DIDEROT, DENYS, was born at Langres, in the province of Cham pagne, in 1713. His father, a master cutler, a worthy man, much respected iu his native town, and eonfortable in his circumstances, placed his son first in the Jesuits' College at Langres, and afterwards sent him to the College d'Harcourt at Paris to continue his studies. At one time young Diderot was intended for the church, but as he felt no inclination for the clerical profession, his father did not press the point. Diderot made some progress in the ancient and modern lan guages, and still more in mathematics. On leaving college his father placed him as a boarder with a Paris procureur, in order that he might study the law, but Diderot had no taste for that profession ; be made no progress in its study, and he employed all the time be could steal from the office-desk in reading any books that fell into his hands. After two or three years his fhther stopped his board wages, desiring him either to betake himself to some profession or to return home, and ho several times repeated the offer of this alternative, but to no purpose, as Diderot replied that he felt no inclination for any worldly profession ; that he loved reading, was happy, and wanted nothing more. For ten years from that time he lived obscurely in Paris, on his wits as the phrase is, and often, as it may be supposed, in very pro miscuous, company. Literature was not then a very marketable com modity, but Diderot had a facility in writing, and he undertook any thing that came in his way, advertisements, indexes, catalogues, and even sermons for the colonies, which were bespoken and paid for by a missionary. He next began translating from the English for the book sellers. He also received indirectly assistance from home. At the age of twenty-nine he married a young woman as poor as himself, who proved to him ever after a virtuous and affectionate wife, notwith standing his subsequent neglect of her. In his drama ' Le Pere de Famille' he has drawn from life some of the incidents of his courtship and marriage.
Diderot's first original work was the 'Pensees Philosophiques,' 1746, a desultory and rather common-place production, which how ever met with great success among the partisans of the new philo sophy, as it was then called. From that time he ranked as one of the most strenuous assailants of the established systems in religion and politics. He saw many unseemly parts in the social edifice, and could devise no better mode of mending them than by pulling down the whole. That the state of France under the Regent and Louis XV.
was such as easily to lead an impetuous mind to such a conclusion, is made sufficiently evident by the numerous memoirs of those times. In 1749 ho published the Lettrea cur lea ' for which he was imprisoned for three months at where however be was very indulgently treated, and allowed to receive the visits of his friends, among whom was J. J. Rousseau, to whom it is said that Diderot suggested the idea of his first literary paradox. They afterwards quarrelled upon some foolish ground, and the squabble was not creditable to either. [Rousseau.] After editing, in company with others, a Universal Medical Dictionary, Diderot formed the project of a genera] Cyelopmdia, to supersede the French version of Chambers's work, and he found a bookseller, Lebreton, willing to undertake the publication, under the title of Encyclop6die, ou Dictionnaire Raisona des Sciences, des Arts, et Mdtiers.' Diderot and D'Alembert were joint editors, but D'Alembert withdrew after a time, and Diderot remained sole editor. The work began to appear in 1751, and was concluded in 1765, in 17 vole. fol., besides 11 vols. of plates. The publication was stopped two or three times by the government, and the last volumes were distributed privately, though the king himself was one of the purchasers. The most amusing part of the corre spondence of Voltaire and D'Alembert was carried on while D'Alem bert was joint editor of the Dietionnaire,' and presents a lively picture of the various difficulties with which the editors had to contend. On this celebrated compilation Diderot himself passed a severe judgment. He said, "that he had had neither time nor the means of being particular in the choice of his contributors, among whom some were excellent, but most of the rest were very inferior; that moreover the contributors, being badly paid, worked carelessly ; that, in short, it was a patch-work composed of very ill-sorted mate rials, some master-pieces by the side of schoolboys' performances; and that there was also considerable neglect in the arrangement of the articles, and especially in the references." Diderot complained like wise that the publisher, Lebrcton, often took upon himself to scratch out of the proof-sheets any passages which he thought might endanger him, and then filled up the gap as well as he could. Notwithstanding all these deficiencies the 'Dictionnaire Encyclopdclique' met with great success for a time, but it has been since superseded in France by the Encyclopedia Mdthodique,' or great French Cyclopmdia.