aloud his Emile. A variety of circumstances, not generally taken into consideration, contributed to the condemnation and outcry against this work, and consequently swelled it to the vast importance it acquired. The Parliament, which had just suppressed the Jesuits, could not shew themselves deaf to the interests of religion-La Bane had been burned alive for indecorous behaviour, merely on the presumption that he had overturned a wooden cross-the great were bound to support Voltaire, yet it was incumbent on the authorities to display some zeal. "Emile" had been written and even printed under the very auspices of Choiseul and Malesherbes; but it became expedient to sacrifice the author, and they withdrew from him the letters in which his work was approved. The Parliament issued an edict against Rousseau, which compelled him to fly, the Archbishop of Paris attacked his work with equal eloquence and superior truth,-the Sorbonne was in such a hurry to attack him, that laying aside its old custom of expressing itself in Latin, it thundered forth its anathemas in bad French-the general assembly of the clergy of France, the Pope, and even Geneva, hastened to condemn and publicly burn the work, some of them even before they had time to read it. All this was great fun to Jean Jacques, who eclipsed for a while even the renown of Voltaire, and gathered all the eyes of Europe upon himself. He took care to answer kings and archbishops, and let the small fry vex themselves in oblivion; for a time he found a protector and a friend in the worthy veteran, to whom alone he ever remained attached and grateful. The suspicious self-tormentor, who could discover but a spy in the philanthropic Hume, could not find a flaw in the character of George Keith.

The part of "Emile" that drew down all this persecution on its author, was the profession of faith of a Savoyard vicar, where, half deist, half Christian, he eloquently vacillates between the doctrines he learned from his philosophic friends, and the true dictates of his own enthusiastic spirit. As usual, neither party gave him any credit; the philosophers disliked this mode of balancing the question, and were not more favourable to his paradoxes than the devotees. It is surprising that, in that age of boasted liberality, the only

to

dignified and unbigoted auswer Rousseau came from the pen of a partizan of the Jesuits, and the head of the Catholic church of France-from the same Christophe Beaumont, who refused the last sacraments of the church to the dying Jansenists. It is thus that the archbishop combats the errors, at the same time that he respects the talents of Rousseau:

"From the bosom of error has arisen a man full of the language of philosophy, without being truly a philosopher-a spirit gifted with an extensive knowledge, that has not enlightened him, but spread darkness even over his fellows-with opinions and actions at variance, uniting simplicity of manner with internal haughtiness of thought; the zeal for old maxims with the desire to establish new, and the obscurity of retirement with an insatiate eagerness for distinction. He defarnes the sciences which he cultivates, extols the excellence of the gospel while he destroys its principles, and paints the beauty of virtue while he strives to extinguish it in the souls of his readers. In a work on the inequality of conditions, he has degraded man to the rank of brutes-in a later production he has insinuated the poison of voluptuousness, under the pretence of warning against it; and in this he lays hold of the earliest moments of human life, that he may establish the empire of irreligion."

In contemplating the fortunes and character of Rousseau, we are at one time inclined to think, that if he had possessed common sense, he might have been the greatest man in Europe; and at another, that without his extravagance he would have been nothing. The latter opinion is the most likely to be just, therefore let us examine the principal source of his fame in the quarrels with his cotemporaries. The partizans of Jean Jacques come to these discussions armed with the idea of his superior sensibility, which they consider as an excuse for every crime, and a salvo against every extravagance. Now, for our part, we do not at all esteem Rousseau to have possessed finer feelings or a warmer heart than the general run of what are called soft souls-in the history of his actions there are many signs of callousness, even of barbarity; any tenderness he displays is to the last degree selfish. But even allowing the utmost that his

friends can assert, we attribute his acuteness and morbidity of feeling not to a spirit of refined or superior or ganization, but to mere physical weak nesses; nay more, to a distempered state of nerves, brought on by debauch ery. Genuine feeling of all kinds, be it sensibility or modesty, produced with a view to others or ourselves, is, even in its finest state, essentially healthy, rude, and pure. We have heard of Dean Swift's saying, that the cleanliest people have the dirtiest minds it is the same in feeling. Your dealers in scents and pocket-handkerchiefs, have hearts of callous stuff, they seem refined because they are weak, and feeling because they are distempered. There can be no trust in such men, who have principles no deeper than the surface of their nerves; there can be no safe communication expected with them, nor from them. Hourly-varying humours destroy their very identity in one hour, in one moment, they can be noble, mean, generous, malignant, doubly dangerous, because they are sincere during the existence of the reigning passions, and display to the new acquaintance their character in its most attractive light. Nothing but fatal experience can teach their friends, as it did Hume, that they but cherished a viper in their bo

som.

