic trait comes to light; indeed, we can hereby see more of the individual Diderot, and his environment, and method of procedure there, than by all the other books that have yet been published of him. Forgetting or conquering the species of nausea that such a business, on the first announcement of it, may occasion, and By Brière's endeavour, as we said, the con- in many of the details of it cannot but confirm, cealed Manuscript of Naigeon now lies, as the biographic reader will find this well worth published Volume, on this desk. Alas! a looking into. Nay, is it not something of written life, too like many an acted life, where itself, to see that Spectacle of the Philosophe hope is one thing, fulfilment quite another! in Love, or, at least, zealously endeavouring Perhaps, indeed, of all biographies ever put to fancy himself so? For scientific purposes together by the hand of man, this of Naigeon's a considerable tedium, of "noble sentiment" is the most uninteresting. Foolish Naigeon! (and even worse things) can be undergone. We wanted to see and know how it stood with How the most encyclopedical head that perthe bodily man, the clothed, boarded, bedded, haps ever existed, now on the borders of his working, and warfaring Denis Diderot, in that grand climacteric, and already, provided with Paris of his; how he looked and lived, what wife and child, comports himself in that trying he did, what he said: had the foolish Biographer circumstance of preternuptial (and, indeed, at so much as told us what colour his stockings such age, and with so many "indigestions," were! Of all this, beyond a date or two, not a almost preternatural) devotion to the queens syllable, not a hint! nothing but a dull, sulky, of this earth, may, by the curious in science, snuffling, droning, interminable lecture on (who have nerves for it,) be here seen. There Atheistic Philosophy; how Diderot came upon is besides a lively Memoir of him by MadeAtheism, how he taught it, how true it is, how moiselle Diderot, though too brief, and not very inexpressibly important. Singular enough, the true-looking. Finally, in one large Volume, zeal of the devil's house hath eaten Naigeon up. his Dream of d'Alembert, greatly regretted and A man of coarse, mechanical, perhaps intrin- commented upon by Naigeon; which we could sically rather feeble intellect; and then, with have done without. For its bulk, that little the vehemence of some pulpit-drumming Memoir is the best of the whole. Unfortunately, Gowkthrapple," or "precious Mr. Jabesh as hinted, Mademoiselle, resolute of all things Rentowel," only that his kirk is of the other to be piquante, writes, or rather thinks, in a complexion! Yet must he too see himself in smart, antithetic manner, nowise the fittest for a wholly backsliding world, where much the- clearness or credibility: without suspicion of ism and other scandal still rules; and many voluntary falsehood, there is no appearance times Gowkthrapple Naigeon be tempted to that this is a camera-lucida picture, or a porweep by the streams of Babel. Withal, how- trait drawn by legitimate rules of art. Such ever, he is wooden; thoroughly mechanical, as resolution to be piquant is the besetting sin of if Vaucanson himself had made him; and that innumerable persons of both sexes, and wofully singularly tempers his fury.-Let the reader, mars any use there might otherwise be in their finally, admire the bounteous produce of this writing or their speaking. It is, or was, the Earth, and how one element bears nothing but fault specially imputed to the French: in a the other matches it: here have we not the woman and Frenchwoman, who besides has truest odium theologicum, working quite demono- much to tell us, it must even be borne with. logically, in a worshipper of the Everlasting And now, from these diverse scattered mateNothing! So much for Naigeon; what we rials, let us try how coherent a figure of Denis looked for from him, and what we have got. Diderot, and his earthly Pilgrimage and PerMust Diderot then be given up to oblivion, | formance, we can piece together.

presses in while some crowd is entering, and sets off running at full speed; the porter gets at him with a sort of pike he carried, and wounds him in the side: the boy will not be driven back; arrives, takes the place that belonged to him: prizes of all sorts, for composition, for memory, for poetry, he obtains them all. No doubt he had deserved them; since even the resolution to punish him could not withstand the sense of justice in his superiors. Several volumes, a number of garlands had fallen to his lot; being too weak to carry them all, he put the garlands round his neck, and, with his arms full of books, returned home. His mother was at the door; and saw him coming through the public square in this equipment, and surrounded by his school-fellows: one should be a mother to conceive what she must have felt. He was feasted, he was caressed: but next Sunday, in dressing him for church, a considerable wound was found on him, of which he had not so much as thought of complaining.”

