Whigs, or by the Radical wing of their party, which included most of the
intellectual men of the time. It was recognized that Burke spoke with
excessive violence, and that his emotion was largely provoked by
political apprehensions which were not shared by the more enlightened of
his countrymen. It was easily pointed out that the great orator's
objection to Rousseau was founded on a predilection for aristocracy, a
dread of innovation, an abhorrence for abstract politics, rather than on
a serious and philosophical consideration of Rousseau's contributions to
literature. There were many indignant replies to his denunciation, the
most effective being those contained in Sir James Mackintosh's famous
_Vindiciae Gallicae_. Mackintosh, with less eloquence but far more
knowledge, denied the responsibility of Rousseau for the excesses of the
Revolution, and suggested that Burke had not made himself acquainted
with the _Contrat Social_. Rousseau was vindicated as one of the
immortal band of sages "who unshackled and emancipated the human mind,"
and he was assured a place in eternal glory, by the side of Locke and
Franklin.
All that was generous, all that was enthusiastic in English opinion, was
still marshalled on the side of Rousseau, but Burke's measured attack,
so universally considered, was the gradual cause of an ever-increasing
defection. For the time being, however, this was confined to the more
timid and the less intelligent part of the community. Burke had assailed
in Rousseau the politician and the moralist, but although it was evident
that he was out of sympathy with the imaginative writer, his diatribe
did little at first to weaken the spell of the sentimental and literary
writings. There was no sign, in 1800, that the _Nouvelle Heloise_ had
lost its magic for English readers, though it may be doubted whether
these were so numerous as they had been twenty years earlier. The famous
romance had been the direct precursor of the school of romantic-sentimental
novels in England, but it would take us too far back to consider in any
detail its influence on Holcroft, whose _Hugh Trevor_ dates from 1797;
on Bage, in such romances as _Hermsprong_ (1796); on Mrs. Inchbold, in
_Nature and Art_ (1796); and on Charlotte Smith. But it must be
remembered that these popular novelists lived well on into the
nineteenth century, and that their romances were still widely read, and
by advanced thinkers warmly accepted, long after our period begins.
Moreover, in William Godwin (1756-1836), once known as "the immortal
Godwin," we have the most pronounced type in English literature of the
novelist started and supported by a devotion to the principles of
Rousseau. _Caleb Williams_ (1794) is still a minor English classic, and
_Fleetwood_ (1804) is an example of a Rousseau novel actually written
within the confines of our century. But with these names the list of the
novelists directly inspired by the _Nouvelle Heloise_, and in a much
lesser degree by _Emile_, practically ceases, and the advent of Walter
Scott gave them their _coup de grace_.
The excessive admiration of Englishmen for the imaginative writings of
Rousseau was already on the wane, or rather it was beginning to be
old-fashioned. That very remarkable work, _The Diary of a Lover of
Literature_, by Thomas Green (1769-1825), gives us a valuable insight
into the critical opinions of the opening years of the nineteenth
century. It was published in 1810, but it reflects the feeling of a
slightly earlier time. It represents the views of an independent and
transitional thinker, remote from all the literary cliques, who read
extensively in his hermitage at Ipswich, and it mirrors the mind of the
average educated Englishman between 1795 and 1805. We discover that
there were persons of cultivation in England at that time who did not
hesitate deliberately to pronounce that Rousseau was, "without
exception, the greatest genius and the finest writer that ever lived."
This opinion the judicious Green is by no means able to endorse; but he
makes a very curious confession which throws a strong light on the best
English opinion in 1800. The Lover of Literature says that Rousseau is a
character "who has by turns transported me with the most violent and
opposite emotions of delight and disgust, admiration and contempt,
indignation and pity." He points out, with great acumen, the peculiar
conditions of Rousseau's "distempered sensibility," and says that his
wrath against evil-doing burns "in consuming fire." Green's analysis of
Rousseau's genius is very ingenious and glowing, but he sees spots in
the sun, and thus, at the immediate opening of the new century, we meet
with high critical commendation, but also with the faint beginnings of
reproof.
