These contributions to what was then the most popular of the sciences brought him fame, and fame brought him its usual distractions.  As soon as a writer has shown himself the possessor of gifts that may be of value to society, then society straightway sets to work to seduce and hinder him from diligently exercising them.  D’Alembert resisted these influences steadfastly.  His means were very limited, yet he could never be induced to increase them at the cost either of his social independence or of his scientific pursuits.  He lived for forty years under the humble roof of the poor woman who had treated him as a son.  “You will never be anything better than a philosopher,” she used to cry reproachfully, “and what is a philosopher?  ’Tis a madman who torments himself all his life, that people may talk about him when he is dead.”  D’Alembert zealously adhered to his destination.  Frederick the Great vainly tempted him by an offer of the succession to Maupertuis as president of the Academy of Berlin.  Although, however, he declined to accept the post, he enjoyed all its authority and prerogative.  Frederick always consulted him in filling up vacancies and making appointments.  It is a magnanimous trait in D’Alembert’s history that he should have procured for Lagrange a position and livelihood at Berlin, warmly commending him as a man of rare and superior genius, although Lagrange had vigorously opposed some of his own mathematical theories.  Ten years after Frederick’s offer, the other great potentate of the north, Catherine of Russia, besought him to undertake the education of the young grand duke, her son.  But neither urgent flatteries and solicitations under the imperial hand, nor the munificent offer of a hundred thousand francs a year, availed to draw him away from his independence and his friends.  The great Frederick used to compare him to one of those oriental monarchs, who cherish a strict seclusion in order to enhance their importance and majesty.  He did not refuse a pension of some fifty pounds a year from Berlin, and the same amount was bestowed upon him from the privy purse at Versailles.  He received a small annual sum in addition from the Academy.

Though the mathematical sciences remained the objects of his special study, D’Alembert was as free as the other great men of the encyclopaedic school from the narrowness of the pure specialist.  He naturally reminds us of the remarkable saying imputed to Leibnitz, that he only attributed importance to science, because it enabled him to speak with authority in philosophy and religion.  His correspondence with Voltaire, extending over the third quarter of the century, is the most instructive record that we possess of the many-sided doings of that busy time.  His series of eloges on the academicians who died between 1700 and 1772 is one of the most interesting works in the department of literary history.  He paid the keenest attention to the great and difficult art of writing.  Translations from Tacitus, Bacon,