mmediate instrument of God in governing. He has been accused of
reducing things too much to formulas, and of repeating his formulas too
often. But this itself was in great part the effect of reaction against
the vague declamation of the _philosophes_.

CHAPTER VII.

SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.

As the sciences divide and subdivide themselves more and more, the works
which treat of them become less and less the subject of strictly
literary history. Besides this truth, it is necessary to remember the
fact that a large number of treatises, scientific in subject, were in
the eighteenth century professedly popularised and addressed to
unprofessional audiences. Fontenelle, D'Alembert, and many other authors
already mentioned, were _savants_, but their manner of handling their
subjects was far from being strictly or wholly scientific. Yet there
remain a certain number of writers, who, their reputation being derived
wholly or mainly from their treatment of subjects of science and
erudition, are better dealt with separately.

[Sidenote: Buffon.]

The head and chief of these is beyond all question Buffon. George Louis
Leclerc, who was made Count de Buffon by Louis XV., was born at Montbard
in Burgundy, on Sept. 7, 1707; his father was a man of wealth and of
position in the _noblesse de robe_. Buffon was destined for the law, but
early showed an inclination towards science. He became acquainted with a
young English nobleman, Lord Kingston, who with his tutor was taking the
then usual grand tour, and was permitted by his father to accompany him
through France and Italy, and to visit England. On the English language
he spent considerable pains, translating Newton, Hales, and Tull the
agriculturist. When he returned to France he devoted himself to
scientific experiments, and in 1739 he was appointed intendant or
director of the Jardin du Roi, which practically gave him command of the
national collections in zoology, botany, and mineralogy. He was thus
enabled to observe and experiment to his heart's content, and to collect
a sufficient number of facts for his vast Natural History. Buffon,
however, was only half a man of science. He was at least as anxious to
write pompous descriptions and to indulge in showy hypotheses, as to
confine himself to plain scientific enquiry. He accordingly left the
main part of the hack-work of his _Histoire Naturelle_ (a vast work
extending to thirty-six volumes) to assistants, of whom the chief was