Don't adopt any device which doesn't suit your deepest, own needs. You can be sure Diderot did not settle for any less. Literature is not like two designs, as if you're shopping for wallpaper. People hunt around and find their own devices. The history of literature is not just what people have come up with but also the history of what they've become bored with.
Some ages are more susceptible to boredom than others.
My own rule is to choose the necessary and set aside the superfluous. I can fix on some points when this happened. You grow up in this hybrid America and you're overcome by the idea of being a writer because you've been inflamed by what you read. Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, Dos Passos, Dreiser, Faulkner, Joyce. I was an early Faulkner fan.