Rousseau, John-James, was born at Geneva, June 28, 1712. His father was by profession a clock and watch maker. At his birth, which, he says, was the first of his misfortunes, he endangered the life of his mother, and he himself was for a long time after in a very weak and languishing state of health; but as his bodily strength increased, his mental powers gradually opened, and afforded the happiest preludes of future greatness. His father, who was a citizen of Geneva, was a well-informed tradesman; and in the place where he wrought he kept a Plutarch and a Tacitus, and these authors of course soon became familiar to his son. A rath juvenile step occasioned his leaving his father's house. "Finding himself a fugitive, in a strange country, and without money or friends, he changed (says he himself) his religion, in order to procure a subsistence." Bornex, bishop of Annecy, from whom he sought an asylum, committed the care of his education to Madame de Warrens, an ingenious and amiable lady, who had in 1726 left part of her wealth, and the Protestant religion, in order to throw herself into the bosom of the church. This generous lady served in the triple capacity of a mother, a friend, and a lover, to the new profelyte, whom she regarded as her son. The necessity of procuring for himself Rousseau, some settlement, however, or perhaps his unsettled disposition, obliged Rousseau often to leave this tender mother.

He possessed more than ordinary talents for music; and the abbe Blanchard flattered his hopes with a place in the royal chapel, which he, however, failed in obtaining for him; he was therefore under the necessity of teaching music at Chambery. He remained in this place till 1741, in which year he went to Paris, where he was long in very destitute circumstances. Writing to a friend in 1743, he thus expresses himself:

"Everything is dear here, but especially bread,"

What an expression! and to what may not genius be reduced! Meanwhile he now began to emerge from that obscurity in which he had hitherto been buried. His friends placed him with M. de Montaigne, ambassador from France to Venice. According to his own confession, a proud misanthropy and a peculiar contempt of the riches and pleasures of this world, constituted the chief traits in his character, and a misunderstanding soon took place between him and the ambassador. The place of deputy, under M. Dupin, farmer-general, a man of considerable parts, gave him some temporary relief, and enabled him to be of some benefit to Madame de Warren's former benefactress. The year 1750 was the commencement of his literary career. The academy of Dijon had proposed the following question: "Whether the revival of the arts and sciences has contributed to the refinement of manners?" Rousseau at first inclined to support the affirmative. "This is the pons aequorum (says a philosopher, at that time a friend of his), take the negative side of the question, and I'll promise you the greatest success."

His discourse against the sciences, accordingly, having been found to be the best written, and replete with the deepest reasoning, was publicly crowned with the approbation of that learned body. Never was a paradox supported with more eloquence: it was not however a new one; but he enriched it with all the advantages which either knowledge or genius could confer on it. Immediately after its appearance, he met with several opponents of his tenets, which he defended; and from one dispute to another, he found himself involved in a formidable train of correspondence, without having ever almost dreamed of such opposition. From that period he decreased in happiness as he increased in celebrity. His "Discourse on the Causes of Inequality among Mankind, and on the Origin of Social Compacts," a work full of almost unintelligible maxims and wild ideas, was written with a view to prove that mankind are equal; that they were born to live apart from each other; and that they have perverted the order of nature in forming societies. He bestows the highest praise on the state of nature, and deprecates the idea of every social compact. This discourse, and especially the dedication of it to the republic of Geneva, are the chef-d'oeuvres of that kind of eloquence of which the ancients alone had given us any idea. By presenting this performance to the magistrates, he was received again into his native country, and reinstated in all the privileges and rights of a citizen, after having with much difficulty prevailed on himself to abjure the Catholic religion. He soon, however, returned to France, and lived for some time in Paris. He afterwards gave himself up to retirement, to escape the shafts of criticism, and follow after the regimen which the strangury, with which he was tormented, demanded of him. This is an important epoch in the history of his life, as it is owing to this circumstance, perhaps, that we have the most elegant works that have come from his pen. His "Letter to M. d'Alembert" on the design of erecting a theatre at Geneva, written in his retirement, and published in 1757, contains, along with some paradoxes, some very important and well-handled truths. This letter first drew down upon him the envy of Voltaire, and was the cause of those indignities with which that author never ceased to load him. What is singular in him, is, that although so great an enemy to theatrical representations himself, he caused a comedy to be printed, and in 1752 gave to the theatre a pastoral (The Village Conjurer), of which he composed both the poetry and music, both of them abounding with sentiment and elegance, and full of innocent and rural simplicity. What renders the Village Conjurer highly delightful to persons of taste, is that perfect harmony of words and music which everywhere pervades it; that proper connection among the parties who compose it; and its being perfectly correct from beginning to end. The musician hath spoken, hath thought, and felt like a poet. Everything in it is agreeable, interesting, and far superior to those common affected and insipid productions of our modern petit-dramas. His Dictionary of Music affords several excellent articles; some of them, however, are very inaccurate. "This work (says M. la Borde), in his Essay on Music, has need to be written over again, to save much trouble to those who wish to study it, and prevent them from falling into errors, which it is difficult to avoid, from the engaging manner in which Rousseau drags along his readers." The passages in it which have any reference to literature may be easily distinguished, as they are treated with the agreeableness of a man of wit and the exactness of a man of taste. Rousseau, soon after the rapid success of his Village Conjurer, published a Letter on French Music, or rather again// French Music, written with as much freedom as liveliness. The exasperated partisans of French comedy treated him with as much fury as if he had conspired against the state. A crowd of insignificant enthusiasts spent their strength and outcries against him. He was insulted, menaced, and lampooned. Harmonic fanaticism went even to hang him up in effigy.