Rousseau had a strange peculiarity, he never could hate a man thoroughly, unless they had once been intimate together. If he had reason to hate any one, it was Voltaire; but having never seen the foe that pursued him with the most cutting satire, he could not thoroughly bring his mind to enmity. He always spoke of Voltaire with respect and moderation, while he vented his spleen against Grimm, Diderot, D'Alembert, and all who had the ill luck to have professed a friendship for him. He would not believe there was such a person as Horace Walpole, he must fix the blame of having ridiculed him on Hume. His first intimate was Grimm, who certainly gave him just cause of offence whom he should have despised, and whom he would, if his nerves had permitted him. His quarrel with Madame

D'Epinay, in which, even by her own account of the affair, he acted on just motives, was owing to Grimm. The heart of Rousseau was hardened against the world, and taught the harsh lesson of mistrust, to which it was before too well inclined, by this mean and eavesdropping coxcomb. It is impossible to peruse the literary history of that age without being filled with indignation at the craft and baseness of this mercenary "correspondent." What a useful school of experience is preserved in the accounts of these societies, for the youth who destine themselves to the pursuits of literature!

Rousseau and Diderot seem to have balanced pretty fairly between each other the account of injury. The Confessions and the Vie de Seneque, with the famous note to the latter, are even. Rousseau commenced dis trust, Diderot commenced hostility." Diderot was an obstinate reasoner, and had set his heart on establishing the doctrines of materialism; Grimm relates, that he could not sleep till he had satisfied himself that Virgil had approved the doctrines of Lucretius. The passage on which he wished to found this assertion is,—

And his friends were compelled to restrain their opposition, that they might not deprive him of rest. There is an anecdote, extremely characteristic of Diderot, as well as of the liberality and logic of the philosophers of those times. Fréron, in his Année literaire, attacked the philosophes in an essay called 'Histoire des Cacouacs, in which, alluding to his articles in the Encyclopedia, he accuses Diderot of impiety. Now all the world knew that Diderot was a professed atheist ;-this atheist and philosophic stickler for the liberty of the press, applied seriously to Malesherbes, who was then at the head of the censorship, that the heavy hand of authority might punish Fréron for accusing him of impiety.-Mark his argument

he does not say that the assertion is false, but that it is a personality. The dignified answer of Malesherbes to

VOL. XI.

T

Diderot might be perused with advantage by some of our contemporaries. Notwithstanding a few sarcastic remarks scattered throughout his two novels against the philosophes, Rousseau did not openly break with them, till the publication of his letter Sur les Spectacles, in answer to D'Alembert's article in the Encyclopedie, under the title Genève. Before this, however, he was a sworn enemy to Grimm, on account of the affair with Madame D'Epinay, and also to Holbach, who had denied the originality of the music in the Devin du Village, and who was a kind of president among the philosophers, uniting them once or twice aweek at his table, whence Rousseau classes them all under the title of the Holbachich coterie. The letter, Sur les Spectacles, was the signal of war; Rousseau was determined to keep no measures with Diderot, since he made the supposed discovery of the latter's having betrayed his intrigue with Madame d'Houdetot to St Lambert. In the letter, he openly declared his enmity, and almost as openly, the cause. 'Tis difficult to conceive what business D'Alembert had to persuade, by an article in the Encyclopedia, the Genevese to open a theatre; the advice might have been conveyed some other way, but it was most likely so introduced for the purpose of pleasing Voltaire. Rousseau's letter had also the effect of heightening the enmity of this philosopher, who at the very time was busied in erecting a theatre at Ferney.

