ed him from a friend into
an enemy of Voltaire, and, like Freron, he very frequently hit blots
both in the patriarch's works and in those of his disciples. Palissot
was the author of a play called _Les Philosophes_, an _Ecossaise_ on the
other side, in which Rousseau, Diderot, and others were outrageously
ridiculed. There was no great merit in this, but Palissot was not a bad
critic in some ways, and his notes on French classics, especially
Corneille, frequently show much greater taste than those of most
contemporary annotators.

[Sidenote: Philosophe Criticism. D'Alembert, Diderot.]

[Sidenote: Les Feuilles de Grimm.]

[Sidenote: Diderot's Salons]

[Sidenote: His General Criticism.]

The leaders of the _philosophes_ themselves gave considerable attention
to criticism. Voltaire wrote this, as he wrote everything, his
principal critical work being his Commentary on Corneille, in which the
constraint of general dramatic and poetic theory which the critic
imposes on himself, and the merely conventional opinions in which he too
often indulges, do not interfere with much acute criticism on points of
detail. D'Alembert distinguished himself by his extraordinarily careful
and polished _Eloges_, or obituary notices, which remain among the
finest examples of critical appreciation of a certain kind to be found
in literature. Although he did not definitely attempt a new theory of
criticism, D'Alembert's vigorous intellect and unbiassed judgment
enabled him to estimate authors so different as (for instance) Massillon
and Marivaux with singular felicity. But the greatest of the
Encyclopaedists in this respect was unquestionably Diderot. While his
contemporaries, bent on innovation in politics and religion, accepted
without doubt or complaint the narrowest, most conventional, and most
unnatural system of literary criticism ever known, he, in his hurried
and haphazard but masterly way, practically anticipated the views and
even many of the _dicta_ of the Romantic school. Most of Diderot's
criticisms were written for Grimm's 'Leaves,' which thus acquired a
value entirely different from and far superior to any that their nominal
author could give them. Some of these short notices of current
literature are among the finest examples of the review properly so
called, though in point of mere literary style and expression they
constantly suffer from Diderot's hurried way of setting down the first
thing that came into his head in the fi