mercy of northern gales or western breezes; to them he has shouted his sorrows and his victories; he has found a strange delight in fusing himself with the elements, in incorporating himself with the universe, in feeling that, puny creature as he is, his life forms a part of the mighty symphony or tempest of the heavens. "Man, Of this melancholy and poetic race Rousseau was the first representative. Was Sterne the second? To-day we can hardly connect the two names without hesitation, for we no longer have the same belief in Sterne as readers who were contemporary with him. Yet such readers-and the fact is significant-were conscious of a gift in him similar to that of Rousseau. under Sterne's treatment," to quote Garat once more, "is not so much held captive, as tossed hither and thither." His characters, "in some vague borderland between sleeping and waking, tread the brink of every form of error and of crime, like the somnambulist upon the verge of roof or precipice." In a word, Sterne, like Rousseau, reveals "the somnambulist" in man—the creature of instinct, given over to the fluctuations of sensation and of feeling. And he reveals himself also, quite artlessly it would seem, in his true colours—passionate, sensitive, and not particularly reasonable. "He makes us smile," said Ballanche-one of his warmest admirers-" but it is the smile of the soul; he makes us weep, but the tears we shed are gentle as drops of dew." It gave the impression of perfect sincerity, and this was the secret of his success. His readers were grateful to him for speaking of himself, and of himself alone. The time had come when, im- · pelled by the genius of Rousseau, literature was becoming ever more and more narrowed down to "the confession of a soul," and when all that was needed to obtain the public ear was to tell the story of oneself,-provided only one happened to be Yorick, "jester to his Majesty the King of England." Chapter III ENGLISH INFLUENCE AND THE LYRICISM OF ROUSSEAU I. The Love of nature-Rousseau's English predecessors-Thomson: his talent II. Melancholy-English melancholy proverbial in France-Popularity of Gray NOT only however did Rousseau excite in readers of his day the taste for sentimental confession; he opened their eyes at the same time to physical nature, and inspired them with the taste for melancholy. Sensibility, the feeling for nature, and the sadness of the poet are simply three forms of the same disposition of soul, and constitute the whole of Rousseau's lyricism. How far, in this further respect, was he in harmony with foreign writers, both among his predecessors and his contemporaries? I "The picturesque "-wrote Stendhal—“ like our good coaches and our steam-boats, comes to us from England," and he adds, "a fine landscape is no less essential to an Englishman's religion than to his aristocratic station." Frenchmen of the eighteenth century had already remarked this characteristic, and, in the frenzy of their anglomania, had endeavoured to appropriate it themselves. Fashion, following the example set by the English, had driven them to live in the country,—“ certainly one of the best customs," wrote Arthur Young, "they have 1 Mémoires d'un touriste, vol. i., p. 87. 1 taken from England." And it was in imitation of the English that they planted those strange parks in which crooked paths, flights of winding steps and mazes took the place of the broad avenues of Versailles; in which antique statues were replaced by grottoes, tombs and hermitages; in which you beheld a castle in flagrant discord with a Hindoo temple, or a Russian cottage with a Swiss chalet, and in which Petrarch's urn stood side by side with the tomb of Captain Cook. They merely mimicked nature, under the impression that they were imitating her. The English garden was a school of virtue: "When you are thinking," wrote a famous amateur,2 "how to make a ravine shady, or trying to control the course of a stream, you have too much to do to become a dangerous citizen, a scheming general or a plotting courtier. One whose head is full of his stand of flowers, or his clump of judas-trees," cannot be a bad man. Preoccupied in so virtuous a manner, one cannot commit a guilty act. "One would scarcely arrive in time to take advantage of the frailty of a friend's wife, and afterwards would hastily make one's escape to the country, there to expiate the sweetest of crimes." Such was the character of descriptive literature from 1760 to the Revolution. Rousseau's beautiful pages apart, it is inferior and insipid, nor did the influence of Rousseau bear fruit until five-and-twenty years after the publication of La Nouvelle Héloïse.3 The love of nature is not a feeling to be acquired in a day. It demands a whole education of eye and heart. And it may be that certain races, prepared by certain climates or certain conditions of social life, can more easily sustain that abrupt disturbance of the moral equilibrium which must precede the love of physical nature. It was neither central nor northern France-the France which produced most of the French classical writers, the gentle France of Touraine or Anjou, the nursery of the Pléiadethat gave birth to Rousseau, Chateaubriand, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre one of them came from the Alps, the others from the sea. 1 Travels, vol. i., p. 72. 