He promptly grabbed the pages and went off into a corner to read them. Diderot is a master of letter writing, as is demonstrated in his letters to Sophie Volland, and this article reads rather like a love letter to Richardson, master of the letter. Because of the article's love-letter quality, it is a shame to have omitted any parts of it at all in the present selection, since the cumulative effect is essential to the article's function. Nevertheless, the selection given here provides insight into the ways in which Diderot has experienced the novels, and it demonstrates how important he feels it is, for social and individual morality, that people adopt a sentimental method of reading. Reading, in this light, becomes an crucial and earnestly undertaken activity, both for the individual and for the community as a whole.
People engage in deep self-examination because of the novels they read.
And groups of people come together in the space defined by these novels, or they are separated from each other because they can or cannot do so. As Diderot remarks at the end of the selection above indicate, the literature of sensibility aspires to create bonds between people that have strength rivaling that of religion. In this attempt, they also create social divisions and exclusions of similar force. Finally, it seems important that the discussions of Richardson often express themselves in the medium of personal correspondence form. In writing letters about Richardson's letters, there is a repetition of form which mirrors the repetition of literary actions that Diderot speaks about.