analogy is there between the Hottentot, the Indian of the Congo, or the cannibal of the Antilles,1 and the heroes of our tragedies and novels. Again, to return to our own doors, can we help thinking of the countless souls never mentioned in our books and scarcely better known to our writers than the souls of African negroes or the inhabitants of China? Thus no one could be more conscious than Rousseau of the almost infinite diversity of human nature—a consciousness entirely unknown to classical criticism; and he deduces therefrom the consequence that, if the types are almost infinite in number, almost the whole of humanity still remains to be portrayed. "One would suppose," says Rousseau's faithful expositor, Mme. de Staël, "that logic is the foundation of the arts," and that the "unstable nature" spoken of by Montaigne is banished from our books. This unstable nature we must restore to the position suited to it, and must convince ourselves that taste does not consist in confining it within the narrow limits of French and Western logic.

This, however, had been vaguely perceived by many writers -Young, for instance-before Rousseau. The superiority of Jean-Jacques lies in the fact that he proved it by his own example, and found the most signal justification of his ideas within himself. It is this that made him the guide and master of Europe. France, but Germany, England, Italy, and Spain no less-all those, of whatever nationality, who had already found their own consciousness voiced by English writersfelt themselves still more completely reflected in Rousseau. No writer has made so many countries his own at the same time; none has appealed to so many hearts or so many minds; none has thrown down more barriers or removed more boundaries. In him, European, as distinct from national, literature takes its rise.

By German writers he was hailed as a deliverer. Schiller nourished his mind upon Julie, and composed The Robbers and Fiesco under the inspiration of its author. The youthful Goethe was fascinated by him, and every day, at Strasbourg, made extracts from his works. Herder addressed him in passionate 1 See the curious notes to the Discours sur l'inégalité.

may find you my

"secret

terms: "It is myself that I would seek, that at last I and never again lose myself; come, Rousseau, be guide!" Lessing entertained for Jean-Jacques a respect." Kant hung his portrait in his study. Lenz demanded that a statue should be erected in his honour, opposite to that of Shakespeare. Many writers of the period regarded him as an apostle, or, as Herder said to his betrothed, as "a saint and a prophet. I am almost tempted to address him in prayer." At his decease, Schiller extolled him as a martyr: "In these enlightened times the sage must die. Socrates was martyred by the sophists of old; and Rousseau, who endeavoured to render Christians more manly, must suffer and fall beneath their hands." 2

In England, the home of his literary predecessors, his success was scarcely less. There, to tell the truth, his art did. not perhaps seem quite so new as in Germany; since many of the sentiments he expressed were already familiar to English literature. Richardson, Fielding and Sterne had created the sentimental novel of middle class life before Rousseau. Even in his lyrical quality there was nothing absolutely fresh. "Thirty years earlier than Rousseau, Thomson had given expression to the same sentiments, and almost in the same style." An entire school of poetry had sung the praises of melancholy before he did, from Young's Night Thoughts, which appeared in 1742, down to the first fragments of Ossian, which were published in 1760. But these same sentiments were expressed by Rousseau in a more truly poetical manner. This is why he became one of the masters of the English romantic school; of Cowper, by whom he was addressed in beautiful lines; of Shelley, who is never tired of appealing to Rousseau as his teacher; and of Byron, who read him in youth and remained faithful to him in maturer years.1 Many an English poet of the eighteenth, and even of the nine

1 C. Joret, Herder, p. 323.

2 See Marc Monnier: Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les étrangers, in Rousseau jugé par les Genevois d'aujourd'hui. With regard to Rousseau's popularity in Germany consult also Erich Schmidt: Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe.

3 Taine, Littérature anglaise, vol. iv., p. 224.

4 See O. Schmidt, Rousseau und Byron, Greifswald, 1889, 8vo.

teenth, century could have said with George Eliot: "Rousseau's genius has sent that electric thrill through my intellectual and moral frame which has awakened me to new perceptions [and] quickened my faculties." It would be impossible to write any portion of the history of European, as distinct from national, literature during the last one hundred and fifty years without pronouncing his name, for the reason that in him the genius of Latin Europe became one with that of Teutonic Europe.