It is necessary to note that the earliest objections made to Rousseau's
influence by Englishmen were political. They were not directed against
the _Nouvelle Heloise_, nor _Emile_, nor the _Confessions_, but against
the _Contrat Social_. The name of Rousseau was used, in connexion with
this work, to justify the horrors of the French Revolution, the
_jacqueries_, the September massacres. Serious English people, whom
Burke had originally awakened to suspicion, became more and more
persuaded that it was the doctrine of Rousseau which had conducted Louis
XVI to the scaffold. The book itself was never much read in England, but
it formed part of a tradition. It was understood to have consecrated the
violent acts of the Revolution, and English people began to shrink from
a name so tainted with blood. This view found a striking exponent in the
opening number of the _Edinburgh Review_, where Jeffrey, reviewing
Monnier's _Influence attribuee aux Philosophes_, warned his readers with
earnest unction against "the presumptuous and audacious maxims" of
Rousseau, which had a natural tendency to do harm. The arguments of the
_Contrat Social_ were exposed by the Whig critic as unsettling the
foundations of political duty, and as teaching the citizens of every
established Government that they were enslaved, and had the power of
being free. Whatever influence Rousseau still had, and in 1802 it was
already waning, the _Edinburgh Review_ solemnly declared to be
"unquestionably pernicious."
By English politicians of the Tory type, Rousseau was now regarded with
growing suspicion. They looked back to first causes, and found him at
the end of the vista. They blamed him all the more because they still
lay under the spell of his style and his sentiment. He was beginning to
be regarded with more disapproval than other and more definitely
revolutionary philosophers, than Condorcet, for instance, as being more
presumptuous and less logical, more "improvident," to use the expression
of an early English critic. There was no considerable desire in England
for the subversion of monarchy, and it was only in countries where there
was a wish to believe that kings were toppling from their thrones that
the political writings of the arch-firebrand could expect to find a
welcome. All such speculation had been pleasant enough before the great
revolution set in in France, but England, thrilled for a moment by
Quixotic hopes, had turned into another path, where Rousseau had not led
her, nor could ever be her companion. He appeared as a demagogue and a
disturber of the public peace, as an apostle of change and crisis and
unrest. In England everyone, or almost everyone, craved a respite from
such ideas, and his prestige began to sink. Let us note, then, that
beyond question the earliest objection to Rousseau came from the
political side.
The personal character of the Genevese philosopher was still little
known. It was revealed, in certain unfavourable aspects, by several
collections of memoirs, which now began to be published. Those of
Marmontel, in 1805, were widely read in England, and were recommended to
a large circle of readers by Jeffrey in a famous essay. The anecdotes,
so amusing and often so piquant, appeared to the Scotch critic and to
his British audience more discreditable than Marmontel, who belonged to
an earlier and looser generation, had intended them to seem. From 1805
began to arise in England the conception of a Rousseau full of cruel
vanity, implacable, calumnious, and wholly wanting in that frankness and
bluff candour upon which John Bull delights to pride himself. But the
splendour of his writings was still uncontested. In 1809, the _Edinburgh
Review_ said of the _Contrat Social_ that "it contains some deep
observations, and many brilliant and elevated thoughts, along with a
good deal, we admit, of impracticable and very questionable theory." The
_Confessions_ was not much read, but the precise Jeffrey did not
hesitate to recommend it, in 1806, as in some respects the most
interesting of books, and in 1807 Capel Lofft declared, "If I had five
millions of years to live upon the earth, I would read Rousseau daily
with increasing delight."
It would take us too far to consider how the sentimental Pantisocracy of
the youthful Lake Poets coincided with the direct influence of Rousseau.
That movement, moreover, belongs to the eighteenth, not the nineteenth
century, since it was all over by 1794. But so far as it was an outcome
of the teaching of Rousseau, the reaction which followed it was not
favourable to the prestige of works which now came to seem almost
hateful to the Lake Poets. Wordsworth branched away irrevocably, and his
account of the Saturnian Reign in _The Excursion_ (finished in 1805)
would have given little satisfaction to Rousseau. Southey was early, and
permanently, disgusted with himself for having supposed that the
millennium would be ushered in from Geneva. But perhaps the best example
of the revulsion of opinion which followed the juvenile raptures of the
Lake Poets is to be found in the pages of _The Friend_ (1809-10), where
Coleridge derides
Rousseau, the dreamer of love-sick tales, and the spinner of
speculative cobwebs; shy of light as the mole, but quick-eared,
too, for every whisper of the public opinion; the teacher of stoic
pride in his principles, yet the victim of morbid vanity in his
feelings and conduct.
