DICTYS CRETENSIS, the reputed author of a history of the Trojan war, is said to have composed it at the request of Idomeneus, king of Crete, whom he had accompanied to the ten years' siege of the ancient Ilian city. The story respecting this book is as follows:—It was buried with him in his tomb, and lay there till a great storm in the time of Nero burst open the repository, and cast out the literary treasure, which was found by some shepherds and ultimately came into the hands of the Roman emperor. As it was written in the obsolete Phenician character, he directed a Greek version of it to be prepared, which was done by one Praxis; and from his work a Latin translation was subsequently executed by a writer called Septimus. Such is the traditionary account. Only the Latin work remains, the date of which has been fixed by some as low as the fifteenth century. It cannot claim any historical value, and is interesting only as a curious literary forgery.—W. B.
DICUIL, an Irish monk, was born probably about the year 775. He appears to have been a man of much learning, and applied himself especially to the subject of cosmography. He wrote a work, "De Mensura Orbis Terræ," in 825, which has been frequently quoted by geographers, and was for the first time published by M. Walckenäer, Paris, 1807, from MSS. in the imperial library there. An edition also appeared in 1814, with geographical and critical comments by M. Letronne. Dicuil's work is one rather of antiquarian interest than of utility, as his geographical ideas were necessarily incorrect.—J. F. W.
DIDEROT, Denys, was born at Langres in the province of Champagne, October, 1713. His father was a cutler, of worthy repute for justice and humanity; and Diderot in all his wanderings did not fail in honourable affection for his rural home. He was placed at the Jesuit college at Langres, and although impulsively unruly, took prizes of all sorts for composition, for memory, for poetry. From Langres he proceeded to the college d'Harcourt at Paris, where his studies were remarkable for their miscellaneous diversity. He sought familiarity with Latin, Greek, Italian, English; while metaphysics and physics, moral philosophy and geometry, belles-lettres and the mechanical arts, severally occupied his attention. Finding him disinclined for the church, for which he had been originally intended, his father very wisely did not urge it upon him, but placed him with a procureur at Paris, that he might study jurisprudence. Diderot's wide-wandering curiosity, however, could not be chained down to the desk, and he stole every hour possible for literary pursuits, until, upon the complaint of his master, his father interfered and insisted upon the definite choice of a profession. He was called upon to decide whether to be a doctor, procureur, or advocate. Diderot replied that he could not think of killing any body, and therefore would not be a doctor; that the business of a procureur was too difficult for him; and that his repugnance to meddle with other people's business was too great to permit him to be an advocate. "But what will you be, then?" asked the procureur. "Nothing; nothing," replied Diderot; "I love study; I am very happy, very content, and want nothing else." Neither would he accept his father's offer to return home. Upon this his allowance was stopped, and Diderot numbered himself among those who lived by their wits in the attics of Paris. No one in that city could have been more wilful in his cleverness, or more sanguinely have defied starvation. He taught mathematics; but if he found a pupil a dunce, did not return to him twice. He held a well-paid tutorship, but deserted it in spite of the offer of salary, food, lodging, according to his pleasure. "Monsieur," said Diderot to his patron, "look at me; a citron is not so yellow as my face. I am making men of your children, but every day I am becoming a child with them. I feel a hundred times too rich and too well off in your house, yet I must leave it; the object of my wishes is not to live better, but to keep from dying." Strange shifts, however, had this philosopher recourse to, to effect his purpose, and keep from dying. That sternest disease of all, hunger, was not far from him; and while sometimes Diderot sold a MS. to a bookseller, sometimes he duped a credulous abbé, and rather dangerously held companionship with those who lived no one exactly knew how. Meanwhile his pen was active, and no object was strange to his unresting mind. He wrote anything and everything; indexes, catalogues, advertisements, sermons for missionaries duly ordered and paid for, and translations from English. At the age of twenty-nine he fell in love with a sempstress, and found in a pretty girl the heart of a noble woman—a higher prize than his subsequent