It is a question, nevertheless, whether Diderot would have achieved masterpieces, even if the pressure of housekeeping had never driven him to seek bread where he could find it.  Indeed it is hardly a question.  His genius was spacious and original, but it was too dispersive, too facile of diversion, too little disciplined, for the prolonged effort of combination which is indispensable to the greater constructions whether of philosophy or art.  The excellent talent of economy and administration had been denied him; that thrift of faculty, which accumulates store and force for concentrated occasions.  He was not encyclopaedic by accident, nor merely from external necessity.  The quality of rapid movement, impetuous fancy, versatile idea, which he traced to the climate of his birthplace, marked him from the first for an encyclopaedic or some such task.  His interest was nearly as promptly and vehemently kindled in one subject as in another; he was always boldly tentative, always fresh and vigorous in suggestion, always instant in search.  But this multiplicity of active excitements—­and with Diderot every interest rose to the warmth of excitement—­was even more hostile to masterpieces than were the exigencies of a livelihood.  It was not unpardonable in a moment of exhaustion and chagrin to fancy that he had offered up the treasures of his genius to the dull gods of the hearth.  But if he had been childless and unwedded, the result would have been the same.  He is the munificent prodigal of letters, always believing his substance inexhaustible, never placing a limit to his fancies nor a bound to his outlay.  “It is not they who rob me of my life,” he wrote; “it is I who give it to them.  And what can I do better than accord a portion of it to him who esteems me enough to solicit such a gift?  I shall get no praise for it, ’tis true, either now while I am here, nor when I shall exist no longer; but I shall esteem myself for it, and people will love me all the better for it.  ’Tis no bad exchange, that of benevolence, against a celebrity that one does not always win, and that nobody wins without a drawback.  I have never once regretted the time that I have given to others; I can scarcely say as much for; the time that I have used for myself."[20] Remembering how uniformly men of letters take themselves somewhat too seriously, we may be sorry that this unique figure among them, who was in other respects constituted to be so considerable and so effective, did not take himself seriously enough.

Apart from his moral inaptitude for the monumental achievements of authorship, Diderot was endowed with the gifts of the talker rather than with those of the writer.  Like Dr. Johnson, he was a great converser rather than the author of great books.  If we turn to his writings, we are at some loss to understand the secret of his reputation.  They are too often declamatory, ill-compacted, broken by frequent apostrophes, ungainly, dislocated, and rambling.  He has been