Yet this was premature, as an expression of general critical
disapprobation. In November, 1809, the high Tory organ, the _Quarterly
Review_,[6] spoke, without a shade of disapproval, of "the tremendous
fidelity" of the picture of life in the _Confessions_. In 1812, the same
severe periodical, then forming the most dreaded tribunal of British
intellectual taste, devoted several pages to an examination of the moral
character of Rousseau, and the result was by no means unfavourable. The
writer was John Herman Merivale (1779-1844), who declared that
"Rousseau's system of morality is as little practicable as would be a
system of politics invented by one who had always lived in a state of
savage independence," and suggested, but without bitterness, that
portions of the _Nouvelle Heloise_ betrayed "a certain lack of just
moral taste and feeling." The _Confessions_ are described in faltering
terms which suggest that Merivale had not read them with any attention.
On the whole, we find, up to this point, no difference between the views
of Englishmen and of similarly placed Frenchmen. Even Shelley, in his
_Proposals for an Association_ (1812), blames the tendency of some of
Rousseau's political writings in exactly the conventional Continental
tone.
But a brief and limited, though splendid revival was now approaching,
the last which the reputation of Rousseau was to enjoy in England. We
must note the sphere within which this esoteric celebration of his
genius was confined; it was not an explosion of national enthusiasm, but
the defiant glorification of a power which had already begun to decline;
it was not a general expression of approval, but the effort of a group
of revolutionaries. It was roused, no doubt, by the attitude of the
official critics who were affecting to think that the influence of
Rousseau was exploded. The _Quarterly_ had said in 1813, "As it is
probable that we may not soon be again in the company of this
extraordinary man, we would willingly take leave of him in good humour,"
and though it was quite unable to keep up this attitude of dignified
dismissal, and returned to the attack in April, 1814, nevertheless that
was the tone adopted towards Rousseau, as of a man played out, and
rapidly being forgotten.
The publication of the voluminous _Correspondence_ of Grimm, which was
much read in England, led Englishmen to review the subject of the
character and writings of Rousseau, and in the remarks which
contemporaries made in 1813 and 1814 we may trace a rapid cooling of
their enthusiasm. The scorn of all French habits of thought and conduct,
which immediately succeeded the anxious and wearisome period of the
Napoleonic wars, makes itself particularly felt in the English attitude
towards Rousseau, who was regarded as the source from which all the
revolutionary sorrows of Europe had directly proceeded. The _Quarterly
Review_ for April, 1814, pronounced a judgment upon Rousseau, of which a
portion must be quoted here, since it may be considered as the original
indictment, the document which served to start the unfavourable opinion
which now became more and more that which sober and conservative
Englishmen were to adopt during the next fifty years. The opening lines
give a new warning, which was to gain more and more in emphasis, while
the end repeats praise which was conventional in 1814, but was already
fading, and was soon to disappear.
It says:--
A writer who professes to instruct mankind is bound to deliver
precepts of morality. But it is by inflaming the passions, and by
blotting out the line which separates virtue from vice, that
Rousseau undertakes to teach young ladies to be chaste, and young
men to respect the rights of hospitality. His heroine, indeed, in
conformity to his own example, is always prating about virtue, even
at the time when she deviates most essentially from its precepts;
but to dogmatize is not to be innocent. Yet, with all its defects,
there are numerous passages in this celebrated work which astonish
by their eloquence. Language, perhaps, never painted the conflicts
of love in colours more animated and captivating than in the letter
written by St. Preux when wandering among the rocks of Meillerie.
Unfortunately, the name of this critic is unknown.
But the charm was not to be broken without a violent effort being made
to restore to Rousseau his earlier supremacy. It came from the group of
brilliant Radical writers, who had not accepted the Toryism of the
ruling classes, to whom the discredited principles of the Revolution
were more dear than they had ever been, and who pinned their attractive
and enthusiastic aesthetic reforms to the voluptuous ecstasy of the
_Nouvelle Heloise_ and the chimerical sentiment of _Emile_. Already, in
_The Round_ _Table_ (1814), Hazlitt had recommended the _Confessions_ as
the "most valuable" of all Rousseau's writings; he was presently in his
_Liber Amoris_ (1823) to produce the work which of all important books
of the English nineteenth century was to reproduce most closely the
manner of the Genevese master. Two years later, having made a very
careful examination of the works, Hazlitt published his essay _On the
Character of Rousseau_, which was not surpassed, or approached, as a
study of the great writer until the appearance of Lord Morley's
monograph, nearly sixty years afterwards.
