house by Diderot and one of the publishers. The Jesuits tried
to continue the work, but in vain. It was less easy, says Grimm,
than to ruin philosophers. The Dictionnaire de Trévoux
pronounced the completion of the Encyclopédie impossible, and
the project ridiculous (5th edition, 1752, iii, 750). The government
had to request the editors to resume the work as one
honourable to the nation. The marquis d’Argenson writes,
7th of May 1752, that Mme de Pompadour had been urging
them to proceed, and at the end of June he reports them as
again at work. Volume iii., rather improved by the delay,
appeared in October 1753; and volume vii., completing G, in
November 1757. The clamours against the work soon recommenced.
D’ Alembert retired in January 1758, weary of sermons,
satires and intolerant and absurd censors. The parlement of
Paris, by an arrêt, 23rd of January 1759, stopped the sale and
distribution of the Encyclopédie, Helvetius’s De l’Esprit, and six
other books; and by an arrêt, 6th February, ordered them all
to be burnt, but referred the Encyclopédie for examination to a
commission of nine. An arrêt du conseil, 7th of March, revoked
the privilege of 1746, and stopped the printing. Volume viii.
was then in the press. Malesherbes warned Diderot that he
would have his papers seized next day; and when Diderot said
he could not make a selection, or find a place of safety at such
short notice, Malesherbes said, “Send them to me, they will
not look for them there.” This, according to Mme de Vandeul,
Diderot’s daughter, was done with perfect success. In the
article Pardonner Diderot refers to these persecutions, and says,
“In the space of some months we have seen our honour, fortune,
liberty and life imperilled.” Malesherbes, Choiseul and Mme
de Pompadour protected the work; Diderot obtained private
permission to go on printing, but with a strict charge not to
publish any part until the whole was finished. The Jesuits were
condemned by the parlement of Paris in 1762, and by the
king in November 1764. Volume i. of plates appeared in 1762,
and volumes viii. to xvii., ten volumes of text, 9408 pages,
completing the work, with the 4th volume of plates in 1765, when
there were 4250 subscribers. The work circulated freely in the
provinces and in foreign countries, and was secretly distributed
in Paris and Versailles. The general assembly of the clergy, on
the 20th of June 1765, approved articles in which it was
condemned, and on the 27th of September adopted a mémoire to
be presented to the king. They were forbidden to publish their
acts which favoured the Jesuits, but Lebreton was required to
give a list of his subscribers, and was put into the Bastille for
eight days in 1766. A royal order was sent to the subscribers
to deliver their copies to the lieutenant of police. Voltaire in
1774 relates that, at a petit souper of the king at Trianon, there
was a debate on the composition of gunpowder. Mme de
Pompadour said she did not know how her rouge or her silk
stockings were made. The duc de la Vallière regretted that
the king had confiscated their encyclopaedias, which could
decide everything. The king said he had been told that the
work was most dangerous, but as he wished to judge for himself,
he sent for a copy. Three servants with difficulty brought in
the 21 volumes. The company found everything they looked
for, and the king allowed the confiscated copies to be returned.
Mme de Pompadour died on the 15th of April 1764. Lebreton
had half of the property in the work, and Durand, David and
Briasson had the rest. Lebreton, who had the largest printing
office in Paris, employed 50 workmen in printing the last ten
volumes. He had the articles set in type exactly as the authors
sent them in, and when Diderot had corrected the last proof of
each sheet, he and his foreman, hastily, secretly and by night,
unknown to his partners in the work, cut out whatever seemed
to them daring, or likely to give offence, mutilated most of the
best articles without any regard to the consecutiveness of what
was left, and burnt the manuscript as they proceeded. The
printing of the work was nearly finished when Diderot, having
to consult one of his great philosophical articles in the letter S,
found it entirely mutilated. He was confounded, says Grimm,
at discovering the atrocity of the printer; all the best articles
were in the same confusion. This discovery put him into a
state of frenzy and despair from rage and grief. His daughter
never heard him speak coolly on the subject, and after twenty
years it still made him angry. He believed that every one knew
as well as he did what was wanting in each article, but in fact
the mutilation was not perceived even by the authors, and for
many years was known to few persons. Diderot at first refused
to correct the remaining proofs, or to do more than write the
explanations of the plates. He required, according to Mme de
Vandeul, that a copy, now at St Petersburg with his library,
should be printed with columns in which all was restored. The
mutilations began as far back as the article Intendant. But
how far, says Rosenkranz, this murderous, incredible and
infamous operation was carried cannot now be exactly ascertained.
