Preface

Preface I present with great pleasure this selection of essays, chosen from among the finest papers delivered at ASECS conferences in the year 1979-80. As is always the case with this volume, they represent—in quality and variety— a sampling of the liveliest eighteenth-century scholarship in our society. An editor of a volume such as this has many pleasures and a few head­ aches. Chief among the latter is trying to write some sort of preface which ties together the disparate works which often have in common—necessarily and unashamedly — only excellence of scholarship and the same century. Hence one often resorts — as I did in volume 10 — to rough groupings to satisfy ones own (and presumably the reader's) "blessed rage for order." Such ordering, though, distorts as much as it enlightens. It artificially guides the reader. The century as it was lived had no such order. To be sure, there were common threads —wit, prosperity, reform, and the like; it is not simply an act of arbitrary will that we treat the century as a recog­ nizable unit. But for the best of the century, such as Diderot, the problems and puzzles came in rich variety and no particular sequence. To sample the century in all its richness, Diderot found himself having to be scien­ tist, theologian, aesthetician, moralist, editor, author, and jailbird. Therefore, it is worth noting that though his Encyclopedic begins with a preliminary discourse which outlines an elaborate tree of knowledge, the work itself is organized on a much more mundane principle — the al­ phabet. And, hence, Though to some it may seem quizzical I put little stock in order physical; Though to lumieres it may seem antithetical, I put the works, by author, alphabetical. xi xii I Preface Apologies to Pope, Dryden, and even Voltaire, but no apologies for the spirited and fine scholarship represented by this, our annual volume 11. Harry C. Payne Colgate University October1980 ...