Note 161 — Chapter IV · DIDEROT AND THE FRENCH TRANSITION.

20 vols., ed. Assézat and Tourneux: Paris, 1875-76. I had known Diderot before, not merely from Carlyle and Mr Morley, but from Génin’s extraordinarily well-chosen Pensées Choisies in the Didot collection. But I remember very well, after more than a quarter of a century, the delight with which I read this edition as the successive volumes reached me at their appearance. I cannot take them down without that anticipation of sentences at particular places of the page which one only feels in such a case. They are quarrelling with the edition now, of course: but that does not matter.