That interesting and tender style, which is so conspicuous throughout the Village Conjurer, animates several letters in the New Heloïsa, in five parts, published 1761 in 12mo. This epistolary romance, of which the plot is ill-managed, and the arrangement bad, like all other works of genius, has its beauties as well as its faults. More truth in his characters and more precision in his details were to have been wished. The characters, as well as their style, have too much sameness, and their language is too affected and exaggerated. Some of the letters are indeed admirable, from the force and warmth of expression, from an effervescence of sentiments, from the irregularity of ideas which always characterize a passion carried to its height. But why is so affecting a letter so often accompanied with an unimportant digression, an insipid criticism, or a self-contradicting paradox? Why, after having thrown in all the energy of sentiment, does he on a sudden turn unafflicting? It is because none of the personages are truly interesting. That That of St Preux is weak, and often forced. Julia is an assemblage of tendernels and pity, of elevation of soul and of coquetry, of natural parts and pedantry. Wolmar is a violent man, and almost beyond the limits of nature. In fine, when he wishes to change his style, and adopt that of the speaker, it may easily be observed that he does not long support it, and every attempt embarrasses the author and cools the reader. In the Heloïsa, Rousseau's unlucky talent of rendering everything problematical, appears very conspicuous; as in his arguments in favour of and against duelling, which afford an apology for suicide, and a just condemnation of it: in his facility in palliating the crime of adultery, and his very strong reasons to make it abhorred: on the one hand, in declamations against social happiness; on the other, in transports in favour of humanity: here, in violent rhapsodies against philosophers; there, by a rage for adopting their opinions: the existence of God attacked by sophistry, and Atheists confuted by the most irrefragable arguments; the Christian religion combated by the most specious objections, and celebrated with the most sublime eulogies.

His Emilius afterwards made more noise than the new Heloïsa. This moral romance, which was published in 1762, in four vols 12mo, treats chiefly of education. Rousseau wished to follow nature in everything; and though his system in several places differs from received ideas, it deserves in many respects to be put into practice, and with some necessary modifications it has been so. His precepts are expressed with the force and dignity of a mind full of the leading truths of morality. If he has not always been virtuous, no body at least has felt it more, or made it appear to more advantage. Everything which he says against luxury shows the vices and concealed opinions of his age, and is worthy at once of Plato or of Tacitus. His style is peculiar to himself. He sometimes, however, appears, by a kind of affected rudeness and affectation, to ape at the mode of Montaigne, of whom he is a great admirer, and whose sentiments and expressions he often clothes in a new dress. What is most to be lamented is, that in wishing to educate a young man as a Christian, he has filled his third volume with objections against Christianity. He has, it must be confessed, given a very sublime eulogium on the gospel, and an affecting portrait of its divine Author: but the miracles and the prophecies, which serve to establish his mission, he attacks without the least reserve. Admitting only natural religion, he weighs every thing in the balance of reason; and this reason being false, leads him into dilemmas very unfavourable to his own repose and happiness.

