extending over an incredibly wide field, possesses a
vivacity that I cannot describe, is pleasant and friendly in
intercourse, and has new and unusual observations to make on every
subject.... Who could fail to prize him? He is so bright, so full of
instruction, has so many new thoughts and suggestions, that nobody can
help admiring him. But willingly as he talks when one goes to him, he
shows to little advantage in large companies, and that is why he did not
please everybody at St. Petersburg. You will easily see the reason why
this incomparable man in such companies, where people talk of fashion,
of clothes, of frippery, and all other sorts of triviality, neither
gives pleasure to others nor finds pleasure himself." And the friendly
Swede rises to the height of generalisation in the quaint maxim, Where
an empty head shines, there a thoroughly cultivated man comes too short.

Bjoernstaehl quotes a saying of Voltaire, that Diderot would have been a
poet if he had not wished to be a philosopher--a remark that was rather
due perhaps to Voltaire's habitual complaisance than to any serious
consideration of Diderot's qualities. But if he could not be a poet
himself, at least he knew Pindar and Homer by heart, and at the Hague he
never stirred out without a Horace in his pocket. And though no poet, he
was full of poetic sentiment. Scheveningen, the little bathing-place a
short distance from the Hague, was Diderot's favourite spot. "It was
there," he writes, "that I used to see the horizon dark, the sea covered
with white haze, the waves rolling and tumbling, and far out the poor
fishermen in their great clumsy boats; on the shore a multitude of women
frozen with cold or apprehension, trying to warm themselves in the sun.
When the work was at an end and the boats had landed, the beach was
covered with fish of every kind. These good people have the simplicity,
the openness, the filial and fraternal piety of old time. As the men
come down from their boats, their wives throw themselves into their
arms, they embrace their fathers and their little ones; each loads
himself with fish; the son tosses his father a codfish or a salmon,
which the old man carries off in triumph to his cottage, thanking heaven
that it has given him so industrious and worthy a son. When he has gone
indoors, the sight of the fish rejoices the old man's mate; it is
quickly cut in pieces, the less lucky neighbours invited, it is speedily
eaten, and the room res