166 ROUSSEAU. 



most rigid abstinence in the moral artist. Particulars, 

 details, circumstances, must be given, and given when 

 the moral excitement is at its pitch ; but the selection 

 is of infinite moment, and there must be no superfluity, 

 no ornament, nothing flowery, nothing, no, absolutely 

 nothing, introduced of an opposite, an inconsistent 

 character. The superfluity surfeits, and sickens, and 

 weakens all effect ; the foreign substance inserted causes, 

 as it were, a fermentation to cast the intruder forth. 



The less delicate and more vehement portions of the 

 work are certainly very inferior, faulty as even the best 

 parts are. Nothing can be less refined, nothing, 

 indeed, more vulgar, than a lover writing to his 

 mistress at all about his transports on obtaining 

 possession of her. But St. Preux begins, " from the 

 first kiss of love," to hold up her weakness in her own 

 face, and that happens no later in the piece than the 

 fourteenth letter. He holds her conduct up, too, in 

 coarse terms, by way of making the offence less out- 

 rageous : " Je suis ivre mes sens sont troubles par ce 

 baiser mortel." " Un doux fremissement." " Ta 

 bouche de roses la bouche de Julie se poser sur la 

 mienne, et mon corps serre dans tes bras."* This may 

 not possibly be the only instance of an innocent girl 

 suffering such a liberty for the first time in her life 

 without resistance, nay, meeting her lover more than 

 half-way ; but assuredly it is the only instance of his 

 telling her in plain terms what a forward, abandoned 

 wanton she proved. After this, we are well pre- 

 pared for a letter, in which she says that all difficulties 



* Part I., let. xix. : CEuv. ii. 5. 



