ad; while even his strictly critical faculty seems
never to have been exercised on his own books--a failure forming part of
the "ostrich-like indifference" with which he produced and abandoned
them.[371]

[Sidenote: His gifts and the waste of them.]

It is sometimes contended, and in many cases, no doubt, is the fact,
that "Selections" are disgraceful and unscholarly. But what has been
said will show that this is an exceptional case. The present writer
waded through the whole of twenty-volume edition of Assezat and Tourneux
when it first appeared, and is very glad he did; nor is there perhaps
one volume (he does not say one page, chapter, or even work) which he
has not revisited more or fewer times during the forty years in which
(alas! for the preterite) they remained on his shelves. But it is
scarcely to be expected that every one, that many, or that more than a
very few readers, have done or will do the same. It so happens, however,
that Genin's _Oeuvres Choisies_--though it has been abused by some
anti-Ydgrunites as too much Bowdlerised--gives a remarkably full and
satisfactory idea of this great and seldom[372] quite rightly valued
writer. It must have cost much, besides use of paste and scissors, to
do; for the extracts are often very short, and the bulk of matter to be
thoroughly searched for extraction is, as has just been said, huge. A
third volume might perhaps be added;[373] but the actual two are far
from unrepresentative, while the Bowdlerising is by no means
ultra-Bowdlerish.

[Sidenote: The various display of them.]

The reader, even of this selection, will see how, in quite miscellaneous
or heterogeneous writing, Diderot bubbles out into a perfectly told tale
or anecdote, no matter what the envelope (as we may call it) of this
tale or anecdote may be. All his work is more or less like conversation:
and these excursus are like the stories which, if good, are among the
best, just as, if bad, they are the worst, sets-off to conversation
itself. Next to these come the longer _histoires_--as one would call
them in the Heroic novel and its successors--things sometimes found by
themselves, sometimes ensconced in larger work[374]--the story of
Desroches and Mme. de la Carliere, _Les Deux Amis de Bourbonne_, the
almost famous _Le Marquis des Arcis et Mme. de la Pommeraye_, of which
more may be said presently; and things which are not exactly tales, but
which have the tale-quality in part, like the charming _R