In the ancient Town of Langres, in the month of October, 1713, it begins. Fancy Langres, aloft on its hill top, amid Roman ruins, nigh the sources of the Saone and of the Marne, with its coarse substantial houses, and fifteen thousand inhabitants, mostly engaged in knife-grinding; and one of the quickest, clearest, most volatile, and susceptive little figures of that century, just landed in the World there. In this French Sheffield, Diderot's Father was a Cutler, master of his craft; a much-respected and respect-worthy man; one of those ancient craftsmen (now, alas! nearly departed from the earth, and sought, with little effect, by idyllists, among the "Scottish peasantry," and elsewhere) who, in the school of practice, have learned not only skill of hand, but the far harder skill of head and of heart; whose whole knowledge and virtue, being by necessity a knowledge and virtue to do somewhat, is true, and has stood trial: humble modern patriarchs, brave, wise, simpie; of worth rude, but unperverted, like genuine unwrought silver, native from the "One of the sweetest moments of my life," mine! Diderot loved his father, as he well writes Diderot himself, of this same business, might, and regrets on several occasions that he with a slight variation, "was more than thirty was painted in holiday clothes, and not in the years ago, and I remember it like yesterday, workday costume of his trade, "with apron when my Father saw me coming home from and grinder's-wheel, and spectacles pushed the college, with my arms full of prizes that I up,"-even as he lived and laboured, and had carried off, and my shoulders with the garhonestly made good for himself the small sec- lands they had given me, which, being too big tion of the Universe he pretended to occupy. for my brow, had let my head slip through A man of strictest veracity and integrity was them. Noticing me at a distance, he threw this ancient master; of great insight and down his work, hastened to the door to meet patient discretion, so that he was often chosen as umpire and adviser; of great humanity. se that one day crowds of poor were to "follow him with tears to his long home." An outspoken Langres neighbour gratified the now fatherless Philosopher with this saying-"Ah, Monsieur Diderot, you are a famous man, but you will never be your father's equal." Truly, of all the wonderful illustrious persons that come to view in the biographic part of these six-and-twenty Volumes, it is a question whether this old Langres Cutler is not the worthiest; to us no other suggests himself whose worth can be admitted, without lamentable pollutions and defacements to be deducted from it. The Mother also was a loving-hearted. just woman: so Diderot might account himself well-born: and it is a credit to the man that he always (and sometimes in the circle of kings and empresses) gratefully did so.

The Jesuits were his schoolmasters: at the age of twelve, the encyclopedical head was "tonsured." He was quick in seizing, strong in remembering and arranging; otherwise flighty enough; fond of sport, and from time to time getting into trouble. One grand event, significant of all this, he has himself commemorated: his Daughter records it in these

terms.

'He had chanced to have a quarrel with his comrades: it had been serious enough to bring on him a sentence of exclusion from college on some day of public examination and distribution of prizes. The idea of passing this important time at home, and grieving his parents, was intolerable: he proceeded to the collegegate; the porter refused him admittance; he

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me, and could not help weeping. It is a fine sight, a true man and rigorous falling to weep!"

Mademoiselle, in her quick-sparkling way, informs us, nevertheless, that the school-victor, getting tired of pedagogic admonitions and inflictions, whereof there were many, said “one morning" to his father, "that he meant to give up school!". "Thou hadst rather be a cutler, then ?"-" With all my heart."-They handed him an apron, and he placed himself beside his father. He spoiled whatever he laid hands on, penknives, whittles, blades of all kinds. It went on for four or five days; at the end of which he rose, proceeded to his room, got his books there, and returned to college,—and having, it would appear, in this simple manner sown his college wild-oats, never stirred from it again.

To the Reverend Fathers, it seemed that Denis would make an excellent Jesuit; wherefore they set about coaxing and courting, with intent to crimp him. Here, in some mils, a certain comfortable reflection on the diabolic cunning and assiduity of these Holy Fathers, now happily all dissolved and expelled, will suggest itself. Along with which may another melancholy reflection no less be in place: namely, that these Devil-serving Jesuits should have shown a skill and zeal in their teaching vocation, such as no Heaven-serving body, of what complexion soever, anywhere on our earth now exhibits. To decipher the talent of a young vague Capability, who must one day be a man and a Reality; to take him by the hand, and train him to a spiritual trade, and set him up in it, with tools, shop, and good

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