But if his philosophical work is mainly an expression of the Latin genius, it was mainly the Teutonic genius, or, as Mme. de Staël said, the literatures of the North, that benefited by the revolution he accomplished. Rousseau's triumph marks the advent of these literatures; his influence was henceforth inseparable from theirs. And this union dates from the eighteenth century, and from pre-revolutionary times.

I do not propose to write here the history of the intercourse of France with England and Germany between 1760 and 1789. I shall simply attempt to show how the success of Jean-Jacques Rousseau brought success to certain foreign writers whose careers preceded, or were contemporary with, his own, whose genius was very closely related to his, and whose influence became blended with that which he exerted.

1 George Eliot's Life, vol. i., p. 168.

Chapter II

ENGLISH INFLUENCE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVEL

I. Sterne and the sentimental novel-Sterne, like Rousseau, brought the sentimental confession into fashion-His visit to Paris-His amours-The culte-du-moi.

II. The eighteenth century failed to understand his humour, but appreciated the way in which, like Rousseau, he affected to talk of himself, and to be deeply touched by his own condition-Nature and extent of the influence exerted by his work in France.

I

SOME months after the appearance of La Nouvelle Héloïse, and simultaneously with the publication of Diderot's famous Éloge de Richardson, there appeared in Paris one of the most remarkable characters of the age. Laurence Sterne was a man of weak health, effusive disposition, profound sensibility and singular genius. A contemporary says that "by the frank simplicity, the readiness and the touching character of his own sensibility, he inspired sensitive hearts with fresh emotions."1 Suard once asked him to explain his own personality. Sterne replied that he could distinguish three causes which had made him like nobody else: the daily reading of the Bible, the study of Locke's sacred philosophy, "without which the world will never attain to a true universal religion or a true science of ethics, and man will never obtain real command over nature"; lastly, and above all, the possession of "one of those organizations, in which the sacred constitutive principle of the soul is predominant, that immortal flame by which life is at once nourished and devoured." 2 Endowed with the originality of an Englishman, Sterne, like Rousseau, was also sensitive, passionate, and, at times, lyrical.

1 Garat, Mémoires sur Suard, vol. ii., p. 135.

2 Ibid., p. 149.

When he arrived in Paris, Tristram Shandy-the first volume of which had recently appeared-was already famous there; so that Sterne wrote to Garrick: "My head is turned with what I see, and the unexpected honour I have met with here. Tristram was almost as much known here as in London."1

The Seven Years' War being then at its height, it was necessary to find a guarantor for one's good behaviour; accordingly d'Holbach became his patron and admitted him to his salon. There he met with all the anglomaniacs of Paris, and astonished them, now by his exuberant gaiety, now by his philosophical gravity. But what gave most pleasure was his ostentatious contempt for the "eternal sameness" of the French mind and disposition. Being asked whether he had not found in France some character which he could introduce in his novel: No, he replied, Frenchmen are like coins which, "by jingling and rubbing one against another, . . . are become so much alike. you scarcely can tell one from another." This sally in the manner of Jean-Jacques was immensely successful. "What sort of a fellow is this?" cried Choiseul in astonishment.-On another occasion he halted before Henri IV.'s statue on the Pont-Neuf; a crowd gathered around him; turning round, he called out : "What are you all looking at me for? Follow my example, all of you!"—and they all knelt with him before the statue. "The Englishman," says the narrator, "forgot that it was the statue of a king of France. A slave would never

have paid such homage to Henri IV." 3

2

Just as Rousseau, who had his Thérèse, fell in love with Mme. d'Houdetot, so "the good and agreeable Tristram," as a contemporary calls him, though possessed of a devoted helpmeet, loved Eliza Draper, the wife of another man, and neither the one nor the other, nor both together, could keep him from falling in love with every woman he met. "By loving them all," says Garat, gravely, "in such a transient manner, the minister of the Gospel maintained his religious belief in all its purity."

To Eliza, "wife of Daniel Draper, Esq., chief of the English

1 Traill, Sterne, p. 67.

2 Garat, vol. ii., p. 147. Sentimental Journey, ch. li.

3 Garat, p. 148.