He dwelt from 1754 in a small house in the country near Montmorency; a retreat which he owed to the generosity of a farmer-general. The cause of his love for this retirement was, according to himself, "that invincible spirit of liberty which nothing could conquer, and in competition with which honours, fortune, and reputation, could not stand. It is true, this desire of liberty has occasioned less pride than laziness; but this indolence is inconceivable. Everything startles it; the most inconsiderable reciprocities of social life are to it insupportable. A word to speak, a letter to write, a visit to pay, things necessary to be done, are to me punishments. Hear my reasons. Although the ordinary intercourse between mankind be odious to me, intimate friendship appears to me very dear; because there are no mere ceremonies due to it; it agrees with the heart, and all is accomplished. Hear, again, why I have always shunned kindness so much; because every act of kindness requires a grateful mind, and I find my heart ungrateful, from this alone, that gratitude is a duty. Lastly, that kind of felicity which is necessary for me, is not so much to do that which I wish, as not to do what I wish not to do." Rousseau enjoyed this felicity which he so much wished in his retirement. Without entirely adopting that too rigorous mode of life pursued by the ancient Cynics, he deprived himself of everything that could in any measure add fuel to this wished-for luxury, which is ever the companion of riches, and which inverts even custom itself. He might have been happy in this retreat, if he could have forgot this public which he affected to despise; but his desire after a great name got the better of his self-love, and it was this thirst after reputation which made him introduce so many dangerous paragraphs in his Emilia.

The French parliament condemned this book in 1762, and entered into a criminal prosecution against the author, which forced him to make a precipitate retreat. He directed his steps towards his native country, which shut its gates upon him. Prohibited in the place where he first drew breath, he sought an asylum in Switzerland, and found one in the principality of Neufchatel. His first care was to defend his Emilia against the mandate of the archbishop of Paris, by whom it had been anathematized. In 1763 he published a letter, in which he re-exhibits all his errors, set off with the most animated display of eloquence, and in the most insidious manner. In this letter he describes himself as "more vehement than celebrated in his researches, but sincere on the whole, even against himself; simple and good, but sensible and weak; often doing evil, and always loving good; united by friendship, never by circumstances, and keeping more to his opinions than to his interests; requiring nothing of men, and not willing to be under any obligation to them; yielding no note to their prejudices than to their will, and preserving his own as free as his reason; disputing about religion without licentiousness; loving neither impiety nor fanaticism, but disliking precise people more than bold spirits," &c. From this specimen, the limitations he would appoint to this portrait may easily be discovered.

