4 74 D'ALEMBERT. 



ality, and the sentiments are generally those of a liberal, 

 enlightened and unprejudiced mind; but no force is put 

 forth; no difficulty is grappled with; nothing original 

 or striking appears in the views taken; nothing very 

 felicitous in the illustrations; nothing profound in the 

 argument. The "great facility," or quickness, which has 

 been already noted as characterizing his geometrical 

 capacity, had a fatal effect when he deviated into lighter 

 studies ; it lulled his attention asleep and prevented the 

 severe labour which great works in the belles-lettres 

 demand, as in every other department of human exertion. 

 All his writings are more or less slight and insufficient. 

 By far the most elaborate are, the Discourse in the 

 'Encyclopedic' and the 'Elements of Philosophy:' but 

 the first of these must be confessed to fail from the 

 radical defect of its fundamental principles ; and the 

 second, though superior, does not rise much above medi- 

 ocrity, nor leave on the mind any lively or lasting 

 impression. 



Of the style in which all his writings are composed, 

 the great merit must at once be admitted. It has the 

 good quality of perfect clearness and of undeviating 

 simplicity. The taste which it displays is very far 

 superior to what could have been expected from so 

 warm an admirer of Tacitus. It seems as if his other 

 passion, that which devoted him to Voltaire, together 

 with his keen sense of ridicule, had effectually saved 

 him from the rock upon which the admirers of Tacitus 

 have so generally made shipwreck, and had purged his 

 diction of those false ornaments in which men of science 

 are so very apt to indulge when they quit their proper 

 haunts and descend into the low but perilous sphere of 



