ed over the country was not less
indispensable to France than the flood of the barbarians was
indispensable for the transformation of the Roman Empire.

Scattered among the more serious fragments of the dialogue is some
excellent by-play of sarcasm upon Palissot, and one or two of the other
assailants of the new liberal school. Palissot is an old story. The
Palissots are an eternal species. The family never dies out, and it
thrives in every climate. All societies know the literary dangler in
great houses, and the purveyor to fashionable prejudices. Not that he is
always servile. The reader, I daresay, remembers that La Bruyere
described a curious being in Troilus, the despotic parasite. Palissot,
eighteenth century or nineteenth century, is often like Troilus,
parasite and tyrant at the same time. He usually happens to have begun
life with laudable aspirations and sincere interests of his own; and
when, alas, the mediocrity of his gifts proves too weak to bear the
burden of his ambitions, the recollection of a generous youth only
serves to sour old age.

Bel esprit abhorre de tous les bons esprits,
Il pense par la haine echapper au mepris.
A force d'attentats il se croit illustre;
Et s'il n'etait mechant, il serait ignore.

Palissot began with a tragedy. He proceeded to an angry pamphlet
against the Encyclopaedists and the fury for innovation. Then he achieved
immense vogue among fine ladies, bishops, and the lighter heads of the
town, by the comedy in which he held Diderot, D'Alembert, and the
others, up to hatred and ridicule. Finally, after coming to look upon
himself as a serious personage, he disappeared into the mire of
half-oblivious contempt and disgust that happily awaits all the poor
Palissots and all their works. His name only survives in connection with
the men whom he maligned. He lived to be old, as, oddly enough, Spite so
often does. In the Terror he had a narrow escape, for he was brought
before Chaumette. Chaumette apostrophised the assailant of Rousseau and
Diderot with rude energy, but did not send him to the guillotine. In
this the practical disciple only imitated the magnanimity of his
theoretical masters. Rousseau had declined an opportunity of punishing
Palissot's impertinences, and Diderot took no worse vengeance upon him
than by making an occasional reference of contempt to him in a dialogue
which he perhaps never intended to publish.

Another subject is handled in _Rameau's