DIDEEOT, DENYS. 



DIDIUS JULIANUS. 



83 



referred for further particulars respecting the historian and his 

 translator. 



DIDEROT, DENYS, was born at Langres.in the province of Cham- 

 pagne, in 1713. His father, a master cutler, a worthy man, much 

 respected iu his native town, and confortable in hia circumstances, 

 placed his son first in the Jesuits' College at Langrea, and afterwards 

 sent him to the College d'Harcourt at Paris to continue his studies. 

 At one time young Diderot was intended for the church, but as he felt 

 no inclination for the clerical profession, his father did not press the 

 point. Diderot made some progress in the ancient and modern lan- 

 guages, and still more in mathematics. On leaving college his father 

 placed him as a boarder with a Paris procureur, in order that he might 

 study the law, but Diderot had no taste for that profession ; he made 

 no progress in its study, and he employed all the time he could steal 

 from the office-desk in reading any books that fell into his hands. 

 After two or three years hia rather stopped his board wages, desiring 

 him either to betake himself to some profession or to return home, 

 and he several times repeated the offer of this alternative, but to no 

 purpose, as Diderot replied that he felt no inclination for any worldly 

 profession ; that he loved reading, was happy, and wanted nothing 

 more. For ten years from that time he lived obscurely in Paris, on 

 hia wits as the phrase is, and often, as it may be supposed, in very pro- 

 miscuous company. Literature was not then a very marketable com- 

 modity, but Diderot had a facility in writing, and he undertook any- 

 thing that came in his way, advertisements, indexes, catalogues, and 

 even sermons for the colonies, which were bespoken and paid for by a 

 missionary. He next began translating from the English for the book- 

 sellers. He also received indirectly assistance from home. At the age 

 of twenty-nine he married a young woman as poor as himself, who 

 proved to him ever after a virtuous and affectionate wife, notwith- 

 standing his subsequent neglect of her. In his drama ' Le Pure de 

 Famille' he hag drawn from life some of the incidents of his courtship 

 and marriage. 



Diderot's first original work was the 'Pense'es Philosophiques," 

 1746, a desultory and rather common-place production, which how- 

 ever met with great success among the partisans of the new philo- 

 sophy, as it was then called. From that time he ranked as one of the 

 moat strenuous assailants of the established systems in religion and 

 politics. He saw many unseemly parts in the social edifice, and 

 could devise no better mode of mending them than by pulling down 

 the whole. That the state of France under the Regent and Louis XV. 

 was such as easily to li-ad an impetuous mind to such a conclusion, 

 in made sufficiently evident by the numerous memoirs of those times. 

 In 1749 he published the ' Lettres sur les Aveugles,' for which he 

 was imprisoned for three months at Viucennes, where however he was 

 very indulgently treated, and allowed to receive the visits of his friends, 

 among whom was J. J. Rousseau, to whom it is said that Diderot 

 suggested the idea of his first literary paradox. They afterwards 

 quarrelled upon some foolish ground, and the squabble was not 

 creditable to either. [RotrsSEAU.] After editing, in company with 

 others, a Universal Medical Dictionary, Diderot formed the project of 

 a general Cyclopaedia, to supersede the French version of Chambers' s 

 work, and he found a bookseller, Lebreton, willing to undertake the 

 publication, under the title of ' Encyclopedic, ou Dictionnaire Raisonuc 

 des Sciences, des Arts, et Metiers.' Diderot and D'Alembert were 

 joint editors, but D'Alembert withdrew after a time, and Diderot 

 remained sole editor. The work began to appear in 1751, and wag 

 concluded in 1765, in 17 vols. fol., besides 1 1 vols. of plates. The 

 publication waa stopped two or three times by the government, and 

 the last volumes were distributed privately, though the king himself 

 was one of the purchasers. The most amusing part of the corre- 

 spondence of Voltaire and D'Alembert was carried on while D'Alem- 

 bert was joint editor of the 'Dictionnaire,' and presents a lively 

 picture of the various difficulties with which the editors had to 

 contend. On this celebrated compilation Diderot himself passed a 

 severe judgment. He said, "that he had had neither time nor the 

 means of being particular in the choice of his contributors, among 

 whom some were excellent, but most of the rest were very inferior; 

 that moreover the contributors, being badly paid, worked carelessly ; 

 that, in short, it was a patch-work composed of very ill-sorted mate- 

 rials, some master-pieces by the side of schoolboys' performances ; and 

 that there was also considerable neglect in the arrangement of the 

 articles, and especially in the references." Diderot complained like- 

 wise that the publisher, Lebreton, often took upon himself to scratch 

 out of the proof-sheets any passages which he thought might endanger 

 him, and then filled up the gap as well as he could. Notwithstanding 

 all these deficiencies the 'Dictionnaire Encyclope'dique ' met with 

 great success for a time, but it has been since superseded in France 

 by the ' Encyclopddie M(!thodique,' or great French Cyclopedia. 