faithlessness deserved. At first she refused to marry him, on account of his father's opposition to the match; but when she learnt that he had fallen sick, that his room was a perfect dog-kennel, that he lay without nourishment, without attendance, wasted and sad, she promised to be his wife. In Diderot's drama, "Le Père de Famille," he has painted from life some incidents of his courtship and marriage. His wife proved affectionately faithful, as capable of self-sacrifice as her lot was ofttimes full of sorrow. But Diderot worshipped the divinity of impulse, and could make a virtue not simply of following the highest, but of yielding to the coarsest. The same man who wrote "L'Essai sur le Merite et la Vertu," could neglect a wife, and write an obscene novel for the sake of paying a mistress with its proceeds. Diderot's first original work was the "Pensées Philosophiques" (1746), and he thereby took rank in that band of philosophers whoso existence was a natural reaction against the overstraining of spiritual tyrannies, and whose thoughts soon became burning deeds, devouring the ancient social edifice of France. The publication of the "Lettres sur les Aveugles" for the use of those who see, brought Diderot some months' imprisonment at Vincennes. This, however, increased his personal importance, and he was visited by many eminent friends, including J.-J. Rousseau. Diderot's vast amount of miscellaneous knowledge was equalled by the marvellous readiness of a pen that could write a volume in a few days. In conjunction with D'Alembert he projected a universal encyclopædia, designed to give an intelligent summary of the whole range of human knowledge—to explain the observed results of every science, and the mechanical processes of every trade—as well as to be a means of inculcating those heresies which subsequently bore the fruit of revolution. It was entitled "Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et Métiers." Its publication commenced in 1751, and concluded in 1765 with the seventeenth folio volume, in addition to eleven volumes of plates, Diderot being throughout a large part of the time, in consequence of the withdrawal of D'Alembert, sole editor. The labour was enormous, but Diderot had a fresh vivacity of mental constitution which not even the burden of an encyclopædia could oppress. The work was several times stopped by royal authority, but its editor still kept printing on, until the decision was unenforced. His activity was wonderful. He visited workshops and tried his own hand at the loom, that his descriptions might be accurate, and made his own head a living encyclopædia. Meanwhile his study was full of people wanting the help of his pen or purse, or mediation or advice, and it is recorded to his honour that he spared no trouble in assisting others. On one occasion he wrote the dedication of a lampoon against himself, in order to assist a starving author; he arbitrated in law-suits; reconciled enemies; and was not inconsiderably plundered by sharpers who played upon his good nature. The attention of France was given to Diderot, for his encyclopædia was the great literary embodiment of the philosophy of the age—a philosophy dreary and sad, but in itself an inevitable historical result of Jesuitism at the altar and irresponsible tyranny upon the throne. Before mind could have been resolved into physical organization, and before morality could have been regarded as an enlightened self-interest by the predominant intellect of a nation, that nation must have had its free life cramped in its natural development. The atheism of Diderot and his compeers will always reappear under similar social conditions. In addition to the encyclopædia, he produced many miscellaneous works. He was intimate with d'Helbach, and is said by Grimm to have written many passages in the Systéme de la Nature. Grimm affirms, also, that a large part of Abbé Raynal's Histoire Philosophique belongs to Diderot, who was often startled at the boldness with which he made his friend speak. "Who," asked he, "will venture to subscribe this?" "I," replied the Abbé, "I will subscribe it; proceed, I tell you." Diderot's "Essay on Painting" was thought worthy of translation and comment by Goethe, and bears witness that he was gifted with something of the poet's insight into the higher graces of art. His professed faith in nature had its light as well as its shade. On the one hand he sacrificed the spiritual to the material; but on the other he demanded from poet, dramatist, and painter closer attention to the simple laws of natural beauty. Through this artistic sense, that strange skeleton of a materialistic creed which was to Diderot as the universe itself, was sometimes clothed with a passing grace, although it could be redeemed by no art from
