Boieldieu afterwards imitated Rossini to some extent in _La Dame Blanche_, but the chief followers of this great Italian master in France have been Hérold and Auber." This brings us down to the present day, when we find Meyerbeer, the composer of great choral and orchestral schemes, the cultivator of musico-dramatic "effects" on a large scale, writing for the Opéra Comique; and in spite of the spoken dialogue in the _Etoile du Nord_ and the _Pardon de Ploermel_, it is impossible not to place those important and broadly conceived lyrical dramas in the class of grand opera. CHAPTER IX. ROUSSEAU AS A CRITIC AND AS A COMPOSER OF MUSIC. The Musical Dictionary.--Account of the French Opera from the Nouvelle Héloise.--Le devin du Village.--Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Granet of Lyons. Rousseau, a man of a decidedly musical organisation, who, during his residence in Italy, learnt, as he tells us in the _Confessions_, to love the music of Italy; who wrote so earnestly and so well in favour of that music, and against the psalmody of Lulli and Rameau, in his celebrated _Lettre sur la Musique Française_; and who had sufficient candour, or, rather let us say, a sufficiently sincere love of art to express the enthusiasm he felt for Gluck when all the other writers in France, who had ever praised Italian music, felt bound to depreciate him blindly, for the greater glory of Piccinni; this Rousseau, who cared more for music than for truth or honour, and who has now been proved to have stolen from two obscure, but not altogether unknown, composers the music which he represented to be his own, in _Pygmalion_, and the _Devin du Village_, has given in his _Dictionnaire Musicale_, in the before-mentioned _Lettre sur la Musique Française_, but above all in the _Nouvelle Héloise_, the best general account that can be obtained of the Opera in France during the middle of the 18th century. I will begin with Rousseau's article on the Opera (omitting only the end, which relates to the ballet), from the _Dictionnaire Musicale_:-- [Sidenote: ROUSSEAU'S DEFINITION OF OPERA.] "An opera is a dramatic and lyrical spectacle, designed to combine the enchantments of all the fine arts by the representation of some passionate action through sensations so agreeable as to excite both interest and illusion.[45] "The constituent parts of an opera are the poem, the music, and the decoration. By poetry, the spectacle speaks to the mind; by music, to the ear; and by painting, to the eye: all combining, through different organs, to make the same impression on the heart. Of these three parts, my subject only allows me to consider the first and last with reference to the second.