ped in the first place to accomplish their
result. But such is the case. His peculiar literary characteristics are
perhaps better exhibited in the _Confessions_ and in the miscellaneous
works, than in either of the novels. The _Contrat Social_ is a very
remarkable piece of pseudo-argument. It is felt from the first that the
whole assumption on which it reposes is historically false and
philosophically absurd. Yet there is an appearance of speciousness in
the arguments, an adroit mixture of logic and rhetoric, of order and
method, which is exceedingly seductive. The _Confession du Vicaire
Savoyard_, with many passages allied to it in the smaller works, has,
despite the staleness of the language (which was hackneyed by a thousand
empty talkers during the Revolution), not a little dignity and
persuasive force. But it is in the _Confessions_ that the literary power
of the author appears at its fullest. Never, perhaps, was a more
miserable story of human weakness revealed, and the peculiar thing is
that Rousseau does not limit his exhibitions of himself to exhibitions
of engaging frailty. The acts which he admits are in many cases
indescribably base, mean, and disgusting. The course of conduct which he
portrays is at its best that of a man entirely destitute of governing
will, petulant, often positively ungrateful, always playing into the
hands of the enemies whom his hallucinations supposed to exist, and
frustrating the efforts of the friends whom he allows himself, if only
for a time, to have possessed. Yet the narrative and dramatic skill with
which all this is presented is so great, that there is hardly room for a
sense of repulsion which is merged in interest, not necessarily
sympathetic interest, but still interest. Of the feeling for natural
beauty, which is everywhere present in these remarkable works, it is
enough to say that in French prose literature, it may almost be said in
the prose literature of Europe, it was entirely original. Part of
Rousseau's devotion to nature arose no doubt from his moody and retiring
temperament, which led him to rejoice in anything rather than the
society of his fellow men. But this would not of itself have given him
the literary skill with which he expresses these feelings. It is not so
much in set descriptions of particular scenes as in slight occasional
thoughts, embodying the emotions experienced at the sight of a flower, a
lake-surface, a mountain side, a forest glade, that this ma