1906-7. TRANSACTIONS. 115 



contempt. It was a case of kicking down the ladder which had 

 led to their own great achievement. In spite of the fame of the 

 contributors, Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Buffon, and 

 others, the story of the publication has some petty and humiliat- 

 ing features about it. A quarrel arose with the publisher, M. 

 Breton, before publication, and on the issue of the Encyclopedie 

 it was found that all the trenchant attacks of Diderot and his 

 confreres upon the church and political opponents, had been 

 pruned down, and their sting and satire had all been extracted. 

 Baron de Grimm's correspondence tells of the dismay of the 

 Encyclopedists when they discovered that their iconoclastic 

 efforts had been so subtly frustrated. Nevertheless it was an 

 epoch-making work; and half of Europe, it has been said, ap- 

 plauded, while the other half denounced it. About the end of the 

 century (1790) there quietly appeared, in London, Rees' Cyclo- 

 pedia in 47 volumes quarto. It was a most erudite and, even now, 

 valuable work of reference, its author being a learned Unitarian 

 clergyman, Dr. Abraham Rees. The handsomely printed volumes 

 may often be seen at second-hand book stores, a stately pile of 

 quarto volumes, containing a vast mass of succint and reliable 

 information compiled by a laborious scholar. Like the wonderful 

 Penny Cyclopaedia (published by the Society for promoting Useful 

 Knowledge, under Lord Brougham's auspices), Rees' Cyclopaedia 

 was a great work, and ranks high in that kind of literature. About 

 this time appeared Good and Gregory's " Pantologia, " embracing 

 as the title page states, "a complete series of essays, treatises, 

 and systems alphabetically arranged" by Dr. Good Mason, an 

 American, Dr. O. Gregory, London, and Mr. Newton Gregory 

 Bosworth, of Cambridge. It was in 12 volumes with beautiful 

 engraved plates. From 1782 to 1832 the Encyclopedie Methodi- 

 que was in course of publication, this great French work extending 

 over 201 volumes; but it was rivalled at any rate in slowness of 

 issue by the vast Allgemeine Encyclopadie of Ersch and Grube 

 which began in 1818 and is, I believe, still in course of publication 

 • — the 108th volume appearing in 1888 seventy years after the first 

 volume. 



During the 19th century, encyclopaedias in England followed 

 each other in quick succession, the London Encyclopaedia, 22 

 volumes, in 1824, the Penny Cyclopaedia, already mentioned 

 which was issued in 28 volumes, small folio, and later by Charles 

 Knight under the new name of "The English Cyclopaedia" and 



