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 Dideroť'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 | ment, in his sort: he did the work of many rendered back, with light labour, in corre- men, yet nothing, or little, which many could sponding clearness. Whether, at the same not have done. 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, Jiderot 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, Matter, 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 ་ 1 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 dedly the best of all Diderot's Compositions. It looks like a Sibylline utterance from 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. pressed forward irresistibly out of the artifi- | one looks a sunny Elysium, through the other cial 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 seconda-shorter, is also the better; may pass for deciry 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 half- We here (con la bocca dolce) take leave of Ditruth, for Art too is Art, as surely as Nature is derot in his intellectual aspect, as Artist and Nature; which struggle, meanwhile, either as Thinker: a richly endowed, unfavourably situhalf-truth or working itself into a whole truth, ated nature; whose effort, much marred, yet may be seen (in countries that have any Art) not without fidelity of aim, can triumph, on still forming the tendency of all artistic en- rare occasions; is perhaps nowhere utterly deavour. In which sense, Diderot's Essay on fruitless. In the moral aspect, as Man, he Painting has been judged worth translation by makes a somewhat similar figure; as indeed, the greatest modern Judge of Art, and greatest in all men, in him especially, the Opinion and modern Artist, in the highest kind of Art; and the Practice stand closely united; and as a wise may be read anew, with argumentative com- man has remarked, "the speculative principles mentary and 'exposition, in Goethe's Works. are often but a supplement (or excuse) to the Nay, let us grant, with pleasure, that for Di-practical manner of life." In conduct, Didederot himself the realms of Art were not wholly unvisited; that he too, so heavily imprisoned, stole Promethean fire. Among these multitudinous, most miscellaneous Writings of his, in great part a manufactured farrago of Philosophism no longer saleable, and now looking melancholy enough,-are two that we can almost call Poems; that have something perennially poetic in them: Jacques le Fata- | 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 elegance 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. Weari-living mostly in the society of women, or of somely 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 rot can nowise seem admirable to us; yet neither inexcusable; on the whole, not at all quite worthless. Lavater traced in his physiognomy "something timorous;" which reading his friends admitted to be a correct one. Diderot, in truth, is no hero: the earnest soul, wayfaring and warfaring in the complexities of a World like to overwhelm him, yet wherein he by Heaven's grace will keep faithfully 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 impulses, which at best he had fashioned into some show of principles; with vehemence enough, with even a female uncontrollableness; with little of manful steadfastness, considerateness, invincibility. Thus, too, we find him 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 : 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 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 brag-concern of French Philosophism will dwindle gart, we know, is not the likeliest to succeed. into the thinnest of fractions, or vanish into On the whole, peace be with sentiment, for that nonentity! Alas, while the rude History and also lies behind us!-For the rest, as hinted, Thoughts of those same "Juifs miserables,” the what duties were difficult our Diderot left un- barbaric War-song of a Deborah and Barak, 'done. How should he, the cœur sensible, front the rapt prophetic Utterance of an unkempt such a monster as Pain? And now, since Isaiah, last now (with deepest significance) say misgivings cannot fail in that course, what is only these three thousand years,-what has the to be done but fill up all asperities with floods thrice resplendent Encyclopédie shrivelled into of Sensibilité, and so voyage more or less within these three-score! This is a fact smoothly along? Est-il bon? Est-il méchant? which, explain it, express it, in which way hẻ | he is his own account of himself. At all events, will, your Encyclopedist should actually conhe was no voluntary hypocrite; that great sider. Those were tones caught from the sapraise can be given him. And thus with Me- cred Melody of the All, and having harmony chanical Philosophism, and passion vive; work- and meaning for ever; these of his are but ing, flirting; "with more of softness than of outer discords, and their jangling dies away true affection, sometimes with the malice and without result. "The special, sole, and deeprage 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? 