ROUSSEAU. 



479 



with our celebrated countryman David Hume, who 

 then resident in the capital as charge d 'a f lain -, In. in the 

 ii>h court. Commiserating his destitute condition, 

 Mr. Hume took him ;ilon^ with him to England in the 

 lu'^innin I, and obtained for him nn agreeable 



settlement in the family which he had hinnelf chosen 

 as the best asylum from his enemies. A character so 

 compound, so cnprii .ous, so insincere as that of Kous- 

 seau, was incapable of making a favourable impression 

 upon an English mind. His licence of speech, which 

 made him an object of wonder abroad, excited no notice 

 in a country where every man canfcay what he pleases; 

 his melancholy and troubled temperament had not 

 even the charm of peculiarity in our land of clouds and 

 fogs ; and his overweening vanity did not find among 

 our grave countrymen any food for its insatiableappetite. 

 Rousseau was therefore soon disgusted with England. 

 Although he himself chose to speak openly of all 

 things, and of all men, yet his love of liberty could 

 not brooke that he himself should be the subject of 

 free discussion. The English newspapers sneered at 

 his peculiarities: they published a forged letter from 

 the king of Prussia, ridiculing the principles and con- 

 duct of Rousseau, as adapted to a modern Diogenes. 

 Such treatment was not congenial to a distempered 

 mind like Rousseau's, and it annoyed tiim the more as 

 it was the act of a liberal and free people. Here he had 

 no corrupted priesthood to rail at, no fanatical minis- 

 ters to ridicule, no despot to satirize. He therefore con- 

 ceived that there was a general confederacy organized 

 against him of all sects and parties. He imagined that 

 his friend and benefactor, Mr. Hume, had leagued 

 himself with the French philosophers against his peace 

 and glory, and that he had brought him to England to 

 expose him to the ridicule of his countrymen. Full of 

 these opinions, and equally full of his own importance, 

 he addressed an abusive letter to Mr. Hume, and re- 

 nounced a pension which that amiable man had suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining for him from the English govern- 

 ment.* 



From England he went to Paris in 1767, and in 

 1768 he published his Dictionnaire de Musique, com- 

 posed principally of the musical articles which he had 

 contributed to the Encylopedie. This work, though 

 it contains many good articles, many excellent ob- 

 servations, and many just criticisms, is yet full of 

 inaccuracies, and has a tendency to mislead the stu- 

 dent. 



In the year 1769, when he was in the neighbourhood 

 of Lyons, Rousseau married his governess Mademoi- 

 selle le Vasseur, a woman devoid both of beauty and 

 talents, but who, from a devoted attention to him 

 in health and in sickness, had gained over him an as- 

 cendancy which was unfortunately used rather to ex- 

 aggerate than to subdue his peculiarities. By this lady 

 he had already five children, all of whom he had base- 

 ly sent to the orphan hospital ; a step which he never 

 scrupled to avow and to defend. Although the mar- 

 ried state did not introduce Rousseau to the " match- 

 less joys of virtuous love," 



An elegant lufficiency, content. 



Retirement, rural quiet, rrienddiip, book*, 



KaM and alternate labour, uvcl'ul . 



I'rogreMtve virtue, and approving heaven ; Tnouiov. 



yet his entrance into that state was a sort of homage 

 paid in those social principles which it had been the 

 business of bin life to deride; and when he agreed to 

 shackle his licentious love by " the coarser tie of hu- 

 nt m laws," he may be considered as having expressed 

 some regret for his crime, in the fulness of his age, 

 and the maturity of his intellect. Yet this was perhaps 

 only another caprice of his unsettled temper, and we 

 should have regarded it as such, had it not been certain 

 that this was the most rational period of his life, and 

 that he now sought for tranquillity of mind in the 

 peaceful study of the productions of nature. At Bour- 

 goin, in Dauphmy, where he resided, he embarked ea- 

 gerly in botanical study, and employed himself dili- 

 gently in collecting and examining the plants which 

 abound in the mountainous districts of that province. 

 This study was by no means a temporary pursuit, taken 

 up for the moment. It occupied his best talents, and 

 such was his ardour, that he corresponded on botani- 

 cal subjects with the late M. Gouan, professor of bo- 

 tany at Montpellier.t The correspondence of this bo- 

 tanist has fortunately fallen into the hands of our emi- 

 nent countryman Dr. Hooker ; and through his kind- 

 ness we have now before us two of Rousseau's let- 

 ters to M. Gouan,:}: exhibiting along with the ut- 

 most amiableness of character, a thorough know- 

 ledge of the subject on which he writes, and, as 

 Dr. Hooker remarks in a note prefixed to these let- 

 ters, " and has shown himself thoroughly acquainted 

 with the principles of the science, and exhibited a de- 

 gree of modesty and diffidence in his own knowledge 

 which is seldom found in persons of much inferior ac- 

 quirements. They are dated," continues Dr. Hooker, 

 " from Dauphiny in Savoy, || in the year 1769. eight 

 years before his death, during that period when he 

 concealed his real name under that of Renon, when re 

 turning from England disgusted with the world, he 

 sought for amusement and health in investigating and 

 studying the vegetable creation in the beautiful alpine 

 district just alluded to; and we trust that they will be 

 found to strengthen the remark made by Sir J. E. Smith, 

 under his article ROUSSEA in Rees* Cyclopaedia, that 

 ' botany had spread a charm over the latter years of 

 this distinguished man, and soothed their real and 

 imaginary evils;' and that whenever he touches on 

 this favourite subject in his writings, he communi- 

 cates the same charm to his readers." The effect 

 which was produced by the Letters on Botany of 

 J. J. Rousseau, in giving popularity to the Linnaean 

 system in France is well known ; and even in this 

 country we could scarcely mention any truly elemen- 

 tary work which has been more generally read and 

 admired, or which appears more calculated to encou- 

 rage a taste for the science especially among young 

 students. 



See our Life of HUME, Vol. XI. p. 343, for a full account of these transactions. 



f Rousseau corresponded with Linnaeus, who had dedicated a genus to his name ; but Linneus the younger, inadvertently published it as 

 JtusteHiii. 



\ These letters are published in Dr. Brewster's Journal o/AViV/ur, Vol. IV, p. 246. No. VI. for July October, 1*1^. 

 y The first is dated from Bourgoin in Dauphine, 28th May, 1709 ; and the second from Montquin, 6th October, 1769. 

 A genus named by Sir James after Rousseau. 