Diderot’s articles, not including those on arts and
trades, were reprinted in Naigeon’s edition (Paris, 1821, 8vo,
22 vols.). They fill 4132 pages, and number 1139, of which
601 were written for the last ten volumes. They are on very
many subjects, but principally on grammar, history, morality,
philosophy, literature and metaphysics. As a contributor, his
special department of the work was philosophy, and arts and
trades. He passed whole days in workshops, and began by
examining a machine carefully, then he had it taken to pieces
and put together again, then he watched it at work, and lastly
worked it himself. He thus learned to use such complicated
machines as the stocking and cut velvet looms. He at first
received 1200 livres a year as editor, but afterwards 2500 livres
a volume, besides a final sum of 20,000 livres. Although after
his engagement he did not suffer from poverty as he had done
before, he was obliged to sell his library in order to provide for
his daughter. De Jaucourt spared neither time, trouble nor
expense in perfecting the work, for which he received nothing,
and he employed several secretaries at it for ten years. To pay
them he had to sell his house in Paris, which Lebreton bought
with the profits derived from De Jaucourt’s work. All the
publishers made large fortunes; their expenses amounted to
1,158,000 livres and their profits to 2,162,000. D’Alembert’s
“Discours Preliminaire,” 45 pages, written in 1750, prefixed
to the first volume, and delivered before the French Academy
on his reception on the 19th of December 1754, consists of a
systematic arrangement of the various branches of knowledge,
and an account of their progress since their revival. His system,
chiefly taken from Bacon, divides them into three classes,
under memory, reason and imagination. Arts and trades are
placed under natural history, superstition and magic under
science de Dieu, and orthography and heraldry under logic.
The literary world is divided into three corresponding classes—érudits,
philosophes and beaux esprits. As in Ephraim
Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, history and biography were excluded,
except incidentally; thus Aristotle’s life is given in the article
Aristotelisme. The science to which an article belongs is generally
named at the beginning of it, references are given to other
articles, and the authors’ names are marked by initials, of which
lists are given in the earlier volumes, but sometimes their names
are subscribed in full. Articles by Diderot have no mark, and
those inserted by him as editor have an asterisk prefixed. Among
the contributors were Voltaire, Euler, Marmontel, Montesquieu,
D’Anville, D’Holbach and Turgot, the leader of the new school
of economists which made its first appearance in the pages of
the Encyclopédie. Louis wrote the surgery, Daubenton natural
history, Eidous heraldry and art, Toussaint jurisprudence, and
Condamine articles on South America.
No encyclopaedia perhaps has been of such political importance, or has occupied so conspicuous a place in the civil and literary history of its century. It sought not only to give information, but to guide opinion. It was, as Rosenkranz says (Diderot, i. 157), theistic and heretical. It was opposed to the church, then all-powerful in France, and it treated dogma historically. It was, as Desnoiresterres says (Voltaire, v. 164), a war machine; as it progressed, its attacks both on the church and the still more despotic government, as well as on Christianity itself, became bolder and more undisguised, and it was met by opposition and persecution unparalleled in the history of encyclopaedias. Its execution is very unequal, and its articles of very different value. It was not constructed on a regular plan, or subjected to sufficient supervision; articles were sent in by the