2 The prince de Ligne, quoted by de Lescure: Rivarol, p. 310. 3 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: Études de la nature, 1784; Paul et Virginie, 1788. 1776-30 But the English had loved and described the material universe long before Rousseau. The feeling for nature is common to all their great poets: Shakespeare is full of it, a fact which had been noticed even by Letourneur; Milton abounds in admirable descriptive passages which would have greatly astonished his French contemporaries; and in the least productive years of the century, Thomson, Gray, Collins, and Chatterton, not to come down to Burns and the lake poets, are great painters of nature. What French writer in 1739 would have said, with Gray, during the ascent to the Grande-Chartreuse: "Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief.” It was in 1730 that Thomson-the only one of these poets to obtain any celebrity in France-had published his admirable poem The Seasons, so shamefully misrepresented by Saint-Lambert and by Roucher. It is true that in this work man as a social being still occupies too large a place. Thomson cannot describe winter without giving a sentimental picture of the horrors of cold, nor spring without introducing a hymn to Love. Too frequently also there are suggestions of the Georgics, and apostrophes to those who live in luxury and ease," or to the "generous Englishmen" who "venerate the plough." Nevertheless, Thomson has the painter's eye. His winter and his spring are no mere adaptations from Vergil. He has a true and deep understanding of the English landscape. With delicate subtlety he renders the impressions produced by spring or autumn, the charm of the indefinite periods when season gives way to season, the approach of rain, the forebodings of storm, the scudding of heavy clouds across skies grey and overcast. Even in the awkward French version something of the charm of these pictures lingers yet. Rising slow, Blank, in the leaden-colour'd east, the Moon The stars obtuse emit a shiver'd ray; 1 See the introduction to his version of Shakespeare. 2 See Léon Morel's able book: James Thomson, sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris, 1895). Or frequent seen to shoot athwart the gloom, It is in these grey-toned pictures that Thomson excels. But in others he revels in precision of detail: there is one of a farm, for instance, redolent of the dunghill, damp grass, and new milk; another of a flower-garden with its "velvet-leaved ❞ auriculas, variegated pinks, and "hyacinths, of purest virgin white, low bent, and blushing inward";2 the whole perceived with the artist's glance and described in the language of a poet. Occasionally, too, Thomson can command richness of colouring and splendour of imagery.3 The downward Sun Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush The illumined mountain, through the forest streams, Far smoking o'er the interminable plain, In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems. Moist, bright and green, the landscape laughs around. What French author wrote in this style, in 1730? The author of the Seasons had visited France as a young man, without, however, attracting any notice. But since then Voltaire had made the public acquainted with his name, if not with his talent.1 The Seasons, if Villemain is to be credited, came as a revelation in 1759:5 a certain Mme. Bontemps had taken upon herself to introduce the work to the French public in a translation which she described as "scrupulously simple," adding, at the same time, an earnest apology for the "extravagant and almost hideous" images employed by its author. Villemain affirms that the climate of the North, the Scotch mountains, 1 Winter, l. 122. 4 Voltaire represents his own play Socrate (1759) as a posthumous work of Thomson's. In 1763 Saurin produced Blanche et Guiscar, a tragedy imitated from Thomson, who had himself, it was said, taken his subject from Gil Blas (see the Journal encyclopédique, March 1764). See an English letter of Voltaire's on Thomson, published by Ballantyne, Voltaire's Visit to England, (pp. 99-101). Lesson xxvi. 2 Spring. 3 Spring, 1. 187. V |