DID E R Ô T.

DIDEROT is one of those grand figures which stand boldly out in the picture of the eighteenth century. He holds a high place as an artist and philosopher in the history of art and of ideas. In his memory there is something at once grand and charming: his is the genius of paradox, the heroism of audacity and passion. On his shoulders he bears the nineteenth century as old Atlas bore the world. No one has ever thought of erecting a monument in his honor; but has he not a temple, an immortal temple, though now in ruins the Encyclopædia whence issued the Revolution fully armed?

Born at Langres in 1713, Diderôt was descended from a race of honest men. He was the eldest of a large family, of which he was considered the black sheep, but of which he became the glory. He studied first with the Jesuits of his native village, who would willingly have retained him among them, but his father sent him to the College d'Harcourt at Paris. From that time he lived in the Paris of that time (1733-1743) the life of the young men of the age, trying every profession without deciding on any; reading, studying, devouring every thing with avidity; giving lessons in mathematics which he himself learned as he went along; promenading at the Luxembourg in summer, 'in a riding-coat of grey plush, with tattered sleeves, and black woollen hose, mended with white thread;' visiting Mademoiselle Babuti, the pretty book-seller of the Quai des Augustins, (who afterward became Madame Greuze,) entering her shop with that gay, lively air which then distinguished him, and saying to her: Mademoiselle, the 'Tales of La Fontaine,' if you please, a Petrona.' Such was Diderôt before his marriage, (a marriage of love, accomplished at the age of thirty,) and even after, leading that life of chance, expedients, of labor and of continual improvisation. His genius- for by no other name can we designate the greatness and the force of his different faculties was so well adapted to this mode of life, that even now we do not know if he would have been fitted to any other, and we are tempted to believe that in thus diversifying his talents and applying himself to all things and to all occasions, he has best fulfilled his destiny.*

His great and individual work was the 'Encyclopædia.' As soon as the publishers, who conceived the first idea of it, had put their hand on him, they felt indeed that they had found their man, and from that moment the idea extended, took root and prospered. For nearly

* SAINTE BEUVE, Causeries du Lundi.

twenty-five years (1748-1772) Diderot was at first with D'Alembert, and then alone, the support, the column, the Atlas as it were of this enormous enterprise, under which we see him slightly bowed and bent, but ever serene and smiling. The History of Philosophy,' of which he there treats, at second-hand, it is true, the 'Description of the Mechanical Cuts,' in which he is more original, three or four thousand articles which are composed under his supervision, the charge and direction of the whole, cannot absorb or impair his vivacity of mind. Toward the end of his life, casting a retrograde glance over the past, he could not repress a sigh of regret, as he said: 'I know indeed many things, but there is scarcely a man who does not know some one thing better than I. This mediocrity in every thing is the result of an unbridled curiosity, and of a fortune so small that it has never permitted me to give myself entirely to any one branch of human knowledge. I have been obliged all my life to follow occupations to which I was not suited, and to leave those to which my tastes called me.' He has remarked, too, that in his native town of Langres the vicissitudes of the atmosphere are such, that in less than twentyfour hours they pass from the extreme of cold to that of heat, from fair to stormy weather, from drought to rain, and that this fickleness of climate influences the minds of the inhabitants. They are accustomed from their earliest childhood to turn at every wind; and the head of a Langrois is like the weather-cock on a church, steeple, it is never fixed in one direction, and if it ever returns to that it has left, it is only to stop for a moment ere it is off again. As for myself, I am of my country; only a long residence in the capital and constant application have somewhat corrected me; I am constant in my tastes.' Constant in his tastes, it is true, but certainly extremely changeable in his impressions; and he says of his portrait painted by Michel Vanloo, in which he can with difficulty recognize himself: 'My children, I warn you, that it is not I. I had in one day a hundred different expressions, according as I was affected: I was serene, sad, dreamy, tender, violent, passionate, enthusiastic, but I was never such as you see me there.' And he adds, and it is of interest to know him as he was: 'I had a high forehead, very piercing eyes, rather large features, the head of an ancient orator, and a good nature, which bordered upon foolishness."*

Let us then picture Diderôt such as he was in fact, according to the unanimous testimony of all his cotemporaries, and not as he has been painted by his artist friends, Vanloo and Greuze, who have more or less failed in their attempts so much so indeed that the engraving made from the portrait of the latter is much more like Marmontel.

*SAINTE BEUVE, Causeries du Lundi

Meister tells us that his brow was large and softly rounded, bearing the imposing impress of a vast, luminous and fertile mind.' Lavater, the physiognomist, thought he detected the traces of a timid character, and we may here remark, that though of bold and hardy mind, Diderot was somewhat deficient in energy of character and action. 'The ensemble of the profile,' adds the same Meister, was distinguished by a manly beauty; the contour of the eyebrow was full of delicacy; the habitual expression of the eyes soft and feeling, but when excited full of fire. His mouth was an interesting mingling of delicacy, grace, and good-nature.' Such was the man who was never himself unless excited or roused, which indeed was easily and frequently the case, and then the port of his head was full of nobleness, energy, and dignity.' Those who have known Diderôt only by his writings, have not known him. He, so affable and open to all, feared the world, the beau monde; he could never accustom himself to the salons of Madame Geoffrin, of Madame du Deffand, of Madame Necker, and other beautiful dames. He sometimes appeared at them, but it was only for a moment. Madame d'Epinay, aided by Grimm, took much trouble to familiarize him to her house, and indeed she merited success for her admiration of the man; but it was in vain. The Empress of Russia, the great Catherine, equally admired the philosopher for his superiority and good-nature; he visited her at Saint Petersburgh, and sometimes treated her in conversation, as a comrade. 'Go on,' said she, as by chance she saw him hesitate at some liberty of expression, 'between men, every thing is allowable.' But he was only at his ease in his society of familiar and intimate friends, and then he displayed in their full abundance his rich and powerful thoughts, enchanting all who listened. It was impossible to know him and not to love him.

