182 ROUSSEAU. 



all the provincialisms of that place, but also to lose all 

 its pedantry and precision, he writes both with the 

 accuracy and elegance of a Frenchman, and with the 

 freedom of wit and of genius, even of humour and 

 drollery yes, even of humour and drollery ; for the 

 picture of the vulgar young man who supplanted him 

 with Madame de Warens shows no mean power of 

 caricature ; and the sketches of his own ludicrous situ- 

 ations, as at the concert he gave in the Professors 

 house at Lausanne, show the impartiality with which 

 he could exert this power at his own proper cost and 

 charge. The subject is often tiresome ; it is almost 

 always his own sufferings, and genius, and feelings ; al- 

 ways, of course, but of that no complaint can be justly 

 made, of -his own adventures ; yet we are carried irre- 

 sistibly along, first of all by the manifest truth and 

 sincerity of the narrative which the fulness of the hu- 

 miliating confessions at every step attests, and then, 

 and chiefly, by the magical diction, a diction so idio- 

 matical and yet so classical so full of nature and yet 

 so refined by art so exquisitely graphic without any 

 effort, and so accommodated to its subject without any 

 baseness, that there hardly exists another example of 

 the miracles which composition can perform. The 

 subject is not only wearisome from its sameness, but, 

 from the absurdities of the author's conduct, and 

 opinions, and feelings, it is revolting ; yet on we 

 go, enchained and incapable of leaving it, how often 

 soever we may feel irritated and all but enraged. 

 The subject is not only wearisome generally, revolting 

 frequently, but it is oftentimes low, vulgar, grovelling, 

 fitted to turn us away from the contemplation with 



