3T. J. Rousseau, Gilbert, Zimmerman, are remarkable, among many others, 

 and deserve, by their just celebrity, to fix our consideration. The first, 

 born in the happy climate of Italy, proscribed and unhappy from his child- 

 hood, author, at twenty-two years old, of the finest epic poem the moderns 

 can boast of, seized in the midst of the enjoyments of premature glory, 

 with the most violent and most inauspicious love for the sister of the Duke 

 of Ferrara, at whose court he lived : an extravagant passion, which was 

 the pretext of the most cruel persecutions, and which followed him to 

 his death; this took place towards the thirty-second year of his age, 

 on the eve of a triumphal pomp which was prepared for him in the 

 capitol. 



The author of the Provincial Letters, and of the Thoughts, enjoying, 

 like Tasso, a premature eelebrity, almost on quitting childhood, was 

 led to melancholy, not like him by the crosses of unhappy love, but, by a 

 violent and overpowering terror, which left, in his imagination, the sight 

 of a gulph for ever open at his side ; an illusion which left him only at 

 his death, eight years after the accident*. 



No one perhaps, has ever shown the melancholic temperament, in a 

 higher degree of energy, than the philosopher of Geneva. To be con- 

 vinced of it, it is enough to read, with attention, certain passages of his 

 immortal works, and especially the two last parts of his confessions, and 

 the Reveries in the solitary walker : tormented with continual distrusts, 

 and fears, his fruitful imagination represents to him all men as enemies. 

 If you believe him, the whole human race is in league to do him mischief, 

 u kings and nations have consfiired together against the son of a jwor watch- 

 maker ;" children and invalids are brought in to execute these dreadful 

 plots. But let us leave him to speak for himself, the most eloquent 

 and most unfortunate man of the eighteenth century : u Here then I am, 

 alone upon the earth, without brother, neighbour, friend, without society 

 but myself ; the most sociable and the most loving of men has been pro- 

 scribed by them with unanimous consent. " Further on he adds, "Could 

 J believe that I should be held, without the smallest doubt, for a mon- 

 ster, a prisoner, an assassin, that I should become the horror of the hu- 

 man' race, and the game of the rabble ; that all the salutation of those that 

 passed by me, would be to spit upon me 5 that a whole generation would 

 amuse itself, with unanimous consent, in burying me alive ?" It is idle 

 to multiply quotations, in speaking of the works of a philosopher, who, 

 in spite of his errors, will ever be the delight of all those who love to 

 read and to thinkf. 



The history of J. J. Rousseau, like that of all the melancholies who 

 have distinguished themselves in literature, shows us genius struggling 

 with misfortune ; a strong soul lodged in a feeble body, at first gentle, 

 affectionate, open and tender, soured by the sense of an unhappy condi- 

 tion, and of the injustice of men. Till the time when, impelled by the 

 desire of fame, Rousseau sprang forward in the career of letters, we see 

 him endowed with a sanguine temperament, acting with all the qualities 

 belonging to it, gentle, loving, generous, feeling, though inconstant : his 

 fertile imagination shows him nothing but gay images, and, in this illu- 



* Blaise Pascal died at 89. See his life by Condorcet. 



f Consult the Studies of Nature, by Betnardin de Saint Pierre ; and the Letters on 

 J. J. Rousseau, by Madame de Stael. 



