ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES. 



HOWE, NICHOLAS. 



380 



One of Rousseau's grievances was that ho thought the French 

 ministers had imposed restrictions upon hia writing. One of his 

 friends applied to the Duke of Choiseul on the subject. The duke's 

 answer, dated 1772, is as follows: "If ever I have advised M. Rousseau 

 not to publish anything without my previous knowledge, of which fact 

 I have no remembrance, it could only have been with a view to save 

 him from fresh squabbles and annoyances. As now however I have 

 no longer the power of protecting him [the duke had just resigned his 

 premiership], I fully acquit him of any engagement of the sort." 



As liousseau grew old and infirm, the labour of copying music became 

 too irksome, and all his income consisted of an annuity of 1450 livres, 

 not quite 6QI. sterling. His wife was also in bad health, and provisions 

 were very dear, and he found that he could not remain in Paris. The 

 Marquis de Qirardin, being informed of this, kindly offered Rousseau 

 a permanent habitation at the chateau of Ermenonville, near Chantilly. 

 Rousseau accepted for his residence a detached cottage near the family 

 mansion, whither he removed in May 1778. In this new abode he 

 appeared for once contented. He used to botanise in the neighbour- 

 hood with one of the sons of the marquis. On the 1st of July he went 

 out as usual for the purpose, but returned home fatigued and ill. 

 The next morning after breakfast he went to his room to dress, as he 

 intended to pay a visit to Madame de Girardin ; but he felt exhausted, 

 and his wife coming in gave the alarm. Madame de Girardin came at 

 once to see him ; but Rousseau, whilst thanking her for all her kindness, 

 begged of her to return to her house, and leave him for the present. 

 Having requested his wife to sit by him, he begged her forgiveness for 

 any pain that he might have caused her, and said that he died in peace 

 with all the world, and that he trusted in the mercy of God. He 

 asked her to open the window, that he might once more behold the 

 lovely verdure of the fields. " How pure and beautiful is the sky," 

 observed he ; " there is not a cloud on it. I hope the Almighty will 

 receive me there." So saying, he fell with his face to the ground ; 

 and when he was raised, life was extinct. His death was purely 

 natural, and not in consequence of suicide, as was said by some. He 

 was buried, according to his request, in an island shaded by poplars, 

 in the little lake of the park of Ermenonville, and a plain marble 

 monument was raised to his memory. 



He had begun to write his autobiography when he was in England, 

 under ihe title of his ' Confessions.' This work contains many excep- 

 tionable passages. It ought to be observed however that he did not 

 intend it for publication until the year 1800, judging that the persons 

 mentioned in it would then be dead ; but through an abuse of confi- 

 dence on the part of the depositaries of his manuscript, it was published 

 in 1788. Rousseau did not, like Voltaire, sneer at religion and morality. 

 He was sceptical, but had no fanatical hatred of Christianity ; on the 

 contrary, he admired and praised the morality of the Gospel. " I 

 acknowledge," he says in the ' Emile,' " that the majesty of the 

 Scriptures astonishes me, that the holiness of the Gospel speaks to my 

 heart. Look at the books of the philosophers ; with all their pomp, 

 how little they appear by the side of that one book ! Can a book so 

 simple and yet so sublime be the work of men ? How prejudiced, 

 how blind that man must be, who can compare the son of Sophroniscus 

 (Socrates) with the son of Mary ! " With such sentiments Rousseau 

 could not long agree with Diderot, Helvetius, D'Holbach, and their 

 coterie. They ridiculed him as a bigot. Voltaire, on his part, coarsely 

 abused him on many occasions, it is believed from literary jealousy; 

 but Rousseau never retorted. " I have spent my life," says Rousseau, 

 " amongst infidels, without being seduced by them : I esteemed and 

 loved several of them personally, and yet their doctrines were insuffer- 

 able to me. I told them repeatedly that I could not believe them. 



I leave to my friends the task of constructing the world by 



chance. I find in the very architects of this new-fangled world, in 

 spite of themselves and their arguments, a fresh proof of a God, 

 Creator of alL" 



Through his deficient education, and his infirmities of judgment and 

 temper, Rousseau was totally unfit to be a political writer. He set a 

 pernicious example to many others, who were still less qualified by 

 proper study to consider themselves as legislators and reformers. 

 Rousseau by his eloquence misled the understanding ; Voltaire by his 

 sneers and ribaldry destroyed all moral feeling. Both writers exerted 

 a great influence on the generation which they saw grow up, and which 

 afterwards effected the great French revolution ; and yet Rousseau 

 might well disclaim all intention to contribute to such a catastrophe. 

 While Helvetius maintained the principle that " any action becomes 

 lawful and virtuous in the furtherance of the public weal," Rousseau 

 says that " the public weal is nothing unless all the individuals of 

 society are safe and protected." And elsewhere he says that if the 

 attainment of liberty should cost the life of a single man, it would bo 

 too dearly bought. He also said, speaking of his ' Contrat Social,' 

 that it was not written for men, but for angels. M. Angar one day 

 introduced his son to Rousseau, saying that he had been educated 

 according to the principles of the 'Emile;' when Rousseau gruffly 

 replied, " So much the worse for you and for your son too ! " All 

 these circumstances serve to show the real character of Rousseau's 

 mind. 



Rousseau set to music about one hundred French ' Romances,' some 

 of them very pretty, which he published under the title of ' Conso- 

 lations des Miscres de ma Vie.' He was passionately fond of music, 



though he seems not to have attained a profound knowledge of the 

 subject. 



There have been several editions of Rousseau's works : those of 

 Lefevre, 22 vols. 8vo, 1819-20, and of Lequien, 21 vols. 8vo, 1821-22, 

 are considered the best. 