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 If now we and our reader, reinterpreting may, are splendid, heart-elevating, fruitful for for our present want that Life and Perform-contemporaries and posterity. All epochs, on ance of Diderot, have brought it clearer before us, be the hour spent thereon, were it 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 even 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 | 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 performances, and so, in all ways, to vindicate himcould be fitter. History is the Letter of Inself as vital portion of a Mankind, no study structions, 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 backfloods ; 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 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. Here, however, let us grant that Nature, in ble: taking up the other face of the matter, let us rather admire the pains she has been at, the truly magnificent provision she has made, that this same Message of Instructions might reach us in boundless plenitude. Endowments, faculties enough we have: it is her wise will too that no faculty imparted to us shall rust from disuse; the miraculous faculty of Speech, once given, becomes not more a gift than a necessity; the Tongue, with or without much meaning, will keep in motion; and only in some La Trappe, by unspeakable self-restraint, forbear wagging. As little can the fingers that have learned the miracle of Writing lie idle; Perfection in any kind is well known not to be the lot of man: but of all supernatural perfect-characters, this of the Perfect in History (so easily conceivable too) were perhaps the most miraculous. Clearly a faultless monster which the world is not to see, not even on paper. Had the Wandering Jew, indeed, begun to wander at Eden, and with a Fortunatus' Hat on his head! Nanac Shah too, we remember, steeped himself three days in some sacred Well; and there learnt enough: Nanac's was a far easier method; but unhappily not prac-if there is a rage of speaking, we know also ticable,-in this climate. Consider, however, there is a rage of writing, perhaps the more at what immeasurable distance from this furious of the two. It is said, "so eager are Perfect Nanac your highest Imperfect Gibbons men to speak, they will not let one another get play their part? Were there no brave men, to speech;" but, on the other hand, writing is thinkest thou, before Agamemnon? Beyond usually transacted in private, and every man the Thracian Bosphorus, was all dead and has his own desk and inkstand, and sits indevoid; from Cape Horn to Nova Zembla, round pendent and unrestrainable there. Lastly, the whole habitable Globe, not a mouse stirring? multiply this power of the Pen some ten thouOr, again, in reference to Time-the Creation sand fold: that is to say, invent the Printing| of the World is indeed old, compare it to the Press, with its Printer's Devils, with its Editors, Year One; yet young, of yesterday, compare Contributors, Booksellers, Billstickers, and see it to Eternity! Alas, all Universal History is what it will do! Such are the means wherebut a sort of Parish History; which the "P. P. with Nature, and Art the daughter of Nature, Clerk of this Parish," member of "our Ale-have equipped their favourite, man, for publishhouse Club" (instituted for what "Psalmody" | ing himself to man. is in request there) puts together,-in such sort as his fellow-members will praise. Of the thing now gone silent, named Past, which was once Present, and loud enough, how much do we know? Our "Letter of Instructions" comes to us in the saddest state; falsified, blotted out, torn, lost, and but a shred of it in existence; this too so difficult to read or spell. Unspeakably precious meanwhile is our shred of a "Letter," is our "written or spoken Message," such as we have it. Only he who understands what has been, can know what should be and will be. It is of the last importance that the individual have ascertained his relation to the whole; an individual helps not," it has been written; "only he who unites with many at the proper hour." How easy, in a sense for your all-instructed Nanac to work without waste of force, (or what we call fault ;) and, in practice, act new History, as perfectly as, in theory, he knew the old! Comprehending Consider now two things: first, that one Tongue, of average velocity, will publish at the rate of a thick octavo volume per day; and then how many nimble enough Tongues may be supposed to be at work on this Planet Earth, in this City London, at this hour! Secondly, that a literary Contributor, if in good heart and urged by hunger, will many times (as we are credibly informed) accomplish his two magazine sheets within the four-and- twenty hours; such Contributors being now numerable not by the thousand, but by the million. Nay, taking History in its narrower, vulgar sense, as the mere chronicle of "occurrences" (of things that can be, as we say, "narrated,") our calculation is still but a little altered. Simple Narrative, it will be observed, is the grand staple of Speech: "the common man," says Jean Paul, " is copious in Narrative, exiguous in Reflection; only with the cultivated man is it otherwise, reverse-wise." Allow even the thousandth part of human pub- | case was always intrinsically similar. The lishing for the emission of Thought, though Life of Nero occupies some diamond pages of perhaps the millionth were enough, we have our Tacitus: but in the parchment and pastill the nine hundred and ninety-nine employ-pyrus archives of Nero's generation how many ed in History proper, in relating occurrences, did it fill? The Author of the Vie de Sénéque, or conjecturing probabilities of such; that is at this distance, picking up a few residuary to say, either in History or Prophecy, which | snips, has with ease made two octavos of it. is a new form of History;-and so