that of Shakespeare. So far from being susceptible to flattery and to the blandishments of prosperity, more than half of his quarrel with society is founded upon his abhorrence of this social falsehood. Although he loudly condemns general vices, and thus accounts for his retirement from the world,
“La raison, pour mon bien, veut que je me retire; Je n'ai point surma langue un assez grand empire,” yet he detests private scandal, and reproaches his mistress for indulging in it. The dishonest praise and blame of indi viduals are equally hateful to his ears. The reason he as signs for his misanthropy, and its extent, are identical with those which Erasmus attributed to Timon; in his anger, he
says, that his aversion to man admits of no exception; “Non, elle est générale, et je hais tous les hommes; Les uns, parcequ'ils sont méchants et malfaisants,
Et les autres, pour étre aux mèchants complaisants.” He hates all mankind, because they all come under the ca tegory of rogues or flatterers. He is, however, elevated above Timon in this, that the personal injuries he himself receives are not the cause of this hatred ; on the contrary, he treats them with a noble indifference. The character of Alceste is,
on the whole, that of a magnanimous, truth-loving, truth speaking man, misplaced in a court where servility and cor ruption are triumphant. His very defects, his anger at vice and duplicity, and his promptness to express it, are those of a noble soul.
Rousseau has taken this view of the character in a severe cri
ticism, to which he has exposed Molière for degrading the dra matic art, to pander to the corrupt morals of his age, in covering virtue with ridicule, and vice with false attractions.
Other
French writers have generally dissented from this condemnation, but Rousseau's letter to D'Alembert is a fine example of analytic criticism, not to be set aside by the sneering assertion, that P
