All turns upon what we mean by celebrity.

What the Encyclopaedists certainly did was to raise Bacon, for a time, to the popular throne from which Voltaire's Newtonianism had pushed Descartes.

Mr.Fowler traces a chain of Baconian tradition, no doubt, but he perhaps surrenders nearly as much as is claimed when he admits that "the patronage of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists did much to extend the study of Bacon's writings, besides producing a considerable controversy as to his true meaning on many questions of philosophy and theology."] [Footnote 159: See above, p.

62, _note_.] [Footnote 160: D'Alembert was not afraid to contend against the great captain of the age, that the military spirit of Lewis XIV.

had been a great curse to Europe.