. The book
has, however, the merit of conciseness, and is a singular monument of
literary industry, for it was entirely compiled by Chambers himself. It
had a great success, and though its price was high (four guineas), it
ran through five editions in eighteen years. On the whole, however, it
is meagre, and more like a dictionary than an encyclopaedia, such as
Alsted's for instance.

Some fifteen years after the publication of Chambers's Cyclopaedia, an
Englishman (Mills) and a German (Sellius) went to Le Breton with a
project for its translation into French. The bookseller obtained the
requisite privilege from the government, but he obtained it for himself,
and not for the projectors. This trick led to a quarrel, and before it
was settled the German died and the Englishman returned to his own
country. They left the translation behind them duly executed.[96] Le
Breton then carried the undertaking to a certain abbe, Gua de Malves.
Gua de Malves (_b._ 1712) seems to have been a man of a busy and
ingenious mind. He was the translator of Berkeley's _Hylas and
Philonous_, of Anson's Voyages, and of various English tracts on
currency and political economy. It is said that he first suggested the
idea of a cyclopaedia on a fuller plan,[97] but we have no evidence of
this. In any case, the project made no advance in his hands. The
embarrassed bookseller next applied to Diderot, who was then much in
need of work that should bring him bread. His fertile and energetic
intelligence transformed the scheme. By an admirable intuition, he
divined the opportunity which would be given by the encyclopaedic form,
of gathering up into a whole all that new thought and modern knowledge,
which existed as yet in unsystematic and uninterpreted fragments. His
enthusiasm fired Le Breton. It was resolved to make Chambers's work a
mere starting-point for a new enterprise of far wider scope.

"The old and learned D'Aguesseau," says Michelet, "notwithstanding the
pitiable, the wretched sides of his character, had two lofty sides, his
reform of the laws, and a personal passion, the taste and urgent need of
universality, a certain encyclopaedic sense. A young man came to him one
day, a man of letters living by his pen, and somewhat under a cloud for
one or two hazardous books that lack of bread had driven him to write.
Yet this stranger of dubious repute wrought a miracle. With
bewilderment the old sage listened to him unrolling the gigantic scheme
of