D'ALEMBERT. 439 



was not confined to their literary adversaries or rivals, 

 terms far too frequently synonymous, to the disgrace of 

 letters. The circles of fashion, which at Paris always 

 had their factious divisions, and always connected them- 

 selves both with literature and the theatre, took their 

 share in the controversy. The clergy, of course, were 

 not slow to join; and the Government became influenced 

 against the great work and its conductors. D'Alembert 

 now first knew what it was to have the hitherto unruffled 

 calm of a geometrician's life broken and agitated by the 

 tempests of controversy and of faction. Though he had 

 never lived retired from the world, yet he had not been 

 so mixed up in its affairs as to have acquired the cal- 

 lousness by which practical men soon become protected 

 against the buffetings of the world. He could not easily 

 reconcile himself to the bitterness that assailed him, and 

 the injustice to which it led. When the Government 

 refused in 1758 to let the * Encyclopedic' be any longer 

 published in France, and its seat was transferred to 

 Neufchtel, he retired from all share in the direction, 

 (which Diderot alone continued to exercise,) and only 

 contributed articles on mathematical and metaphysical 

 subjects. 



During the stormy years which now passed over his 

 head he published his ' Melanges de Philosophic, d'His- 

 toire, et de Litterature/ his ' Memoirs of Queen Christina 

 of Sweden/ his ' History of the Fall of the Jesuits/ and 

 his ' Essay on the Intercourse of Literary Men with the 

 Great/ a work in which he reads to his brethren lessons 

 of independence, fully as distasteful as wholesome. His 

 serious, rational, and dignified remonstrances are known 

 to have at least had the salutary effect of terminating 



