le Fataliste_.

[13] Sterne's Letters, May 23, 1765.

[14] Nov. 12, 1767.

[15] E.g. _Le Voyageur Sentimental_ of Vernes (Grimm, _Corr. Lit._,
xiii. 227).

It seems to have been composed about the time (1773) of Diderot's
journey to Holland and St. Petersburg, of which we shall have more to
say in a later chapter. Its history is almost as singular as the history
of _Rameau's Nephew_. A contemporary speaks of a score of copies as
existing in different parts of Germany, and we may conjecture that they
found their way there from friends whom Diderot made in Holland, and
some of them were no doubt sent by Grimm to his subscribers. The first
fragment of it that saw the light in print was in a translation that
Schiller made of its most striking episode, in the year 1785. This is
another illustration of the eagerness of the best minds of Germany to
possess and diffuse the most original products of French intelligence
and hardihood. Diderot, as we have said, stands in the front rank along
with Rousseau, along also with Richardson, Sterne, and Goldsmith, among
those who in Germany kindled the glow of sentimentalism, both in its
good and its bad forms. It was in Germany that the first complete
version of the whole of _Jacques le Fataliste_ appeared, in 1792. Not
until four years later did the French obtain an original transcript.
This they owed to the generosity of Prince Henri of Prussia, the brother
of Frederick the Great; he presented it to the Institute.

"There is going about here," wrote Goethe in 1780, while Diderot was
still alive, "a manuscript of Diderot's called _Jacques le Fataliste et
son Maitre_, and it is really first-rate--a very fine and exquisite
meal, prepared and dished up with great skill, as if for the palate of
some singular idol. I set myself in the place of this Bel, and in six
uninterrupted hours swallowed all the courses in the order, and
according to the intentions, of this excellent cook and _maitre
d'hotel_."[16] He goes on to say that when other people came to read it,
some preferred one story, and some another. On the whole, one is
strongly inclined to judge that few modern readers will equal Goethe's
unsparing appetite. The reader sighs in thinking of the brilliant and
unflagging wit, the verve, the wicked graces of _Candide_, and we long
for the ease and simplicity and light stroke of the _Sentimental
Journey_. Diderot has the German heaviness. Perhaps this is because he
had