Sensibility is hardly the quality of a great genius.

He will have justice; but he will practise it without reaping all the sweetness of it.

It is not his heart, but his head, that does it all.

Well, then, what I insist upon, says Diderot, is that it is extreme sensibility that makes mediocre actors; it is mediocre sensibility that makes bad actors; and it is the absolute want of sensibility that prepares actors who shall be sublime.[276] This is worked out with great clearness and decision, and some of the illustrations to which he resorts to lighten the dialogue are amusing enough.

Perhaps the most interesting to us English is his account of Garrick, whose acquaintance he made towards the year 1765.