A Short History of French Literature
serious poetry and criticism, in which from the literary point of view
he fails to attain all but the highest rank.
[Sidenote: The Encyclopaedia.]
Montesquieu and Voltaire were, as has been said, precursors rather than
members of the _philosophe_ group proper, which is identified with the
Encyclopaedia, and to this group it is now time to come. The history of
this famous book is rather curious. The English Cyclopaedia of Ephraim
Chambers had appeared in 1727. About fifteen years after its publication
a translation of it was offered to and accepted by the French
bookseller, Le Breton. But Le Breton was not satisfied with a bare
translation, and wished the book to be worked up into something more
extensive. He applied to different men of letters, and finally to
Diderot, who, enlisting the Chancellor d'Aguesseau in the plan,
obtaining privilege for the enlarged work, and mustering by degrees a
staff of contributors which included almost every man of letters of any
repute in France, succeeded in carrying it out. The task was anything
but a sinecure. It occupied nearly twenty years of Diderot's life; it
was repeatedly threatened and sometimes actually prohibited; and
D'Alembert (Diderot's principal coadjutor, and in fact co-editor)
actually retired from it in disgust at the obstacles thrown in their
way. The book so produced was by no means a mere pamphlet or
controversial work, though many of the articles were made polemical by
those to whom they were entrusted. The principal of its contributors
however--Voltaire himself was one--became gradually recognised as
representing the criticism of existing institutions, many of which, it
must be confessed, were so bad at the time that simple examination of
them was in itself the severest censure. It becomes necessary,
therefore, to mention the names and works of the most remarkable of this
group who have not found or will not find a place elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Diderot.]
Denis Diderot was born at Langres, on the 15th October, 1713. He was
brilliantly successful at school, but on being required to choose a
profession rejected both church and law. It appears, however, that he
studied medicine. His father, a man of affectionate temper but strong
will, refused to support him unless he chose a regular mode of life, and
Diderot at once set up for himself and attempted literature. Not much is
authentically known of his life till, in 1743, he married; but he seems
to have lived partly by taking pupils, partly by miscellaneous literary
hack-work. After his marriage his household expenses (and others)
quickened his literary activity, and before long he received, in the
editorship of the Encyclopaedia, a charge which, though ridiculously ill
paid and very laborious, practically secured him from want for many
years, while it gave him a very important position. He made many
friends, and was especially intimate with the Baron d'Holbach, a rich
and hospitable man, and a great adept in chemistry and atheism. Before
this Diderot had had some troubles, being even imprisoned at Vincennes
for his _Essai sur les Aveugles_, 1749. Besides his Encyclopaedia work
Diderot was lavish in contributing, often without either remuneration or
acknowledgment of any kind, to the work of other men, and especially to
the correspondence by which his friend Grimm kept the sovereigns of
Germany and Russia informed of the course of things in Paris. The most
remarkable of these contributions--criticisms of literature and
art--have been noticed elsewhere, as have Diderot's historical and
fictitious productions. As he grew old his necessities were met by a
handsome act of Catherine of Russia, who bought his library, left him
the use of it, and gave him a pension nominally as payment for his
trouble as caretaker. He made, in 1773, a journey to St. Petersburg to
pay his thanks, and on his return stayed for some time in Holland. He
died in Paris in 1784. Diderot's miscellaneous works are, like
Voltaire's, penetrated by the _philosophe_ spirit, but it is less
prominent, owing to his greater acquaintance with the individual matters
which he handled. His contributions to definite philosophical literature
are not unimportant. He began by an 'Essay on Merit and Virtue,' 1745,
imitated from Shaftesbury, and by some more original _Pensees
Philosophiques_. These pieces were followed by _La Promenade du
Sceptique_, written somewhat in the fashion of Berkeley's _Alciphron_,
and by some minor treatises, the most important of which are the
_Lettres sur les Sourds et Muets_, and by the already mentioned _Lettre
sur les Aveugles_, which led to his imprisonment, with some 'Thoughts on
the Interpretation of Nature.' A singular and characteristic book
containing not a few acute but fantastic ideas is _Le Reve de
D'Alembert_, which, like an elaborate criticism on Helvetius' _De
l'Homme,_ was not printed during Diderot's life. The _Essai sur les
Regnes de Claude et de Neron_ was one of the latest of Diderot's works,
and is a kind of historico-philosophical disquisition. The last piece of
any importance which is included in the philosophical works of Diderot
is an extensive scheme for a Russian university.
