Ever loyal to good causes, and resolute against despairing of the human commonwealth, he began in the pages of the Encyclopaedia a career that was brilliant with good promise and high hopes, and ended in the grim hall of the Convention and a nobly tragic death amid the red storm of the Terror.
Among the lesser stars in the encyclopaedic firmament are some whose names ought not to be wholly omitted.

Forbonnais, one of the most instructive economic writers of the century, contributed articles to the early volumes, which were afterwards republished in his Elements of Commerce.[113] The light-hearted Marmontel wrote cheerful articles on Comedy, Eloges, Eclogues, Glory, and other matters of literature and taste.

Quesnai, the eminent founder of the economic sect, dealt with two agricultural subjects, and reproduced both his theoretical paradoxes, and his admirable practical maxims, on the material prosperity of nations.

Holbach, not yet author of the memorable System of Nature, compiled a vast number of the articles on chemistry and mineralogy, chiefly and avowedly from German sources, he being the only writer of the band with a mastery of a language which was at that moment hardly more essential to culture than Russian is now.

The name of Duclos should not be passed over, in the list of the foremost men who helped to raise the encyclopaedic monument.