Hazlitt exposes the baneful effect of Burke's attacks, while
acknowledging that from his own, the Tory point of view, Burke was
justified in taking the line that he did. It is perfectly true that "the
genius of Rousseau levelled the towers of the Bastille with the dust,"
but Hazlitt, an intellectual revolutionary, exults in the admission.
Hazlitt allows, nevertheless, that the exaggerated hopes founded upon
such books as the _Contrat Social_ have been followed by inevitable
disappointment. It was, however, not the fault of Rousseau, but of his
sanguine and absurd disciples, that Europe, or particularly England, has
"lost confidence in social man." Ecstatic admirers of his inspired
visions had expected the advent of Rousseau to bring in a millennium,
and in the disappointment founded on the excesses of the French
Revolution they had turned, with ingratitude, upon the pure and Utopian
dreamer who had drawn things as they should be, not as it was humanly
possible that they ever could be. The writings of Rousseau, he declares,
are looked up to with admiration by friends and foes alike as possessing
"the true revolutionary leaven," but it needs political foresight and a
rare capacity of imagination to perceive that this operates, through
temporary upheaval and distraction, to produce an ultimate harmony and a
beneficent beauty. In the course of his writings, Hazlitt frequently
quotes Rousseau, and always with admiration. He is the most illuminating
and the most thoughtful of all his early English critics.
In the summer of 1816 the two young poets of the day who displayed the
most extraordinary genius in England, or perhaps in Europe, made
acquaintance with one another for the first time, and instantly
determined to travel together. They met in Switzerland, intoxicated with
the unfamiliar beauty around them, and Byron took the Villa Diodati,
close to Geneva, where he and Shelley steeped themselves in the
_Nouvelle Heloise_ under the shadow of Mont Blanc. In June they started
together round the lake on a journey, which turned into a pilgrimage. In
Shelley's _Letters_ may be read the enthusiastic account of the poets'
visit to Meillerie. Shelley refrained from gathering acacia and roses
from Gibbon's garden at Lausanne, "fearing to outrage the greater and
more sacred name of Rousseau, the contemplation of whose imperishable
creations had left no vacancy in his heart for mortal things." As they
sauntered along the shores of the enchanted Leman, the friends "read
Julie all day." They lived, with the characters of the great romance, in
an endless melancholy transport. Byron's enthusiasm took the form of the
famous stanzas in "Childe Harold III," beginning:
Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau.
It is a remarkable instance of the complete decline of the prestige of
Rousseau in England that Byron's editor of 1899 is astonished that
Byron and Shelley "should not only worship at the shrine of Rousseau,
but take delight in reverently tracing the footsteps of St. Preux and
Julie." He is so completely disconcerted that he can only exclaim, "But
to each age its own humour!" The age of 1899 was certainly not in the
humour for Rousseau, but it was almost to go beyond the boundaries of
reason to denounce, as this editor did, in the face of Byron's raptures,
"the unspeakable philanderings" of Rousseau. Such was not the poet's
judgment when, in a trance of pleasure, he visited all the scenes of the
_Nouvelle Heloise_. To Byron the long-drawn loves of St. Preux and of
Julie seemed "most passionate, yet not impure," and he vivaciously
proclaimed their creator as the one prophet of Ideal Beauty. The five or
six stanzas mentioned above are so well-known as to be positively
hackneyed. We no longer set on them any very high poetical value; we see
that none of them are good as verses, and that some of them are bad. But
the whole passage retains its full interest for us. It is a perfectly
logical statement of the author's unbounded admiration for Rousseau, and
in particular for the "burning page, distempered though it seems," upon
which are celebrated the devouring loves of Julie and St. Preux.
Further on, in the same poem, Byron rose to far purer heights of style.
