all had an irresistible attraction for
him.[179] Both Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon had preceded him in
admiration for Seneca, and Montaigne found Cicero tiresome and
unprofitable compared with the author of the Epistles to Lucilius. "When
there comes any misfortune to a European," says the imaginary oriental
of Montesquieu's _Persian Letters_, "his only resource is the reading of
a philosopher called Seneca."[180]

[179] Diderot's _Leben_, ii. 357.

[180] See Mr. Brewer's preface to Roger Bacon, p. 73.; Montaigne's
chapter _Des Livres_, and the _Defense de Seneque et de Plutarque._;
_Let. Pers._, 33.

But Diderot was not a man to admire by halves, and to literary praise of
Seneca's writings he added a thoroughgoing vindication of his career. In
his early days he had referred disparagingly to Seneca,[181] but
reflection or accident had made him change his mind. The cheap severity
of abstract ethics has always abounded against Seneca, and this severity
was what Diderot had all his life found insupportable. Holbach had
induced Lagrange, a young man of letters whom he had rescued from want,
to undertake the translation of Seneca, and when Lagrange died, Holbach
prevailed on Naigeon, Diderot's fervid disciple, to complete and revise
the work, which still remains the best of the French versions. That
done, then both Holbach and Naigeon urged Diderot to write an account
of the philosopher.

[181] _Essai sur le Merite et la Vertu._ _Oeuv._, i. 118, _note_.

The Essay on the Reigns of Claudius and Nero[182] is marked by as much
vehemence, as much sincerity of enthusiasm, as if Seneca had been
Diderot's personal friend. There is a flame, a passion, about it, an
ingenuous air of conviction, which are not common in historical
apologies. It is inevitable, as the composition is Diderot's, that it
should have many a rambling and declamatory page. His paraphrases of
Tacitus are the most curious case in literature of the expansion of a
style of sombre poetic concentration into the style of exuberant
rhetoric. Both Grimm and a Russian princess of the blood urged him even
to translate the whole of Tacitus's works, but it is certain that nobody
in the world had ever less of Tacitean quality. Still the history is
alive. "_I do not compose_," Diderot said in the dedication. "_I am no
author; I read or I converse; I ask questions and I give answers._" The
writer throws himself into the historic situation with the viv