The booksellers who were interested in the Encyclopaedia were importunate with the authorities to restore its head and chief to an enterprise that stirred universal curiosity.[89] For the first volume of that famous work was now almost ready to appear, and expectation was keen.

The idea of the book had occurred to Diderot in 1745, and from 1745 to 1765 it was the absorbing occupation of his life.

Of the value and significance of the conception underlying this immense operation, I shall speak in the next chapter.

There also I shall describe its history.

The circumstances under which these five-and-thirty volumes were given to the world mark Diderot for one of the few true heroes of literature.