DIDEROT.

[FOREIGN QUArterly Review, 1833.]

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, victories, 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.

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 sees write down according to his gift of sight; 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.

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 hus

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 multi-bandmen these were. For which reason, be tude 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,

par J. A. Naigeon. 22 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1821.

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 whether 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

:

perly the End; the End of a Social System | reaches downwards and up vards, unsurvey. which 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 As to this Diderot, had we once got so far that a time when the mouldering changes into a we could, in the faintest degree, personate him; rushing; active hands drive in their wedges, take upon ourselves his character and his enset to their crowbars; there is a comfortable vironment of circumstances, and act his Life appearance of work going on. Instead of over again in that small Private-Theatre of here and there a stone falling out, here and ours, (under our own Hat,) with moderate Iltnere a handful of dust, whole masses tumble lusiveness and histrionic effect,-that were down, who.e clouds and whirlwinds of dust: what, in conformity with common speech, we torches too are applied, and the rotten easily should name understanding him, and could be takes fire so what with flame-whirlwind, what abundantly content with. 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 iabour 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 Amsterdam Editions," or rather formless, blundering Agglomerations," were all that the world saw during his life. Diderot did not hear of these for several years, and then only, it is said, "with peals of laughter," and no other practical step whatever. Of the four that have since been printed, (or reprinted, for Naigeon's of 1798, is the great original,) no one so much as pretends either to be complete or selected on any system. Brière's, the latest, of which alone we have much personal knowledge, is a well-printed book, perhaps better worth buying than any of the others; yet without arrangement, without coherence, purport; often lamentably in need of commentary: on the whole, in reference to the wants and 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, indeed, it is several years since the present Reviewer gave up the idea of what could be called understanding any Man whatever, even himself. Every Man, within that inconsiderable figure of his. contains a whole spiritkingdom and Reflex of the ALL; and though to the eye but some six standard feet in size,

Such a torch-and-crowbar period of quick rushing down and conflagration, was this of the Siècle de Louis Quinze; when the Social System having all fallen to rottenness, rainholes, and noisome decay, the shivering natives resolved to cheer their dull abode by the questionable step of setting it on fire. Questionable we call their Manner of procedure; the thing itself, as all men may now see, was inevitable; one way or other, whether by prior burning or milder methods, the old house must needs be new-built. We behold the business of pulling down, or at least of assorting the rubbish, still go resolutely on, all over Europe: here and there some traces of new foundation, of new building up, may now also, to the eye of Hope, disclose themselves.

gained there; that the Note, whatever it professedly treat of, will, in strict logical speech, mean only as much as to say: "Reader! thou perceivest that we Editors, to the number of at least two, are alive, and if we had any in formation would impart it to thee.-Edits." For the rest, these " EDITS." are polite people; and with this uncertainty (as to their being

persons or things) clearly before them, continue, or remembered not as Man, but merely as Phito all appearance, in moderately good spirits.losophic-Atheistic Logic-Mill! Did not DideOne service they, or Brière for them, (if, rot live, as well as think? An amateur reindeed, Brière is not himself they, as we some-porter in some of the Biographical Dictionatimes surmise,) have accomplished for us:ries declares that he heard him talk one day, sought out and printed the long-looked-for, in nightgown and slippers, for the space of long-lost Life of Diderot by Naigeon. The two hours, concerning earth, sea, and air, with lovers of biography had for years sorrowed a fulgorous impetuosity almost beyond human, over this concealed Manuscript, with a wistful- rising from height to height, and at length ness from which hope had nigh fled. A certain finish the climax by "dashing his nightcap Naigeon, the beloved disciple of Diderot, had against the wall." Most readers will admit (if his own word, in his own editorial Preface, this to be biography; we, alas, must say, it was to be credited) written a Life of him; comprises nearly all about the Man Diderot and, alas! whither was it now vanished? that hitherto would abide with us. Surely all that was dark in Denis the Fatalist Here, however, comes "Paulin, Publishinghad there been illuminated; nay, was there Bookseller," with a quite new contribution: a not, probably, a glorious "Light-street" carried long series of Letters, extending over fifteen through that whole Literary Eighteenth Cen-years; unhappily only love-letters, and from a tury? And was not Diderot, long belauded as married sexagenarian; yet still letters from his "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!

