Note 23 — Lecture V. Infidelity in France in the Eighteenth Century, and Unbelief in England Subsequent to 1760.

An account of these coteries may be seen in Schlosser's Hist. of Eighteenth Century, (E. T.) vol. i. ch. ii. § 4; the particulars of which chapter he has gathered largely from the Autobiography of Marmontel, and from Grimm's Correspondence. See also Sainte-Beuve's Papers (Portraits, vol. ii.) on Espinasse and Geoffrin. These coteries were specially four: viz. (1) that of Madame De Tencin, mother of D'Alembert, which included Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Helvetius, Marivaux, and Astruc; (2) of Madame Geoffrin, who took the place of De Tencin. It included, besides some of the above, Poniatowsky, Frederick the Great when in France, the Swedish Creutz, and Kaunitz, the whole of the Voltaire school, and at first Rousseau; (3) of Madame Du Deffant, contemporary with Geoffrin. This was less a coterie of fashion, and more entirely of intellect; and included Voltaire, D'Alembert, Hénault, and Horace Walpole when in Paris. Later Mlle. Espinasse took the place of Deffant, and this became the union-point for all the philosophical reformers, D'Alembert, Diderot, Turgot, and the Encyclopædists; (4) of D'Holbach, consisting of the most advanced infidels.