A History of French Literature: Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II.Dowden, Edward
History
A History of French Literature: Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II.
Dowden, Edward
French literature -- History and criticism
Authorship, however, had its joys and consolations. The _Lettre a
D'Alembert_, a censure of the theatre (1758), was succeeded by _La
Nouvelle Heloise_ (1761), by the _Contrat Social_ (1762), and _Emile_
(1762). The days at Montmorency which followed his departure from
the Hermitage passed in calm. With the publication of _Emile_ the
storms began again. The book, condemned by the Sorbonne, was ordered
by the Parliament to be burnt by the common executioner. Rousseau
escaped imprisonment by flight. In Switzerland he could not settle
near Voltaire. A champion for the doctrine of a providential order
of the world, an enemy of the stage--especially in republican
Geneva--Rousseau had flung indignant words against Voltaire, and
Voltaire had tossed back words of bitter scorn. Geneva had followed
Paris in its hostility towards Rousseau's recent publications; whose
doing could it be except Voltaire's? He fled from his persecutors
to Motiers, where the King of Prussia's governor afforded him
protection. Renewed quarrels with his countrymen, clerical
intolerance, mob violence, an envenomed pamphlet from Voltaire, once
more drove him forth. He took refuge on an island in the lake of Bienne,
only to be expelled by the authorities of Berne. Encouraged by
Hume--"le bon David"--he arrived in January 1766 in London.
At Wootton, in the Peak of Derbyshire, Rousseau prepared the first
five books of his _Confessions_. Within a little time he had assured
himself that Hume was joined with D'Alembert and Voltaire in a
triumvirate of persecutors to defame his character and render him
an outcast; the whole human race had conspired to destroy him. Again
Rousseau fled, sojourned a year at Trye-Chateau under an assumed name,
and after wanderings hither and thither, took refuge in Paris, where,
living meanly, he completed his _Confessions_, wrote other eloquent
pieces of self-vindication, and relieved his morbid cerebral
excitement by music and botanising rambles. The hospitality of M.
de Girardin at Ermenonville was gladly accepted in May 1778; and there,
on July 2, he suddenly died; suicide was surmised; the seizure was
probably apoplectic.
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