The invocation to Clarens, in the texture of which the result of his
recent intercourse with Shelley may be plainly perceived, is probably
the most impassioned tribute ever paid by one great writer to the
literature of another.
All things are here of _him_; from the black pines,
Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar
Of torrents, where he listeneth, to the vines
Which slope his green path downward to the shore,
Where the bow'd waters meet him, and adore,
Kissing his feet with murmurs, and the wood,
The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar,
But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood,
Offering to him, and his, a populous solitude.
A populous solitude of bees and birds,
And fairy-form'd and many-colour'd things,
Who worship him with thoughts more sweet than words,
And innocently open their glad wings,
Fearless and full of life.
This was a challenge, addressed by the most powerful poet of the day,
and couched in idolatrous language, which it was not possible that those
in England who were opposed to the influence of Rousseau could fail to
take up. Nor did Byron pause here. Writing from Diodati, July, 1816, his
famous _Sonnet to Lake Leman_, Rousseau's was the first illustrious name
he mentioned in the brief roll of "Heirs of Immortality." Enthusiasm for
the _Nouvelle Heloise_ led directly to the composition of _The Prisoner
of Chillon_. Byron discussed and repudiated, with Stendhal in 1817, his
mother's old dream that he closely resembled Rousseau. All that
prevented his embracing this notion, and insisting on being considered
an avatar of the philosopher, was his perception of something turbid in
the character of Rousseau, hostile to the fiery ideal of 1816. The
English poet preferred to be thought to resemble "an alabaster vase
lighted up within." But all his life the memory of Jean Jacques
continued to haunt him; he recollected the _ranz des vaches_ when he was
writing _The Two Foscari_ (1821) and _la pervenche_ in the fourteenth
canto of _Don Juan_ (December, 1823). When Byron died at Missolonghi the
latest and the most passionate of Rousseau's English admirers passed
away with him.
The rapture of the sentimental poets was not allowed to pass unrebuffed.
In October, 1816, no less an authority on romance, no less sane and
typical, and yet moderate and sound exponent of English feeling than Sir
Walter Scott took up his parable against the sentimentality of the
disciples of Rousseau. In reviewing "Childe Harold III" in the
_Quarterly_, Walter Scott takes Byron severely to task for his
exaggerated praise of Rousseau. He says of himself that he is "almost
ashamed to avow the truth--he had never been able to feel the interest
or discover the merit of the _Nouvelle Heloise_.... The dulness of the
story is the last apology for its exquisite immorality." It is
impossible to overestimate the importance of this utterance of Walter
Scott, who was at that very moment bringing forth the amazing series of
his own novels, which were to destroy the taste of his countrymen for
all such works of the imagination as Rousseau had produced. Scott is no
less condemnatory of the political influence of the philosopher. Deeply
blaming the French Revolution, he styles Rousseau "a primary apostle" of
it. "On the silliness of Rousseau," on the subject of political
equality, "it is at this time of day, thank God! useless to expatiate."
This was a counter-blast, indeed, to the melodious trumpetings of Byron
and Shelley.
To a reputation already much reduced, the publication, in 1818, of the
_Memoires et Conversations_ of Madame d'Epinay was a serious blow. These
were very much discussed in England, and Jeffrey called the special
attention of his readers to the lady's revelations of Rousseau's
"eccentricity, insanity, and vice." This produced a painful effect. It
was urged by English critics that Jean Jacques, who had been held up as
a portent of almost divine moral beauty, seemed, on the contrary, to
have claimed, "as the reward of genius and fine writing, an exemption
from all moral duties." Jeffrey called indignant attention to the "most
rooted and disgusting selfishness" of Rousseau, and quoted with approval
the _boutade_ of Diderot, "Cet homme est un forcene." The publication of
Madame de Stael's _OEuvres Inedites_, brought out by Madame Necker
Saussure in 1820, further lowered the English estimate of the "selfish
and ungrateful" Rousseau. He was still praised for his "warmth of
imagination," but told that he was vastly inferior to Madame de Stael in
style. The _Edinburgh Review_ now proclaimed, as a painful discovery,
that Rousseau's affection for mankind was entirely theoretical, and "had
no living objects in this world," and blushed at the "very scandalous
and improper" facts about his private life which were now more and more
frequently being revealed.