His great work, as we have said, was the Encyclopædia:' its ruins will be piously admired by future ages, as the sacred remains of the Parthenon. When the architect is a great artist, the temple survives the worship of its god. The philosophy of Diderot has fallen from its altar, but his temple will remain forever.*

Diderôt so far outstripped his brothers in arms that he could without surprise awake to-day among us. He was at once the commencement of Mirabeau, the first cry of the French Revolution, and the last word of all our beautiful dreams. He was the true revolutionist; in the tribune of 1789 he would have effaced Mirabeau and Danton, for when he was roused, for the worship of ideas, he had all the magnificence of the tempest. Not one of his books give an idea of his bold and entrancing eloquence.

*ARSENE HOUSSAYE. 'Histoire du 41eme Fauteuil de l'Académie Française.'

His was the richest nature of the age. There was a truly olympian form in that fine head in which ideas rumbled like the mutterings of the storm. The other chiefs of that valjant army of the encyclopedists were there only to temper his ardor or to profit by his conquests. All, even Jean Jacques, were more occupied with the laurels than with the victory. Diderôt alone thought not of the laurels.

While Voltaire was reigning at Ferney, Diderôt reigned at Paris, recognized by kings, queens, and foreign princes, who wrote to him as to their equal, or who mounted the four pair of stairs which led to his lodgings as they would mount the steps of a throne.

A man worthy of glory in all ages, he was yet come in time: God had marked him with his fatal seal: the arms which he handled would have broken in his hands a century sooner or a century later. Above all else, he was the luminous sun of an age: his rays warmed every thing, illumined every thing, devoured every thing: the next day another sun appeared, but the bright rays and the fiery blows of the sun-Diderôt were still remembered. From his fruitful brain all his cotemporaries derived their light and life. Where would have been d'Holbach, Helvetius, Grimm, Ledaine, and even D'Alembert, if Diderot had not breathed upon their brow? Voltaire owes to him his last enthusiasm, Jean Jacques his first idea- the idea of all his life.

Strange nature! GOD had endowed him with all qualities, grandeur, enthusiasm, poesy, ideas gushing like lightning from the brain, sentiments which flourish in the heart like the lilies on the sacred shore: he was the man made after God's own image; the body was worthy of the soul; grace was joined to force; nothing was wanting, nothing, but God himself. The prodigal son had fled the paternal mansion without preserving a pious souvenir for the coming evil days.

Fénelon, that unconscious pantheist, that Christian so piously melancholy, who dreamed as his Eden an Isle of Calypso rather than a Paradise Lost, was the brother of Diderot, as Bayle was the brother of Voltaire; only Diderôt, lover of women and of art, poet by the eyes as well as by the heart, had his ideal in the visible world, while that of Fénelon is in the invisible world. Diderôt takes his point of departure from the earth-Fénelon from heaven; but they soon meet in the same love, in the same intelligence in which heart and soul will ever meet.

Diderôt has been the preface of all those who have followed him in politics, in philosophy, and in literature. Goethe himself has drank of the waters of that great mind, for has not Germany returned to France the Neveu de Rameau? In him alone there was more humor than in Sterne and Swift; he has written bad dramas, but he told Ledaine how to make good ones. Jacques le Fataliste is worth more and less than Candide. Had it not been for the Encyclopædia,'

which stifled his imagination, Diderôt would have been the Janus of romance! He loved the courtesans of Petronius, but he loved too, as much as Richardson, the chaste passions of Clarissa and Pamela. 'Ceci n'est pas un Conte' contains the germ of all those tragedies of betrayed love on which our modern inventors live.

Diderot loved painting and statuary, because he was a painter and a sculptor in his writings. His works on art are more than mere books: they are galleries of paintings. He was for the art of the eighteenth century what Winckelmann was for the antique — two suns whose rays will forever shine upon the 'Cruche Cassée** and the Laocoön.

He lived not for himself, but for his friends; it was for them he read, he reflected, and he wrote. In their absence he thought un ceasingly for their happiness; to them he consecrated the use of all his senses and all his faculties; and for that very reason perhaps every thing is slightly exaggerated and enriched in his imagination and his discourse, for which they, the ingrates! would oftentimes reproach him. But we who are of his friends, at least of those of whom he thought confusedly as afar, and for whom he has written, we will not be ungrateful, and though we may regret to find too often that exaggeration of which he accuses himself, too little discretion and sobriety, and some license of manner and expression, yet we will render cheerful homage to his simplicity, to his sympathy, to the delicacy and richness of his views and thoughts, to the grandeur and suavity of his touches, and to the adorable freshness whose secret he has preserved throughout his incessant labor. For all of us Diderôt is a man good to study closely. He is the first great writer, in point of time, who decidedly belongs to the modern democratic society. He has shown us the way and the example, caring little whether or not he belonged to the Academy, but writing for the public, ever giving, never receiving, preferring rather to exhaust himself than to grow rusty- this was his device, and to the end he followed it with energy and devotion. And yet, through it all and perhaps unconsciously, he has known to preserve from all his scattered thoughts and works, some which were durable, and he teaches us how we may reach posterity, though it may be in ruins, even from the ship-wreck of each day.

*The Broken Pitcher,' a painting by GREUZE, the friend of DIDEROT.