The works of Diderot are numerous, and many of them were not pub- 

 lished til! after his death. Among those published in his lifetime are ; 

 ' Lettres sur les Sourds et Mueta, ,1751 ; 'Pense'es sur 1'Interpretation 

 dn la Nature,' 1 754 ; ' Code da la Nature,' 1755. The principal faults of 

 his didactic compositions are obscurity in the ideas, and a declamatory 

 style. Among his tales, 'Jacques le Fataliste' and 'Le Neveu de 

 Rameau/ a posthumous publication, are still popular. ' Les Bijoux Indis- 

 crete," are a cries of obscene stories, which be sold to a publisher, and 

 gave the money to his mistress, Madame de Puiaieux. fie afterwards 



Bioo. l/iv. vol. II. 



formed a connection with Mdlle. Voland, it seems, which lasted till 

 his death. His letters to her form the principal part of the ' Mdmoires, 

 Corrcspondance, et Ouvrages Ine"dits do Diderot,' published in 1831, 

 4 vols. 8vo. Diderot's notions on the sexual connection may be seen 

 in the article ' Marriage,' in the ' Dictionnaire Encyclope'dique,' as well 

 as in several of his ' Ouvrageg Ine'dits." He professed a strict sense of 

 honour, and was generous and kind, though hasty, touchy, and sus- 

 picious. An estimate of his character may be formed not from the 

 reports of his admirers or enemies, and there were many of both, 

 but from his own works, and especially his correspondence, and also 

 from a well-written and apparently unsophisticated memoir of his life 

 by his daughter, Madame de Vandeul, which is printed at the head, 

 of the unedited correspondence above mentioned. A collection of his 

 principal works was published by his disciple Naigeon, in-15 yols,, 

 8vo, 1798, and reprinted since in 22 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1821, with a life 

 of the author by Naigeon himself, which however is rather a disserta- 

 tion ou Diderot's writings and opinions than a real biography. His 

 last work, a life of Seneca, of which he published a second edition 

 enlarged, in 2 vols., under the title of 'Essai sur les Regnes de Claude 

 et de Neron,' is considered by some one of his beat composition.". It 

 has been said of him that there arc many good passages in all hia 

 works, though he never wrote a single entirely good work. Marmontel, 

 Garat, and others of his contemporaries preferred his conversation, 

 greatly to his writings. 



Diderot had not grown rich by his literary labours ; he was getting 

 old, and he thought of selling his library. Catharine of Russia 

 hearing of hia intention, purchased it at its full value, and moreover 

 settled upon him a handsome pension as librarian to keep it for her, 

 of which pension she paid him fifty years in advance in ready money. 

 Full of gratitude, Diderot resolved to go and thank his benefactress 

 in person. He went first to Holland, where be spent some months, 

 and thence to St. Petersburg. He was delighted with his reception 

 by the empress, and wrote to Mdlle. Voland that " while in a country 

 called the land of freemen he felt as a slave; but now in a country 

 called the country of slaves, he felt like a freeman." (' Correspond- 

 ance Ine"dite,' vol. iii., lettre 138.) After a short stay at St. Peters- 

 burg, he returned to Paris, where the empress hired a splendid suite 

 of apartments for him in the Rue Richelieu. "He enjoyed his new 

 lodgings only twelve days : he was delighted with them ; having 

 always lodged in a garret, he thought himself in a palace. But his 

 body became weaker every day, although his head was not at all 

 affected, and he was quite conscious that his end was approaching. 

 The evening before his death he conversed with his friends upon 

 philosophy, aud the various means of attaining it. ' The first step 

 towards philosophy," said he, 'is incredulity.' This remark is the 

 last which I heard him make." ('Memoir of Diderot,' by his 

 daughter) and it was a very characteristic one. Next day, 30th of 

 July 1784, he got up, sat down to dinner with his wife, and after- 

 wards expired without a struggle. Diderot was one of the principal 

 members of the Holbach coterie, and the leader of that knot of literary 

 sceptics known in the last century by the name of Eueyclope'distes. 

 There are many particulars concerning Diderot in his friend Grimm's 

 ' Correspondance Litt<!raire,' Paris, 1812. 



DIDIUS JULIA'NUS, of a family originally from Milan, and grand- 

 son of Salvius Julianus, a celebrated jurist, was born about A.n. 133. 

 He was educated by Domitia Lucilla, the mother of Marcus Aurelius. 

 He soon rose to important offices, was successively Quaestor, Praetor, 

 and Governor of Belgic Gaul, and having defeated the Chauci, he 

 obtained the Consulship. He was afterwards sent as governor to 

 Dalmatia, and next to Oermania Inferior. Under Commodus, he was 

 governor of Bithynia : oh his return to Rome, he lived in luxury and 

 debauchery, being enormously rich. After the murder of Pertinax 

 in 193, the Praetorians having put up the empire to auction, Didius 

 proceeded to their camp, and bid against Sulpicianus, the father-in-law 

 of Pertinax, who was trying to make hia own bargain with the soldiers. 



Coin of Didius. 

 British Museum. Actual size. Copper. Weight 355 grains. 



Didius having bid highest, was proclaimed, and waa taken by the 

 soldiers into Home. The senate with its usual servility acknowledged 

 him emperor, but the people openly showed their dissatisfaction, and 

 loaded him with abuse aud imprecations in the Circus when he 

 assisted at the solemn games which were customary on the occasion 

 of a new reign. He is said to have borne the insult with patience, 

 and to have 1/ehaved altogether with great moderation during his 



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