Pamphlets, broadsheets, sarcasms flew over Paris from every side. Was music only to flatter the ear, or was it to paint the passions in all their energy, to harrow the soul, to raise men's courage, to form citizens and heroes? The coffee-houses were thrown into dire confusion, and literary societies were rent by fatal discord. Even dinner-parties breathed only constraint and mistrust, and the intimacies of a lifetime came to cruel end. _Rameau's Nephew_ was composed in the midst of the first part of this long campaign of a quarter of a century, and its seems to have been revised by its author in the midst of the second great episode. Diderot declares against the school of Rameau and Lulli. That he should do so was a part of his general reaction in favour of what he called the natural, against the artifice and affectation. Goethe has pointed out the inconsistency between Diderot's sympathy for the less expressive kind of music, and his usual vehement passion for the expressive in art. He truly observes that Diderot's sympathy went in this way, because the novelty and agitation seemed likely to break up the old, stiff, and abhorred fashion, and to clear the ground afresh for other efforts.[299] END OF VOL. I. _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: _Oeuv._, xviii. 505.] [Footnote 2: _Oeuv._, xviii. 364.] [Footnote 3: _Ib._ 379.] [Footnote 4: _Oeuv._, i. 30.] [Footnote 5: _Wahlverwandschaften_, pt. ii. ch. vii. The reader will do well to consult the philosophical estimate of the function of the man of letters given by Comte, _Philosophie Positive_, v. 512, vi. 192, 287. The best contemporary account of the principles and policy of the men of letters in the eighteenth century is to be found in Condorcet's _Esquisse d'un Tableau, etc._, pp. 187-189 (ed. 1847).] [Footnote 6: Naigeon, p. 24.] [Footnote 7: _Oeuv._, xix. 162.] [Footnote 8: _Oeuv._, xix. 89.] [Footnote 9: _Oeuv._, xix. 93.] [Footnote 10: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.] [Footnote 11: Marmontel, _Mem._, vol. ii. b. vii. p. 315.] [Footnote 12: Morellet, _Mem._, i. p. 29.] [Footnote 13: _Oeuv._, i. xlviii.] [Footnote 14: _Ib._ xix. 55.] [Footnote 15: _Oeuv._, xviii. 376.] [Footnote 16: Madame de Vandeul says 1744. But M. Jal (_Dict. Crit._, 495) reproduces the certificate of the marriage. Perhaps we may charitably hope that Diderot himself is equally mistaken, when in later years he sets down a disreputable adventure to 1744. (_Oeuv._, xix. 85.)] [Footnote 17: For an account of Madame de Puisieux in her later years, see Mdme. Roland's _Memoirs_, i. 156.] [Footnote 18: Sainte Beuve, _Causeries_, ix. 136.] [Footnote 19: _Oeuv._, xix. 159. See also _Salons_, 1767, No, 118.] [Footnote 20: _Les Regnes de Claud et de Neron, Sec. 79.] [Footnote 21: Account of Diderot by Meister, printed in Grimm's _Correspondence Litteraire_ xiii. 202-211.] [Footnote 22: Gretry, quoted in Genin's _Oeuv. choisies de Diderot_, 42.]