1828.] his Eloise, and Confessions. 617 
faultless style. We own throughout its pages the presence of a powerful 
and analytical mind, that has studied—deeply studied—the origin and 
progress of even its slightest emotions, and noted them down, fresh as 
they rose, one after the other, from patient and acute investigation, with 
all the overwhelming earnestness of sincerity. . 
The “ Confessions,” like the “ Eloise,” abounds in impassioned sen- 
timent, but possesses in parts a vein of indignant sareasm, of which the 
other is devoid. It is the history—and a mournful one it is—of Rous- 
seau’s own mind; of his progress from childhood to age, from first 
enthusiasm to final despair. It is full of detailed accounts of his con- 
nexion with Madame de Warrens, Therese, and his unrequited fondness 
for Madame de Houdetot, the plain but faithful mistress of Samt Lam- 
bert. It is, in fact, the autobiography of an ardent, self-willed mind, 
at one time capable of the loftiest flights of virtue ; at another, equal to the 
most contemptible misdeeds. What can be more inconsistent than the 
candour that could afford to acknowledge that, in order to avoid punish- 
ment, it falsely accused a poor, unfriended maiden of theft, and the 
meanness that could stoop to act so? But, from first to last, Rousseau 
was the child of caprice: his actions were all impulses—they could 
never be relied on. 
With regard to the literary excellence of his Confessions, it 
is lavish and splendid in the extreme. Each chapter abounds 
{as suits occasion) in passages of unaffected simplicity, of glowing 
declamation, of energetic scorn, and sweet descriptive beauty. In proof 
of this, we may adduce Rousseau’s account of his first introduction to 
Madame de Houdetot—of his solitary walk every morning, to steal one 
kiss from this idol of his enthusiasm—of his proud expectations—un- 
wearied attachment, which neither absence on his own part, nor indif- 
ference on that of his mistress, could extinguish—and of his subsequently 
blighted hopes. Nor is that passage to be forgotten wherein he describes 
his ecstatic feeling of enjoyment, while sailing about at evening in his 
boat, far away from the sight of the hnman countenance, and surrounded, 
only by the grandest forms of nature—the towering mountain, the 
shrubless crag, the soft, luxuriant meadow, through whose daisied herb- 
“age wound a hundred silver rivulets, sparkling in the red sunset, and 
lapsing on their course in music and in happiness. Yet the whole pas- 
sage—beautiful as it undoubtedly is, and conceived in the rapt fervour 
of poetic inspiration—is false to nature, and equivocal in sentiment. It 
is in direct contradiction to the experience of ages—surely entitled to 
some little deference even from so headlong a reformer as Rousseau— 
which has left it on the records of a thousand volumes that the unrea- 
sonable indulgence of solitude is a factitious feeling, engendered by a 
diseased, and confirmed by an unsocial intellect. Amid passages, how- 
ever, of such doubtful (to say the least of them) sensibility, it is delight- 
ful to catch now and then glimpses of another and a nobler nature. It 
is like the bursting in of sudden sunshine upon November's gloom. Of 
such a redeeming character is Rousseau’s account of the periwinkle, 
which by accident he picked up in one of his Alpine botanical excursions, 
His simple exclamation of delight at the recognition, “ Ah, voila la 
spervenche !” goes deeper to the heart than a thousand elaborate homilies. 
It was not the mere flower itself, but the associations thereby engendered, 
that filled the philosopher’s eyes with tears, as he pressed it with fervour 
to his lips. Eight and thirty years before, while rambling with Madame 
M.M.. New Series.—Vou. VI. No. 36. ise 
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