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 in many of the details of it cannot but confirm, the biographic reader will find this well worth looking into. Nay, is it not something of itself, to see that Spectacle of the Philosophe in Love, or, at least, zealously endeavouring to fancy himself so? For scientific purposes a considerable tedium, of "noble sentiment" (and even worse things) can be undergone. How the most encyclopedical head that perhaps ever existed, now on the borders of his grand climacteric, and already, provided with wife and child, comports himself in that trying circumstance of preternuptial (and, indeed, at such age, and with so many "indigestions," almost preternatural) devotion to the queens of this earth, may, by the curious in science, (who have nerves for it.) be here seen. There is besides a lively Memoir of him by Mademoiselle Diderot, though too brief, and not very true-looking. Finally, in one large Volume, his Dream of d'Alembert, greatly regretted and commented upon by Naigeon; which we could have done without. For its bulk, that little Memoir is the best of the whole. Unfortunately, as hinted, Mademoiselle, resolute of all things to be piquante, writes, or rather thinks, in a smart, antithetic manner, nowise the fittest for clearness or credibility: without suspicion of voluntary falsehood, there is no appearance that this is a camera-lucida picture, or a por

By Brière's endeavour, as we said, the concealed Manuscript of Naigeon now lies, as published Volume, on this desk. Alas! a written life, too like many an acted life, where hope is one thing, fulfilment quite another! Perhaps, indeed, of all biographies ever put together by the hand of man, this of Naigeon's is the most uninteresting. Foolish Naigeon! We wanted to see and know how it stood with the bodily man, the clothed, boarded, bedded, working, and warfaring Denis Diderot, in that Paris of his; how he looked and lived, what he did, what he said: had the foolish Biographer so much as told us what colour his stockings were! Of all this, beyond a date or two, not a syllable, not a hint! nothing but a dull, sulky, snuffling, droning, interminable lecture on Atheistic Philosophy; how Diderot came upon Atheism, how he taught it, how true it is, how inexpressibly important. Singular enough, the zeal of the devil's house hath eaten Naigeon up. A man of coarse, mechanical, perhaps intrinsically rather feeble intellect; and then, with the vehemence of some pulpit-drumming "Gowkthrapple," or "precious Mr. Jabesh Rentowel," only that his kirk is of the other complexion! Yet must he too see himself in a wholly backsliding world, where much theism and other scandal still rules; and many times Gowkthrapple Naigeon be tempted to weep by the streams of Babel. Withal, how-trait drawn by legitimate rules of art. Such ever, he is wooden; thoroughly mechanical, as if Vaucanson himself had made him; and that singularly tempers his fury.-Let the reader, finally, admire the bounteous produce of this Earth, and how one element bears nothing but the other matches it: here have we not the truest odium theologicum, working quite demonologically, in a worshipper of the Everlasting Nothing! So much for Naigeon; what we looked for from him, and what we have got.

Must Diderot then be given up to oblivion,

resolution to be piquant is the besetting sin of innumerable persons of both sexes, and wofully mars any use there might otherwise be in their writing or their speaking. It is, or was, the fault specially imputed to the French: in a woman and Frenchwoman, who besides has much to tell us, it must even be borne with. And now, from these diverse scattered materials, let us try how coherent a figure of Denis Diderot, and his earthly Pilgrimage and Performance, we can piece together.

In the ancient Town of Langres, in the presses in while some crowd is entering, and month of October, 1713, it begins. Fancy 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 composi tion, 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."

Langres, aloft on its hill top, amid Reman 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 mine! Diderot loved his father, as he well might, and regrets on several occasions that he was painted in holiday clothes, and not in the workday costume of his trade, "with apron and grinder's-wheel, and spectacles pushed up," even as he lived and laboured, and honestly made good for himself the small section of the Universe he pretended to occupy. A man of strictest veracity and integrity was this ancient master; of great insight and patient discretion, so that he was often chosen as umpire and adviser; of great humanity, so that one day crowds of poor were to " follow him with tears to his long home." An outMademoiselle, in her quick-sparkling way, spoken Langres neighbour gratified the now informs us, nevertheless, that the school-victor, fatherless Philosopher with this saying "Ah, getting tired of pedagogic admonitions and inMonsieur Diderot, you are a famous man, bu fictions, whereof there were many, said "one you will never be your father's equal." Truly, morning" to his father, "that he meant to give of all the wonderful illustrious persons that up school!"-"Thou hadst rather be a cuiler, come to view in the biographic part of these then ?"-"With all my heart."-They handed six-and-twenty Volumes, it is a question whe-him an apron, and he placed himself beside ther 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 m 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

"One of the sweetest moments of my life," writes Diderot himself, of this same business, with a slight variation, “was more than thirty years ago, and I remember it like yesterday, when my Father saw me coming home from the college, with my arms full of prizes that I had carried off, and my shoulders with the garlands they had given me, which, being too big for my brow, had let my head slip through them. Noticing me at a distance, he threw down his work, hastened to the door to meet me, and could not help weeping. It is a fine sight, a true man and rigorous falling to weep!"

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 mi ls, 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