Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/38

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
*
*

2(5 BOUSSEAU sophe coterie as to the orthodox party. He still, how- ever, had no lack of patrons lie never had though his unsurpassable perversity made him quarrel with all in turn. The amiable duke and duchess of Luxem- bourg, who were his neighbours at Montlouis, made his acquaintance, or rather forced theirs upon him, and he was eagerly industrious in his literary work indeed most of his best books were produced during his stay in the neighbourhood of Montmorency. A letter to Voltaire on his poem about the Lisbon earthquake embittered the dislike between the two, being surreptitiously published. La Nouvelle Heloise appeared in the same year (1760), and it was immensely popular. In 1662 appeared the Control Social at Amsterdam, and mile, which was pub- lished both in the Low Countries and at Paris. For the latter the author received 6000 livres, for the Contrat 1000. Julie, ou La Nouvelle Helo'ise, is a novel written in letters describing the loves of a man of low position and a girl of rank, her subsequent marriage to a respectable freethinker of her own station, the mental agonies of her lover, and the partial appeasing of the distresses of the lovers by the influence of noble sentiment and the good offices of a philanthropic Englishman. It is too long, the sentiment is overstrained, and severe moralists have accused it of a certain complaisance in dealing with amatory errors ; but it is full of pathos and knowledge of the human heart. The Contrat Social, as its title implies, endeavours to base all government on the consent, direct or implied, of the governed, and indulges in much ingenious argument to get rid of the practical inconveniences of such a suggestion. JZmile, the second title of which is De Vfiducation, is much more of a treatise than of a novel, though a certain amount of narrative interest is kept up throughout. Rousseau's reputation was now higher than ever, but the term of the comparative prosperity which he had enjoyed foe nearly ten years was at hand. The Contrat Social was obviously anti-monarchic; the Nouvelle Heloise was said to be immoral ; the sentimental deism of the " Profes- sion du vicaire Savoyard " in J2mile irritated equally the philosophe party and the church. On June 11, 1662, mHe was condemned by the parlement of Paris, and two days previously Madame de Luxembourg and the Prince de Conti gave the author information that he would be arrested if he did not fly. They also furnished him with means of flight, and he made for Yverdun in the territory of Bern, whence he transferred himself to Motiers in Neuchatel, which then belonged to Prussia. Frederick II. was not indisposed to protect the persecuted when it cost him nothing and might bring him fame, and in Marshal Keith, the governor of Neuchatel, Rousseau found a true and firm friend. He was, however, unable to be quiet or to practise any of those more or less pious frauds which were customary at the time with the unor- thodox. The archbishop of Paris had published a pastoral against him, and Rousseau did not let the year pass without a Lettre a M. de Beaumont. The council of Geneva had joined in the condemnation of fimile, and Rousseau first solemnly renounced his citizenship, and then, in the Lettres de la Montague (1763), attacked the council and the Genevan constitution unsparingly. All this excited public opinion against him, and gradually he grew unpopular in his own neighbourhood. This unpopularity is said on very uncertain authority to have culminated in a nocturnal attack on his house, which reminds the reader remarkably of an incident in the life of the greatest French man of letters of the present century. At any rate he thought he was menaced if he was not, and migrated to the lie St Pierre in the Lake of Bienne, where he once more for a short, and the last, time enjoyed that idyllic existence which he loved. But the Bernese Government ordered him to quit its territory. He was for some time uncertain where to go, and thought of Corsica (to join Paoli) and Berlin. But finally David Hume offered him, late in 1765, au asylum in England, and he accepted. He passed through Turn, where his presence was tolerated for a time, and landed in England on January 13, 1766. Therese travelled separately, and was entrusted to the charge of James Boswell, who had already made Rousseau's acquaintance. Here he had once more a chance of settling peaceably. Severe English moralists like Johnson thought but ill of him, but the public generally was not unwilling to testify against French intolerance, and regarded his sentimental- ism with favour. He was lionized in London to his heart's content and discontent, for it may truly be said of Rousseau that he was equally indignant at neglect and intolerant of attention. When, after not a few dispjays of his strange humour, he professed himself tired of the capital, Hume procured him a country abode in the house of Mr Davenport at Wootton in Derbyshire. Here, though the place was bleak and lonely, he might have been happy enough, and he actually employed himself in writing the greater part of his Confessions. But his habit of self-tormenting and tormenting others never left him. His own caprices interposed some delay in the con- ferring of a pension which George III. was induced to grant him, and he took this as a crime of Hume's. The publication of a spiteful letter (really by Horace Walpole, one of whose worst deeds it was) in the name of the king of Prussia made Rousseau believe that plots of the most terrible kind were on foot against him. Finally he quarrelled with Hume because the latter would not acknowledge all his own friends and Rousseau's supposed enemies of the philosophe circle to be rascals. He re- mained, however, at Wootton during the year and through the winter. In May 1767 he fled to France, addressing letters to the lord chancellor and to General Couway, which can only be described as the letters of a lunatic. He was received in France by the Marquis de Mirabeau (father of the great Mirabeau), of whom he soon had enough, then by the Prince de Conti at Trye. From this place he again fled and wandered about for some time in a wretched fashion, still writing the Confessions, constantly receiving generous help, and always quarrelling with, or at least suspecting, the helpers. In the summer of 1770 he returned to Paris, resumed music copying, and was on the whole happier than he had been since he had to leave Montlouis. He had by this time married Th<$rese le Vasseur, or had at least gone through some form of marriage with her. Many of the best-known stories of Rousseau's life date from this last time, when he was tolerably accessible to visitors, though clearly half-insane. He finished his Con- fessions, wrote his Dialogues (the interest of which is not quite equal to the promise of their curious sub-title Rousseau juge de Jean Jacques), and began his Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire, intended as a sequel and complement to the Confessions, and one of the best of all his books. It should be said that besides these, which complete the list of his principal works, he has left a very large number of minor works and a considerable correspondence. During this time he lived in the Rue Platiere, which is now named after him. But his suspicions of secret enemies grew stronger rather than weaker, and at the beginning of 1778 he was glad to accept the offer of M. de Girardin, a rich financier, and occupy a cottage at Ermenonville. The country was beautiful ; but his old terrors revived, and his woes were complicated by the alleged inclination of Therese for one of M. de Girardin's stable boys. On July 2d he died in a manner which has been much discussed, sus-