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than all the guests put together'29'。  In like manner; in his dramas;

in his 〃Essays on Claudius and Nero;〃 in his 〃Commentary on Seneca;〃

in his additions to the 〃Philosophical History〃 of Raynal; he forces

the tone of things。  This tone; which then prevails by virtue of the

classic spirit and of the new fashion; is that of sentimental

rhetoric。  Diderot carries it to extremes in the exaggeration of tears

or of rage; in exclamations; in apostrophes; in tenderness of feeling;

in violences; indignation; in enthusiasms; in full…orchestra tirades;

in which the fire of his brains finds employment and an outlet。   …

On the other hand; among so many superior writers; he is the only

genuine artist; the creator of souls; within his mind objects; events

and personages are born and become organized of themselves; through

their own forces; by virtue of natural affinities; involuntarily;

without foreign intervention; in such a way as to live for and in

themselves; safe from the author's intentions; and outside of his

combinations。   The composer of the 〃Salons;〃 the 〃Petits Romans;〃 the

〃Entretien;〃 the 〃Paradoxe du Comédien;〃 and especially the 〃Rêve de

d'Alembert〃 and the〃 Neveu de Rameau 〃is a man of an unique species in

his time。  However alert and brilliant Voltaire's personages may be;

they are always puppets; their action is derivative; always behind

them you catch a glimpse of the author pulling the strings。  With

Diderot; the strings are severed; he is not speaking through the lips

of his characters; they are not his comical loud…speakers or puppets;

but independent and detached persons; with an action of their own; a

personal accent; with their own temperament; passions; ideas;

philosophy; style and spirit; and occasionally; as in the 〃Neveu de

Rameau;〃 a spirit so original; complex and complete; so alive and so

deformed that; in the natural history of man; it becomes an

incomparable monster and an immortal document。  He has expressed

everything concerning nature;'30' art morality and life'31' in two

small treatises of which twenty successive readings exhaust neither

the charm nor the sense。  Find elsewhere; if you can; a similar stroke

of power and a greater masterpiece; 〃anything more absurd and more

profound!〃'32'  …  Such is the advantage of men of genius possessing

no control over themselves。  They lack discernment but they have

inspiration。  Among twenty works; either soiled; rough or nasty; they

produce a creation; and still better; an animated being; able to live

by itself; before which others; fabricated by merely intellectual

people; resemble simply well…dressed puppets。   …  Hence it is that

Diderot is so great a narrator; a master of dialogue; the equal in

this respect of Voltaire; and; through a quite opposite talent;

believing all he says at the moment of saying it; forgetful of his

very self; carried away by his own recital; listening to inward

voices; surprised with the responses which come to him unexpectedly;

borne along; as if on an unknown river; by the current of action; by

the sinuosities of the conversation inwardly and unconsciously

developed; aroused by the flow of ideas and the leap of the moment to

the most unexpected imagery; extreme in burlesque or extreme in

magnificence; now lyrical even to providing Musset with an entire

stanza;'33' now comic and droll with outbursts unheard of since the

days of Rabelais; always in good faith; always at the mercy of his

subject; of his inventions; of his emotions; the most natural of

writers in an age of artificial literature; resembling a foreign tree

which; transplanted to a parterre of the epoch; swells out and decays

on one side of its stem; but of which five or six branches; thrust out

into full light; surpass the neighboring underwood in the freshness of

their sap and in the vigor of their growth。



Rousseau also is an artisan; a man of the people; ill…adapted to

elegant and refined society; out of his element in a drawing room and;

moreover; of low birth; badly brought up; sullied by a vile and

precocious experience; highly and offensively sensual; morbid in mind

and in body; fretted by superior and discordant faculties; possessing

no tact; and carrying the contamination of his imagination;

temperament and past life into his austere morality and into his

purest idylls;'34' besides this he has no fervor; and in this he is

the opposite of Diderot; avowing himself〃 that his ideas arrange

themselves in his head with the utmost difficulty; that certain

sentences are turned over and over again in his brain for five or six

nights before putting them on paper; and that a letter on the most

trifling subject costs him hours of fatigue;〃 that he cannot fall into

an easy and agreeable tone; nor succeed otherwise than 〃in works which

demand application。〃'35' As an offset to this; style; in this ardent

brain; under the influence of intense; prolonged meditation;

incessantly hammered and rehammered; becomes more concise and of

higher temper than is elsewhere found。  Since La Bruyère we have seen

no more ample; virile phrases; in which anger; admiration;