The town of Geneva has raised a bronze statue to his memory in 

 the little island where the Rhone issues from the lake, which is a 

 favourite promenade of the citizens. 



ROUTH, REV. MARTIN JOSEPH, D.D., was born September 15, 

 1755, at South Elmham, near Beccles, in Suffolk. His father was the 

 Rev. Peter Routh, who was rector of South Elmham from 1753 to 1764, 

 when he resigned it for Beccles. In 1774 he became master of Beccles 

 grammar-school. Martin Joseph Routh, after having been educated 

 under his father, matriculated as a battler at Queen's College, Oxford, 

 May 31, 1770, but in July 1771 was elected a demy of the college of 

 St. Mary Magdalen. Having taken his degree of B.A., he became a 

 Fellow in July 1776, and on the 23rd of October, in the same year, 

 took his degree of M.A. In 1781 he was appointed college librarian; 

 in 1783 he was elected senior proctor of the- university, and in 1784 

 junior dean of arts. He proceeded B.D. July 15, 1786', and in 1789 

 was appointed one of the college bursars. He was elected president of 

 Magdalen College April 11, 1791, on the resignation of Dr. Home, 

 bishop of Norwich. 



Dr. Routh's first literary publication was an edition of the Enthy- 

 demus and Gorgias of Plato, 'Platonis Enthydemus et Gorgias, 

 recensuit, vertit, Notasque suas adjecit Martinus Josephus Routh, A.M., 

 Collegii D. Mariso Magd. Oxon. Socius,' 8vo, 1784. 



Having taken his degree of D.D., Dr. Routh in 1810 became rector 

 of Tylehurst, near Reading, in Berkshire, whither he used to retire 

 occasionally for the benefit of his health, and to enjoy the vacation 

 allowed him by the statutes of his college. In 1814 he published the 

 first two volumes of his 'Reliquiae Sacrse; sive Auctorum jam Perdi- 

 torum Secundi Tertiique Seculi post Christum natum quse supersunt,' 

 8vo. The third volume was published in 1815. In 1820 he married 

 Eliza-Agnes, daughter of J. Blagrave, Esq., of Chalcot Park, near 

 Tylehurst. In 1823 he edited Bishop Burnet's 'History of his Own 

 Times.' In 1832 he published 'Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Opuscula,' 

 8vo, and a second edition in 1840. In 1833 he published an improved 

 edition of Burnet's 'History of his Own Times.' In 1846 appeared 

 four volumes of a new edition of the ' Reliquiae Sacrae,' to which he 

 added a fifth volume in 1848. He died December 22, 1854, at the age 

 of ninety-nine, and was buried in the vault of the chapel of Magdalen 

 College. 



RO'VERE, DELLA, the name of a noble family originally from 

 Savona, in the territory of Genoa, which gave to the church two cele- 

 brated popes [Sixius IV. and JULIUS 1 1.] besides many cardinals and 

 other distinguished persons. Pope Julius II. caused his nephew 

 Francesco Maria Delia Rovere to be adopted by Guidobaldo of Monte- 

 feltro, duke of Urbino, who was childless, as his successor in the duchy. 

 Accordingly, after the death of Guidobaldo in 1507, Francesco Maria 

 took possession of Urbino. Under Leo X. he was driven away from 

 his duchy to make room for Lorenzo de' Medici, a relative of the new 

 pope. But after the death of Leo X., Francesco Maria was reinstated 

 in the dominion of Urbino and Pesaro. He was much engaged in the 

 Italian wars of that age, in which he acquired the reputation of an 

 able commander. He died in 1538, and was succeeded by his son 

 Guidobaldo, who was a patron of learning and of the arts. Guidobaldo 

 died in 1574, and was succeeded by Francesco Maria II. This prince 

 surpassed his predecessors as a patron of learning, and was himself 

 learned in various branches of knowledge. Urbino continued to be 

 under him, what it had been from the times of the Montefeltro family, 

 a favourite resort of men of science and of literature. Francesco 

 Maria II. by his liberality assisted the celebrated naturalist Aldrovaudi 

 of Bologna, in forming his rich museum of natural history. Duke 

 Francesco Maria II. lost his only son Federico in 1623, and the court 

 of Rome claimed the reversion of the duchy as a fief of the Papal see. 

 Ferdinand II., grand-duke of Tuscany, who had married the Princess 

 Vittoria della Rovere, daughter of the Duke of Urbino, was induced, 

 chiefly through religious scruples, to give up his claims to the succes- 

 sion ; and thus Tuscany lost the chance of extending its sway from sea 

 to sea as far as the Adriatic. In 1632 Duke Francesco Maria died, 

 when his dominions were seized by Pope Urban VIII. and annexed to 

 the Papal territories. 



ROWE, NICHOLAS, an English dramatic poet, was born at Little 

 Beckford in Bedfordshire, in 1673. His father was John Rowe, of an 

 old Devonshire family, and a serjeant-at-law of some eminence iu hia 

 day. The son was educated at Westminster under Busby, and chosen 

 one of the king's scholars. At the age of sixteen he was removed 

 from school by his father, and entered as a student of the Middle 

 Temple. Ho studied law for about three years, when, being left his 

 own master by his father's death, he began to turn his attention to 

 poetry, and withdrew himself from the less attractive reading of his 

 profession. When he was twenty-five years of age he produced a 

 tragedy, called 'The Ambitious Step-Mother,' which was very well 

 received ; and in 1702 appeared ' Tamerlane,' in which play, according 

 to the taste of the time, Louis XIV. and William III. are represented 

 respectively by Bajazet and Tamerlane. 



This tragedy obtained great popularity, from its connection with the 



