We need not linger over the names of other writers, who indeed are now little more than mere shadows of names, such as La Condamine, a scientific traveller of fame and merit in his day and generation; of Du Marsais, the poverty-stricken and unlucky scholar who wrote articles on grammar; of the President Des Brosses, who was unfortunate enough to be in the right in a quarrel about money with Voltaire, and who has since been better known to readers through the fury of the provoked patriarch, than through his own meritorious contributions to the early history of civilisation.
The name of one faithful worker in the building of this new Jerusalem ought not to be omitted, though his writings were _multa non multum_.
The Chevalier de Jaucourt (1704-1779), as his title shows, was the younger son of a noble house.

He studied at Geneva, Cambridge, and Leyden, and published in 1734 a useful account of the life and writings of Leibnitz.

When the Encyclopaedia was projected, his services were at once secured, and he became its slave from the beginning of A to the end of Z.He wrote articles in his own special subjects of natural history and physical science, but he was always ready to lend his help in other departments, in writing, rewriting, reading, correcting, and all those other humbler necessities of editorship of which the inconsiderate reader knows little and thinks less.

Jaucourt revelled in this drudgery.
God made him for grinding articles, said Diderot.

For six or seven years, he wrote one day, Jaucourt has been in the middle of half a dozen secretaries, reading, dictating, slaving, for thirteen or fourteen hours a day, and he is not tired of it even now.