Jean Jacques Rousseau, born at Geneva on June 28, 1712, tells
the story of his own life in the "Confessions" (see LIVES AND
LETTERS, Vol. X). All his dreams of felicity having been
shattered, he took up his abode in Paris, where he made a poor
living by copying music. Hither, again, he returned after a
short stay in Venice, where he acted as secretary in the
Embassy. He now secured work on the great Encyclopaedia, and
became known, in 1749, by an essay on the arts and sciences,
in which he attacked all culture as an evidence and cause of
social degeneration. A successful opera followed in 1753; and
to the same year belongs his "Essay on Inequality among Men"
("Discours sur l'inégalité parmi les Hommes"), in which he
came forward as the apostle of the state of nature, and of
anarchy. His revolutionary ideas were viewed with great
displeasure by the authorities, and he fled in 1764 to
Switzerland; and in 1766, under the auspices of David Hume, to
England. Rousseau wrote "The New Heloise" ("La Nouvelle
Héloise") in 1756-7, while residing at the Hermitage at
Montmorency--an abode where, in spite of certain quarrels and
emotional episodes, he passed some of the most placid days of
his life. This book, the title of which was founded on the
historic love of Abelard and Heloise (see Vol. IX), was
published in 1760. Rousseau's primary intention was to reveal
the effect of passion upon persons of simple but lofty nature,
unspoiled by the artificialities of society. The work may be
described as a novel because it cannot very well be described
as anything else. It is overwhelmingly long and diffuse; the
slender stream of narrative threads its way through a
wilderness of discourses on the passions, the arts, society,
rural life, religion, suicide, natural scenery, and nearly
everything else that Rousseau was interested in--and his
interests were legion. "The New Heloise" is thoroughly
characteristic of the wandering, enthusiastic,
emotional-genius of its author. Several brilliant passages in
it are ranked among the classics of French literature; and of
the work as a whole, it may be said, judicially and without
praise or censure, that there is nothing quite like it in any
literature. Rousseau died near Paris, July 2, 1778.
_I.--"The Course of True Love"_