indignation; studied and concentrated passion; appear with more

rigorous precision and more powerful relief。  He is almost the equal

of La Bruyère in the arrangement of skillful effects; in the aptness

and ingenuity of developments; in the terseness of impressive

summaries; in the overpowering directness of unexpected arguments; in

the multiplicity of literary achievements; in the execution of those

passages of bravura; portraits; descriptions; comparisons; creations;

wherein; as in a musical crescendo; the same idea; varied by a series

of yet more animated expressions; attains to or surpasses; at the last

note; all that is possible of energy and of brilliancy。  Finally; he

has that which is wanting in La Bruyère; his passages are linked

together; he is not a writer of pages but of books; no logician is

more condensed。  His demonstration is knitted together; mesh by mesh;

for one; two and three volumes like a great net without an opening in

which; willingly or not; we remain caught。  He is a systematizer who;

absorbed with himself; and with his eyes stubbornly fixed on his own

reverie or his own principle; buries himself deeper in it every day;

weaving its consequences off one by one; and always holding fast to

the various ends。  Do not go near him。  Like a solitary; enraged

spider he weaves this out of his own substance; out of the most

cherished convictions of his brain and the deepest emotions of his

heart。  He trembles at the slightest touch; ever on the defensive; he

is terrible;'36' beside himself;'37' even venomous through suppressed

exasperation and wounded sensibility; furious against an adversary;

whom he stifles with the multiplied and tenacious threads of his web;

but still more redoubtable to himself than to his enemies; soon caught

in his own meshes;'38' believing that France and the universe conspire

against him; deducing with wonderful subtlety the proofs of this

chimerical conspiracy; made desperate; at last; by his over…plausible

romance; and strangling in the cunning toils which; by dint of his own

logic and imagination; he has fashioned for himself。



With such weapons one might accidentally kill oneself; but one is

strongly armed。  Rousseau was well equipped; at least as powerful as

Voltaire; it may be said that the last half of the eighteenth century

belongs to him。  A foreigner; a Protestant; original in temperament;

in education; in heart; in mind and in habits; at once misanthropic

and philanthropic; living in an ideal world constructed by himself;

entirely opposed to the world as it is; he finds himself standing in a

new position。  No one is so sensitive to the evils and vices of actual

society。  No one is so affected by the virtues and happiness of the

society of the future。  This accounts for his having two holds on the

public mind; one through satire and the other through the idyll。    …

These two holds are undoubtedly slighter at the present day; the

substance of their grasp has disappeared; we are not the auditors to

which it appealed。  The famous discourse on the influence of

literature and on the origin of inequality seems to us a collegiate

exaggeration; an effort of the will is required to read the 〃 Nouvelle

Hélo?se。〃 The author is repulsive in the persistency of his

spitefulness or in the exaggeration of his enthusiasm。  He is always

in extremes; now moody and with knit brows; and now streaming with

tears and with arms outstretched to Heaven。  Hyperbole; prosopopaeia;

and other literary machinery are too often and too deliberately used

by him。  We are tempted to regard him now as a sophist making the best

use of his arts; now as a rhetorician cudgeling his brains for a

purpose; now as a preacher becoming excited; that is to say; an actor

ever maintaining a thesis; striking an attitude and aiming at effects。

Finally; with the exception of the 〃Confessions〃 his style soon

wearies us; it is too studied; and too constantly overstrained。  The

author is always the author; and he communicates the defect to his

personages。  His Julie argues and descants for twenty successive pages

on dueling; on love; on duty; with a logical completeness; a talent

and phrases that would do honor to an academical moralist。

Commonplace exists everywhere; general themes; a raking fire of

abstractions and arguments; that is to say; truths more or less empty

and paradoxes more or less hollow。  The smallest detail of fact; an

anecdote; a trait of habit; would suit us much better; and hence we of

to day prefer the precise eloquence of objects to the lax eloquence of

words。  In the eighteenth century it was otherwise; to every writer

this oratorical style was the prescribed ceremonial costume; the

dress…coat he had to put on for admission into the company of select

people。  That which seems to us affectation was then only proper; in a

classic epoch the perfect period and the sustained development

constitute decorum; and are therefore to be observed。    …  It must be

noted; moreover; that this literary drapery which; with us of the

present day; conceals truth did not conceal it to his contemporaries;

they saw under it the exact feature; the perceptible detail no longer

detected by us。  Every abuse; every vice; every excess of refinement

and of culture; all that social and moral disease which Rousseau

scourged with an author's emphasis; existed before them under their

own eyes; in their own breasts; visible and daily manifested in

thousands of domestic incidents。  In applying satire they had only to

observe or to remember。  Their experience completed the book; and;

through the co…operation of his readers; the author possessed power

which he is now deprived of。  If we were to put ourselves in their

place we should recover their impressions。  His denunciations

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