Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/37

Rh ROUSSEAU 25 which has been questioned) five children were born to them, who were all consigned to the foundling hospital. This dis- regard of responsibility was partly punished by the use his critics made of it when he became celebrated as a writer on education and a preacher of the domestic affections. Diderot, with whom he became more and more familiar, admitted him as a contributor to the Encyclopedic. He formed new musical projects, and he was introduced by degrees to many people of rank and influence, among whom his warmest patron for a time was Madame d'Epinay. It was not, however, till 1749 that Rousseau made his mark. The academy of Dijon offered a prize for an essay on the effect of the progress of civilization on morals. Rousseau took up the subject, developed his famous paradox of the superiority of the savage state, won the prize, and, publishing his essay next year, became famous. The anecdotage as to the origin of this famous essay is voluminous. It is agreed that the idea was suggested when Rousseau went to pay a visit to Diderot, who was in prison at Vincennes for his Lettre sur les Aveugles. Rousseau says he thought of the paradox on his way down ; Morellet and others say that he thought of treating the subject in the ordinary fashion and was laughed at by Diderot, who showed him the advantages of the less obvious treatment. Diderot himself, who in such matters is almost absolutely trustworthy, does not claim the suggestion, but uses words which imply that it was at least partly his. It is very like him. The essay, however, took the artificial and crotchety society of the day by storm. Francueil gave Rousseau a valuable post as cashier in the receiver general's office. But he resigned it either from conscientiousness, or crotchet, or nervousness at responsibility, or indolence, or more probably from a mixture of all four. He went back to his music copying, but the salons of the day were determined to have his society, and for a time they had it. In 1752 he brought out at Fontainebleau an operettaj theDevindu Village, which was very successful. He received a hundred louis for it, and he was ordered to come to court next day. This meant the certainty of a pension. But Rousseau's shyness or his perversity (as before, probably both) made him disobey the command. His comedy Narcisse, written long before, was also acted, but unsuccessfully. In the same year, however, a letter Sur la Musique Francaise again had a great vogue. 1 Finally, for this was an important 1 Rousseau's influence on French music was greater than might have been expected from his very imperfect education ; in truth, he was a musician by natural instinct only, but his feeling for art was very strong, and, though capricious, based upon true perceptions of the good and beautiful. The system of notation (by figures) concerning which he read a paper before the Academie des Sciences, August 22, 1742, was ingenious, but practically worse than useless, and failed to attract attention, though the paper was published in 1743 under the title of Dissertation sur la musique moderne. In the famous ' ' guerre des buffons," he took the part of the " buffonists," so named in conse- quence of their attachment to the Italian " opera buffa, " as opposed to the true French opera ; and, in his Lettre sur la musique Francaise, published in 1753, he indulged in a violent tirade against French music, which he declared to be so contemptible as to lead to the con- clusion "that the French neither have, nor ever will have, any music of their own, or at least that, if they ever do have any, it will be so much the worse for them." This silly libel so enraged the performers at the Opera that they hanged and burned its author in effigy. Rousseau revenged himself by printing his clever satire entitled Lettre d'un symphoniste de V Academie Royale de Musique a ses cama- rades de Vorchestre. His Lettre a M. Burney is of a very different type, and does full justice to the genius of Gluck. His articles on music in the Encyclopedic deal very superficially with the subject ; and his Dictionnaire de Musique (Geneva, 1767), though admirably written, is not trustworthy, either as a record of facts or as a col- lection of critical essays. In all these works the imperfection of his musical education is painfully apparent, and his compositions betray an equal lack of knowledge, though his refined taste is as clearly displayed there as is his literary power in the Letters and Dic- tionary. His first opera, Les Muses Galantes, privately prepared at year with him, the Dijon academy, which had founded his fame, announced the subject of " The Origin of In- equality," on which he wrote a discourse which was un- successful, but at least equal to the former in merit. During a visit to Geneva in 1754 Rousseau saw his old friend and love Madame de Warens (now reduced in cir- cumstances and having lost all her charms), while after abjuring his abjuration of Protestantism he was enabled to take up his freedom as citizen of Geneva, to which his birth entitled him and of which he was proud. Some time afterwards, returning to Paris, he accepted a cottage near Montmorency (the celebrated Hermitage) which Madame d'Epinay had fitted up for him, and established him- self there in April 1756. He spent little more than a year there, but it was a very important year. Here he wrote La Nouvelle Helo'ise ; here he indulged in the passion which that novel partly represents, his love for Madame d'Houdetot, sister-in-law of Madame d'Epinay, a lady still young and extremely amiable but very plain, who had a husband and a lover (St Lambert), and whom Rousseau's burning devotion seems to have partly pleased and partly annoyed. Here too arose the incomprehensible triangular quarrel between Diderot, Rousseau, and Grimm which ended Rousseau's sojourn at the Hermitage. It is impossible to discuss this at length here. The supposition least favourable to Rousseau is that it was due to one of his numerous fits of half-insane petulance and indignation at the obligations which he was nevertheless always ready to incur. That most favourable to him is that he was expected to lend himself in a more or less complaisant manner to assist and cover Madame d'Epinay's adulterous affection for Grimm. It need only be said that Madame d'Epinay's morals and Rousseau's temper are equally indefensible by anyone who knows anything about either, but that the evidence as to the exact influence of both on this particular transaction is hopelessly inconclusive. Diderot seems to have been guilty of nothing but thought- lessness (if of that) in lending himself to a scheme of the Le Vasseurs, mother and daughter, for getting Rousseau out of the solitude of the Hermitage. At any rate Rous- seau quitted the Hermitage in the winter, and established himself at Montlouis in the neighbourhood. Hitherto Rousseau's behaviour had frequently made him enemies, but his writings had for the most part made him friends. The quarrel with Madame d'Epinay, with Diderot, and through them with the philosophe party reversed this. In 1 758 appeared his Lettre ct d'Alembert contre les Spectacles, written in the winter of the previous year at Montlouis. This was at once an attack on Voltaire, who was giving theatrical representations at Les Delices, on D'Alembert, who had condemned the prejudice against the stage in the Encyclopedic, and on one of the favourite amuse- ments of the society of the day. Diderot personally would have been forgiving enough. But Voltaire's strong point was not forgiveness, and, though Rousseau no doubt exaggerated the efforts of his "enemies," he was certainly henceforward as obnoxious to the philo- the house of La Popeliniere, attracted very little attention ; but Le Devin du Village, given at Fontainebleau in 1752, and at the Academie in 1753, achieved a great and well-deserved success. Though very unequal, and exceedingly simple both in style and con- struction, it contains some charming melodies, and is written through- out in the most refined taste. His Pygmalion (1775) is a melodrama without singing. Some posthumous fragments of another opera, Daphnis et Chloe, were printed in 1780 ; and in 1781 appeared Les Consolations des Miseres de ma Vie, a collection of about one hundred songs and other fugitive pieces of very unequal merit. The popular air known as JRousseau's Dream is not contained in this collection, and cannot be traced back farther than J. B. Cramer's celebrated "Variations." H. Castil -Blaze has accused Rousseau of extensive plagiarisms (or worse) in Le Devin du Village and Pygmalion, but apparently without sufficient cause. (W. S. K.) XXI. 4