it is
inhabited by some ancient sorcerer."[188] They had a dispute as to the
merits of Shakespeare, and Diderot displeased the patriarch by repeating
the expression that we have already quoted (vol. i. p. 330) about
Shakespeare being like the statue of St. Christopher at Notre Dame,
unshapely and rude, but such a giant that ordinary men could pass
between his legs without touching him.[189]

[188] Metra's _Corresp. Secrete_, vi. 292.

[189] See Diderot's _Oeuv._, xix. 465, _note_.

There was one man who might have told us a thousand interesting things
both about Diderot's conversations with Voltaire, and his relations
with other men. This man was Naigeon, to whom Diderot gave most of his
papers, and who always professed, down to his death in 1814, to be
Diderot's closest adherent and most authoritative expounder. Diderot
was, as he always knew and said, less an author than a talker; not a
talker like Johnson, but like Coleridge. If Naigeon could only have
contented himself with playing reporter, and could have been blessed by
nature with the rare art of Boswell. "We wanted," as Carlyle says, "to
see and know how it stood with the bodily man, the working and warfaring
Denis Diderot; how he looked and lived, what he did, what he said."
Instead of which, nothing but "a dull, sulky, snuffling, droning,
interminable lecture on Atheistic Philosophy," delivered with the
vehemence of some pulpit-drumming Gowkthrapple, or "precious Mr. Jabesh
Rentowel." Naigeon belonged to the too numerous class of men and women
overabundantly endowed with unwise intellect. He was acute, diligent,
and tenacious; fond of books, especially when they had handsome margins
and fine bindings; above all things, he was the most fanatical atheist,
and the most indefatigable propagandist and eager proselytiser which
that form of religion can boast. We do not know the date of his first
acquaintance with Diderot;[190] we only know that at the end of
Diderot's days he had no busier or more fervent disciple than Naigeon.
To us, at all events, whatever it may have been to Diderot, the
acquaintance and discipleship have proved good for very little.

[190] The _Biographie Universelle_, after giving 1738 as the date of
Naigeon's birth, absurdly attributes to him the article on _Ame_ in
the Encyclopaedia, which was published in 1752, when Naigeon was
fourteen years old.

Our last authentic glimpse of Diderot is from the pen of a humane