for him. It
literally killed him. It was as if a favorite actress should be quite
smothered to death on the stage, under flowers thrown in excessive
profusion at her feet.

Let Carlyle's sentence be our epigraph on Voltaire:--

"No great Man.... Found always at the top, less by power in
swimming than by lightness in floating."

XVI.

ROUSSEAU.

1712-1778.

There are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least, there was a
first, until the second effaced him, and became the only.

We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. J. B. Rousseau
is still named as a lyric poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when
Rousseau, without initials, is spoken of, it is always Jean Jacques
Rousseau that is meant.

Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it certainly is
one of the most splendid, among French literary names. The squalor
belongs chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the writer's.
There is hardly another example in the world's literature of a union so
striking of these opposites.

Rousseau's life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, and the
most imperishable, of his books, the "Confessions." This book is one to
which the adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal sense of
the word. The spell, however, is repellent as well as attractive. But
the attraction of the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more,
in triumph over the much there is in the matter to disgust and revolt.
It is quite the most offensive, and it is well-nigh the most
fascinating, book that we know.

The "Confessions" begin as follows:--

I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose
execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my
fellows a man in all the truth of nature, and that man--myself.

Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with men. I
am made unlike any one I have ever seen,--I dare believe unlike any
living being. If no better than, I am at least different from,
others. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mould
wherein I was cast, can be determined only after having read me.

Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this
book in my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I
will boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such
was I. With equal frankness have I disclosed the good and the evil.