The first communication that took place between these two rivals, was a letter from Rousseau, on the subject of some music he wished to alter, addressed to Voltaire, and couched in the most humble and flattering terms. In the early correspondence of this bear, as Madame d'Epinay calls him, both with Voltaire and with Hume, he makes use of a tone of servility not at all necessary, and which he took care to counterbalance afterwards, by a proportionate degree of impudence. He that insulted the Prince of Conti, ad

dressed Hume always by the title of Mon cher Patron; it was subsequent remorse for this servility that rendered him so anxious to break with his benefactor. When Voltaire published his poem on the Disaster of Lisbon, he sent it to Rousseau, who was indignant, as every man of sense ought to have been, at the poor sophistry and ludicrous impudence with which it arraigns Providence. Rousseau answered it in a private letter to the author, full of eloquence and acute reasoning, one of the best answers he ever wrote, In the poem, there is a modest objection against the earthquake for having taken place in a populous city, instead of choosing the wilderness for the scene of its depredations. "Shall the order of the universe," says Rousseau, "be changed according to our caprices?

shall nature be submitted to our laws? and if it be our will to forbid an earthquake in a certain place, have we but to build a town there?" The reply of Voltaire was civil;-that he was ill, and would take time to answer. The answer was "Candide." Before, however, any sarcasm of Voltaire was published against the optimist, Jean Jacques made an open declaration of war.-"I hate you," says he, very politely, in one his letters. He was more jealous of Voltaire's being established at Geneva, than of his reputation. Rousseau looked upon his native city as his property, and hated the owner of Ferney as a usurper. The inferior rank of the literary men of that day, have all appeared, in their works, since his death, the enemies of Rousseau; but this must be owing to the malignity of the Confessions in a great measure, and may be considered as a retaliation. Marmontel he offended, by addressing one of his pamphlets" to M. Marmontel, not to the editor of the Mercure;" but the friend of Voltaire and D'Alembert did not need this provocation. He wrote a poor answer to the letter on the Spectacles; and has preserved, in his Memoirs, a full account of Rousseau's intrigue with Madame d'Houdetot," and treason to St

Lambert, not forgetting a set speech of his own, that was evidently composed and manufactured in his closet. Suard translated Hume's Exposé. Morellet has preserved anecdotes against Jean Jacques; D'Alembert, who, notwithstanding his reputation during life, has shrunk since to an inferior rank of consideration, attacked his memory in the eulogium on Marshal Keith. In short, there is not a single cotemporary of Rousseau, possessed of the least celebrity, that adhered to him, except Bernardin St Pierre. The rest were visitors of curiosity, mere BosWELLS, who mounted to his genet, to collect a page for their memorandumbook.

Banished from Geneva, and from Berne, as he was from France, Rousseau took refuge in Neufchatel, under the protection of Marshal Keith. From this retreat also he was soon compelled to fly by the manoeuvres of the woman he lived with, who was never satisfied but when in Paris. Therèse persuaded Jean Jacques, that the Neufchatelese had determined to stone him; he thence took refuge with one of his literary antagonists, Stanislaus, King of Lorraine, who received and entertained him at Strasbourg, with all possible kindness and respect. It is worthy of remark, that while at Neufchatel, he received the sacrament in the Protestant church, and always attended divine service in his Armenian habit. At Strasbourg, he accepted the offer of Hume, who, then Chargé d'Affaires at the Court of France, wrote to Rousseau, offering him his protection, and an asylum in England. Rousseau, in his answer, among other things, declares, that after Geneva, England is the country where he should most like to reside; notwithstanding this, in his Confessions, he accuses Madame de Boufflers of having forced him to undertake this journey,-that he never liked England nor the English.

"Madame de Boufflers disapprouva beaucoup cette résolution, et fit de nouveaux efforts pour m'engager à passer en Angleterre. Elle ne m'ébranla pas. Je n'ai jamais aimé l'Angleterre ni les Anglois; et toute l'eloquence de M. de Boufflers, loin de vaincre ma répugnance, sembloit l'augmenter, sans que je susse pourquoi.

This is in direct contradiction with his letter to Hume, and is worthy of remark in this, that the only plea of the partizans of Rousseau consists in the unimpeachable sincerity of the Confessions and their author. The Confessions go no farther than the year 1759, the period of his journey to England; he purposed writing a third part, but thought it better to leave matters as they were. The abrupt termination of his auto-biography, allows us to be more circumstantial in the details of the rest of Rousseau's life, a supplement relating to this period being all that is wanting.

