J.J. Rousseau—




Celtic, not Saxon

Born 1712—Died 1778 —some say by suicide.—

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"Rousseau's Confessions" translated N.Y. 1856.

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Born in Switzerland—parents decent farmers substantial bourgeoisie

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—a sort of vagabond

—copyist of music

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Lost his mother early—

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One brother—not much together

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Father a quiet, easy person.—

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Jean Jacques left home—lived with various persons—worked —was bashful—learned a little of everything—his "Confessions" are a singular opening up of the trivial incidents, some quite disgusting, which find their tally in every man's life— —Madame de Warrens—                                                                                       over leaf

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A sensitive, Frenchy, frivolous, keen, proud, unhappy, restless, contemplative nature

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Note how "character" is built up, after all—from the beginning—

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How the pompous "history" and "Bi‑
ography" come down to just such as we are.

After many wanderings, the last ten years of Rousseau's life, were in and around Paris.—He was very poor; he lived in a garret, and earned his food by copying music.—He was old, discouraged, not robust, not popular, not happy.— Six Thus ten years—wWhat a ten years those must have been._^! and what an ending to them!—Six weeks before his death, he _^Rousseau was invited to a country mansion a few some miles away.——he went.— There he walked, meditated—thought who knows what? The day of He spent in botanizing The day before his the night of his death.—Did he, indeed _^or did he not, die of suicide?

Rousseau's Confessions—

were in 1766, Rousseau, 564 years old, took refuge T[illegible] ([illegible],)in Wooton, Staffordshire, England, and wrote this frivolous, chattering, repulsive, book, that still has a great lesson in its pages, and whose revelations one keeps reading somehow to the end.—

Rousseau born 1712 died _^a suicid[illegible] 177[illegible] a Genevese (Swiss) a rover, vagabond, copyist of music, never rich, exiled from Fra[illegible]

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THE DEATHS OF ROUSSEAU AND VOLTAIRE.

—Whilst in the triumph of America France already hailed her own revolution, she bade a last farewell to the chiefs of the old sceptic philosophy and the new democratic theories, Voltaire and Rousseau, who died in the spring of the year 1778, within a month of each other.

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finishing stroke George Steers's lead

☞ Remember in those days there were no journals—no "reviews," or masses of cheap literature demanded—