The characteristics of Diderot's philosophical works are the same as the
characteristics of those other works of his which have been noticed, and
his general position as a writer may well be considered here. There has
seldom been an author who was more fertile in ideas. It is impossible to
name a subject which Diderot has not treated, and hardly possible to
name one on which he has not said striking and memorable things. The
peculiarity of his mind was, that it could adjust itself, with hardly
any effort, to any subject presented to it, grasp that subject and
express thoughts on it in a novel and effective manner. He had moreover,
what some other men of his century, notably Voltaire, lacked, a vast
supply of positive information on the subjects with which he dealt, and
an entire independence of conventional points of view in dealing with
them. This independence was in some respects pushed to an unfortunate
length, exposing him (whether deservedly or not, is an exceedingly
difficult point to resolve) to the charge of atheism, and (beyond all
doubts deservedly) to the charge of wilful disregard of the accepted
decencies of language. Another and very serious fault, arising partly
from temperament and partly from circumstances, was the want of needful
pains and deliberation which characterises most of Diderot's work. That
work is extremely voluminous, and even as it is, we have not anything
like the whole of it in a collected form. Indeed, by far the larger part
was never given to the world by the author himself in any deliberate or
finished shape, and much of what he did publish was the result of mere
improvisation. The consequence is, that Diderot is accused, not without
truth, of having written good passages, but no good book, and that a
full appreciation of his genius is only to be obtained by a most
laborious process of wading through hundreds and thousands of pages of
very inferior work. The result of that process, however, is never likely
to be doubtful in the case of competent examiners. It is the conviction
that Diderot ranks in point of originality and versatility of thought
among the most fertile thinkers of France, and in point of felicity and
idiosyncrasy of expression, among the most remarkable of her writers.
[Sidenote: D'Alembert.]
His coadjutor during the earlier part of his great work was a man
curiously different from himself. Diderot was a rapid and careless
writer, devoted to general society and conversation, interested in
everything that was brought to his notice, passionate, unselfish,
frequently extravagant. Jean le Rond d'Alembert (who was really an
illegitimate son of Madame de Tencin by an uncertain father) was an
extraordinarily careful writer, a man of retired habits, reserved,
self-centred and phlegmatic. He was born in 1717, was exposed on the
steps of a church, but was brought up carefully by a foster-mother of
the lower classes, to whom he was consigned by the authorities, and had
a not insufficient annuity settled upon him by his supposed father. He
was educated at the College Mazarin, and early showed great aptitude for
mathematics, in which equally with literature he distinguished himself
in after years. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences as
early as at the age of four-and-twenty. After he had joined Diderot, he
wrote a preliminary discourse for the Encyclopaedia--a famous and
admirable sketch of the sciences--besides many articles. Of these, one
on Geneva brought the book into more trouble than almost any other
contribution, though D'Alembert was equally moderate as a thinker and as
a writer. D'Alembert, as has been said, retired from the work after this
storm, being above all things solicitous of peace and quietness. His
refusals of the offers of Frederick II. in 1752 to go to Berlin as
President of the Academy, and of Catherine II. to undertake, at what was
then an enormous salary, the education of the Grand Duke Paul, have been
variously taken as evidence of his disinterestedness, and of his shrewd
dislike to possibly false positions, and the chance of such experiences
as those of Voltaire. In his later life he and Mademoiselle de
Lespinasse, as has been mentioned, kept house together. He died shortly
before Diderot, in 1783. Perhaps his best literary works are his already
mentioned Academic _Eloges_, or obituaries on important men of letters
and science. D'Alembert contributed to the movement exactness of thought
and precision of style, but his influence was more purely intellectual
than that of any other member of the _philosophe_ group.
[Sidenote: Rousseau.]
The connection of Rousseau with the Encyclopaedia itself was brief and
not important. Yet it is here that his personal and general literary
character and achievements may be most conveniently treated. Jean
Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva, on the 28th of June, 1712, of a
family which had emigrated from France during the religious troubles.
His father was a watchmaker, his mother died when he was very young. His
education was not exactly neglected, but he went to no regular school,
which, considering his peculiarities, was perhaps a misfortune. After
being introduced to the law and to engraving, in both cases with ill
success, he ran away and practically continued a vagabond to the end of
his life. He served as a footman, was an inmate of a kind of
proselytising almshouse at Turin, and went through many odd adventures,
for which there is the dubious authority of his strange _Confessions_.
When he was just of age, he was taken in by Madame de Warens, a Savoyard
lady of birth and position, who had before been kind to him. With her he
lived for some time, chiefly at Les Charmettes, near Chambery. But being
superseded in her good graces, he went to Lyons, where he lived by
teaching. Thence he went to Paris, having little to depend on but an
imperfect knowledge of music. In 1741 he was attached to the French
Embassy at Venice under M. de Montaigu, but (as he did all through his
life) he quarrelled in some way with his patron, and returned to Paris.
Here he became intimate with Diderot, Grimm, and all the _philosophe_
circle, especially with Madame d'Epinay. She established him in a
cottage called the Hermitage with his companion Therese le Vasseur,
whose acquaintance he had made in Paris, and whom he afterwards married.
The extraordinary quarrel which took place between Rousseau and Diderot
has been endlessly written about. It need only be said that Rousseau
showed his usual temper and judgment, that Diderot was to all appearance
quite guiltless, and that the chief fault lay elsewhere, probably with