He arrived in Paris from Strasbourg, December 1765. The Prince of Conti placed him out of danger of arrest, by lodging him within the enceinte of the Temple; and the police allowed him to remain without any disturbance, on the condition that he was to depart as soon as possible; and, while he remained, to drop the Armenian garb, and cease to attract crowds in the streets of the metropolis. In January 1766, he set out for London in company with Hume, and M. de Luze, à Genevese friend, who, it was agreed, should accompany him. His letters from London after his arrival, bear testimony to the kindness and enthusiasm with which he was received—a testimony which he soon afterwards takes the liberty of retracting, another example of the reliance to be placed on the vaunted bonne foi of the author of the Confessions. "After proposing various plans and places of residence,

Hume settled his protegé with his friend Davenport, at Wootton in Staf fordshire; and to satisfy the affected independence of Rousseau, it was agreed that he should pay some petty sum, and be deceived into the opinion that he was living solely on his own resources. Of the same kind was the plan of making Clairaut, the bookseller, give Rousseau an enormous sum in exchange for his Dictionary of music, then ready for the press, for which, of course, the bookseller was to be reimbursed by Hume and his friends: the benevolent deceit was frustrated by the

death of Clairaut. While Jean Jacques was busied in writing his Confessions at Wootton, Hume was employed in London to obtain for him a pension; this he succeeded in, when, after various demurs on the part of the fugitive, he at last gave Hume to understand, that he would have no further connexion with him. The worthy historian was confounded-remonstra

ted, and received a reply, where, to his increased surprise and regret, he finds himself accused; and in the third person, of every species of baseness and treachery. The cause of all this was the following letter, written by Horace Walpole, in the name of the King of Prussia, addressed to Rousseau;-it was written in French, we give the translation:

"My dear Jean Jacques,-You have renounced Geneva, your country. You have driven yourself from Switzerland, so vaunted in your writings. France has condemned you: fly then to me. I admire your talents, and am exceed ingly amused with your reveries, though, (between you and me,) they are somewhat too long. It is time for you to be wise and happy: you have sought vulgar fame enough by singularities that do not much become a great man. If you want decidedly to annoy your enemies, shew them that you have common sense. In my dominions you may find a peaceable retreat: I am your friend, and will prove myself so, if you wish it. But if you reject my offers, remember that I will not publish your refusal. If you persist to torture your mind to invent new misfortunes, choose what kind of misery best suits you. I am king, and can furnish you to your heart's content. And, what you will not find among your enemies, I promise to

cease persecuting you, the moment you cease to put your glory in persecution. FREDERIC."

This sarcastic epistle shook Rouslets and condemnations which had been seau more than the thousand pamphhurled at him. He wrote to the editor of the St James's Chronicle, that it had navré son cœur.-He accused D'Alembert of having written, and Hume of having circulated it. And Hume having begged of his friend after some further delay at Wootton, Davenport, still to protect the ingrate, he fled in trepidation back to

France.

These circumstances are known, and the sensation and dispute so well almost impertinent to repeat them at the time, was so lively, that it is here. The author of Rousseau's Life, however, has taken advantage of the publication of Hume's correspondence which renders it necessary that we in 1820, to renew the controversy, should touch upon the disputable points. Jean Jacques charged David Hume with opening his letters and him to England, merely to spy upon reading them; and with having brought his actions; and this accusation Mr Musset-Pathay indirectly hints to be just. He founds his opinion on this passage in one of Hume's letters, where, speaking of Rousseau, it says, "because he receives no letter by the post." Mr M. P's. note upon this is, "How was Hume so au fait with respect to the letters of his friend?". -a notable sort of proof this. We would not so grossly insult the memory of the historian as to defend him against such accusers; nor would we at all have taken the least notice of Mr M. P., were not his work highly spoken of in French society. The next complaint of Jean Jacques against Hume is, that he fixed his eyes on him one evening, in a queer kind of a manner, on which he (Rousseau) fell to shaking and suspecting, and anon, leaped on the neck of honest David, exclaiming "No, you are not a traitor!" For this compliment David pats him on the back with "Quoi, Monsieur? Quoi donc, mon cher Monsieur ?" These pats on the back Jean Jacques bitterly complains of, as the effects of a total want of sensibility, and of course, Mr Musset - Pathay echoes the accusation.Good, as