That it may become so, is possible.

It will not be by imitating the methods of that colossal type of histrionic failure, the church-pulpit.

Exhortation in set speeches always has been, and always will be, the feeblest bulwark against the boiling floods of passion that helpless virtue ever invented, and it matters not at all whether the hortatory speeches are placed on the lips of Mr.Talkative, the son of Saywell, or of some tearful dummy labelled the Father of the Family.[267] Yet one is half ashamed to use hard words about Diderot.

He was so modest about his work, so simple and unpretending, so wholly without restless and fretting ambitions, and so generous in his judgment of others.

He made his own dramatic experiment, he thought little enough of it; and he was wholly above the hateful vice of sourly disparaging competitors, whether dead or living.