the reader On the other hand, were the contents of the can judge with what abundance this life- then extant Roman memories, or, going to the breath of the human intellect is furnished in utmost length, were all that was then spoken our world; whether Nature has been stingy on it, put in types, how many "longitudinal to him or munificent. Courage, reader! Never feet" of small-pica had we,-in belts that would can the historical inquirer want pabulum, go round the Globe? better or worse; are there not forty-eight longitudinal feet of small-printed History in thy Daily Newspaper? History, then, before it can become Universal History, needs of all things to be compressed. Were there no epitomizing of History, one could not remember beyond a week. Nay, go to that with it, and exclude compression altogether, we could not remember an hour, or at all: for Time, like Space, is infinitely divisible; and an hour with its events, with its sensations and emotions, might be diffused to such expansion as should cover the whole field of memory, and push all else over the limits. Habit, however, and the natural constitution of man, do themselves prescribe serviceable rules for remembering; and keep at a safe distance from us all such fantastic possibilities;-into which only some foolish Mohammedan Caliph, ducking his head in a bucket of enchanted water, and so beating out one wet minute into seven long years of servitude and hardship, could fall. The rudest peasant has his complete set of Annual Regis The truth is, if Universal History is such a miserable defective" shred" as we have named it, the fault lies not in our historic organs, but wholly in our misuse of these; say rather, in so many wants and obstructions, varying with the various age, that pervert our right use of them; especially two wants that press heavily in all ages want of Honesty, want of Understanding. If the thing published is not true, is only a supposition, or even a wilful invention, what can be done with it, except abolish it and annihilate it? But again, Truth, says Horne Tooke, means simply the thing trowed, the thing believed; and now, from this to the thing extant, what a new fatal deduction have we to suffer! Without Understanding, Belief itself will profit little: and how can your publishing avail, when there was no vision in it, but mere blindness? For us in political ap-ters legibly printed in his brain; and, without pointments, the man you appoint is not he who was ablest to discharge the duty, but only he who was ablest to be appointed; so too, in all historic elections and selections, the maddest work goes on. The even worthiest to be known is perhaps of all others the least spoken of; nay some say, it lies in the very nature of such events to be so. Thus, in those same fortyeight longitudinal feet of History, or even when they have stretched out into forty-eight longitudinal miles, of the like quality, there may not be the forty-eighth part of a hair's-breadth that As with man and these autobiographic Anwill turn to any thing. Truly, in these times, nual-Registers of his, so goes it with Manthe quantity of printed Publication that will kind and its Universal History, (which also is need to be consumed with fire, before the its Autobiography :) a like unconscious talent smallest permanent advantage can be drawn of remembering and of forgetting again does from it, might fill us with astonishment, almost the work here. The transactions of the day, with apprehension. Where, alas, is the in- were they never so noisy, cannot remain loud trepid Herculean Dr. Wagtail, that will reduce for ever; the morrow comes with its new all these paper-mountains into tinder, and ex-noises, claiming also to be registered: in the tract therefrom the three drops of Tinder-water Elixir? the smallest training in Mnemonics, the proper pauses, sub-divisions, and subordinations of the little to the great, all introduced there. Memory and Oblivion, like Day and Night, and indeed like all other Contradictions in this strange dualistic Life of ours, are necessary for each other's existence: Oblivion is the. dark page, whereon Memory writes her lightbeam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness. immeasurable conflict and concert of this chaos of existence, figure after figure sinks, as all that has emerged must one day sink: what cannot be kept in mind will even go out of mind; History contracts itself into readable extent; and at last, in the hands of some Bossuet or Müller, the whole printed History of the World, from the Creation downwards, has grown shorter than that of the Ward of Portsoken for one solar day. For, indeed, looking at the activity of the historic Pen and Press through this last halfcentury, and what bulk of History it yields for that period alone, and how it is henceforth like to increase in decimal or vigesimal geometric progression,-one might feel as if a day were not distant, when perceiving that the whole Earth would not now contain those writings of what was done in the Earth, the Whether such contraction and epitome is human memory must needs sink confounded, always wisely formed, might admit of question; and cease remembering!-To some the reflec-or rather, as we say, admits of no question. tion may be new and consolatory, that this state of ours is not so unexampled as it seems; that with memory and things memorable the Scandalous Cleopatras and Messalinas, Caligulas and Commoduses, in unprofitable proportion, survive for memory; while a scientific |