ses on us, we grow weary of them, and release ourselves.
Energies fade, we become feebler, we crave the close of life, as
after working hard we crave the close of the day. Living in harmony
with nature, we learn not to rebel against the orders that we see
in necessary and universal execution.... There is nobody among us
who, having worn himself out in toil, has not seen the hour of rest
approach with supreme delight. Life for some of us is only one long
day of weariness, and death a long slumber, and the coffin a bed of
rest, and the earth only a pillow where it is sweet, when all is
done, to lay one's head, never to raise it again. I confess to you
that, when looked at in this way, and after the long endless
crosses that I have had, death is the most agreeable of prospects.
I am bent on teaching myself more and more to see it so."[177]

[177] Letter to Mdlle. Voland, Sept. 23, 1762. xix. 136, 137.

Again, we are reminded by Diderot's words on this last gentle epilogue
to a harassing performance, of Plato's picture of aged Cephalus sitting
in a cushioned chair, with the garland round his brows. "I was in the
country almost alone, free from cares and disquiet, letting the hours
flow on, with no other object than to find myself by the evening as
sometimes one finds one's self in the morning, after a night that has
been busy with a pleasant dream. The years had left me none of the
passions that are our torment, none of the weariness that follows them;
I had lost my taste for all the frivolities that are made so important
by our hope that we shall enjoy them long. I said to myself: If the
little that I have done, and the little that is left for me to do,
should perish with me, what would the human race be the loser? What
should I be the loser myself?"[178]

[178] The dedication of the _Regnes de Claude et de Neron_ to
Naigeon, iii. 9.

This was the mood in which Diderot wrote his singular apology for the
life and character of Seneca. Rosenkranz makes the excellent reflection
that though Diderot attained to a more free comprehension of Greek art,
and especially of Homer, than most of his contemporaries, yet even with
him the Roman element was dominant. It was Horace, Terence, Lucretius,
Tacitus, Seneca, who to the very end came closer to him than any of the
Greeks. The moralising reflection, the satirical tendency, the
declamatory form of the Romans,