The letters of La Montaigne appeared soon after; but this work, far less eloquent, and full of envious difficulties on the magistrates and clergy of Geneva, irritated the Protestant ministers without effecting a reconciliation with the clergy of the Roman church. Rousseau had solemnly abjured the latter religion in 1753, and, what is somewhat strange, had then resolved to live in France, a Catholic country. The Protestant clergy were not fully reconciled by this change; and the protection of the king of Prussia, to whom the principality of Neufchatel belonged, was not sufficient to rescue him from that obloquy which the minister of Moutiers-Travers, the village to which he had retired, had excited against him. He preached against Rousseau, and his sermons produced an uproar among the people. On the night between the 6th and 7th September 1765, some fanatics, drove on by wine and the declamations of their minister, threw stones at the windows of the the Genevan philosopher, who fearing new insults, in vain fought an asylum in the canton of Berne. As this canton was connected with the republic of Geneva, they did not think proper to allow him to remain in their city, being prohibited by that republic. Neither his broken state of health, nor the approach of winter, could soften the hearts of those obdurate Spartans. In vain, to prevent them from the fear they had of the spreading of his opinions, did he beseech them to shut him up in prison till the spring; for even this favour was denied him. Obliged to set out on a journey, in the beginning of a very inclement season, he reached Strasbourg in a very destitute situation. He received from Marshal de Contades, who then commanded in that place, every accommodation which could be expected from generosity, humanity, and compassion. He waited there till the weather was milder, when he went to Paris, where Mr Hume then was, who determined on taking him with him to England. After having made some stay in Paris, Rousseau actually set out for London in 1766. Hume, much affected with his situation and his misfortunes, procured for him a very agreeable settlement in the country. Our Genevan philosopher was not, however, long satisfied with this new place. He did not make such an impression on the minds of the English as he had done on the French. His free disposition, his obdurate and melancholy temper, were deemed no singularity in England. He was there looked upon as an ordinary man, and the periodical prints were filled with satires against him. In particular, they published a forged letter from the king of Prussia, holding up to ridicule the principles and conduct of this new Diogenes. Rousseau imagined there was a plot between Hume and some philosophers in France to destroy his glory and reputation. He sent a letter to him, filled with the most abusive expressions, and reproaching him for his conduct towards him. From this time he looked upon Hume as a wicked and perfidious person, who had brought him to England with no other view than to expose him to public ridicule; which foolish and chimerical idea was nourished by self-love and a restless disposition. He imagined that the English philosopher, amidst all his kindnesses, had something disagreeable in the manner of expressing them. The bad health of Rousseau, a strong and melancholy imagination, a too nice sensibility, a jealous disposition, joined with philosophic vanity, cherished by the false informations of his governors, who possessed an uncommon power over him; all these taken together, might tend to perplex him with unfavourable sentiments of some innocent freedoms his benefactor might have taken with him, and might render him ungrateful, which he thought himself incapable of becoming. Meanwhile, these false conjectures and probabilities ought never to have had the weight with an honest mind to withdraw itself from its friend and benefactor. Proofs are always necessary in cases of this kind; and that which Rousseau had was by no means a certain demonstration. The Genevan philosopher, however, certainly returned to France. In passing through Amiens, he met with M. Gresset, who interrogated him about his misfortunes and the controversies he had been engaged in. He only answered, "You have got the art of making a parrot speak; but you are not yet possessed of the secret of making a bear speak." In the meantime, the magistrates of this city wished to confer on him some mark of their esteem, which he absolutely refused. His disordered imagination viewed these flattering civilities as nothing else than insults, such as were lavished on Sancho in the island of Barataria. He thought one part of the people looked upon him as like Lazarillo of Tormes, who, being fixed to the bottom of a tub, with only his head out of the water, was carried from one town to another to amuse the vulgar. But these wrong and whimsical ideas did not prevent him from aspiring after a residence in Paris, where, without doubt, he was more looked on as a spectacle than in any other place whatever. On the 1st July 1770, Rousseau appeared, for the first time, at the regency coffee-house, dressed in ordinary clothing, having for some time previous to this wore an Armenian habit. He was loaded with praises by the surrounding multitude. "It is somewhat singular (says M. Sennebier) to see a man so haughty as he returning to the very place from whence he had been banished so often. Nor is it one of the smallest inconsistencies of this extraordinary character, that he preferred a retreat in that place of which he had spoken so much ill." It is singular that a person under sentence of imprisonment should wish to live in so public a manner in the very place where his sentence was in force against him. His friends procured for him, however, liberty of staying, on condition that he should neither write on religion nor politics: he kept his word; for he wrote none at all. He was contented with living in a calm philosophical manner, giving himself to the society of a few tried friends, thumping the company of the great, appearing to have given up all his whimsics, and affecting neither the character of a philosopher nor a bel esprit. He died of an apoplexy at Ermenonville, belonging to the marquis de Girardin, about ten leagues from Paris, July 2, 1778, aged 66 years. This nobleman has erected to his memory a very plain monument, in a grove of poplars, which constitutes part of his beautiful gardens. On the tomb are inscribed the following epitaphs:

Ici repose L'Homme de la Nature Et de la Vérité! Vitam impendere Vero.* * His mihi Hic jacent Offa J. J. Rousseau.

The curious who go to see this tomb likewise see the cloak which the Genevan philosopher wore. Above the door is inscribed the following sentence, which might afford matter for a whole book: "He is truly free, who, to accomplish his pleasure, has no need of the affiance of a second person." Rousseau, during his stay in the environs of Lyons, married Mademoiselle le Vaillant, his governess, a woman who, without either beauty or talents, had gained over him a great ascendancy. She waited on him in health and in sickness: But as if she had been jealous of possessing him alone, she drove from his mind, by the most perfidious insinuations, all those who came to entertain him; and when Rousseau did not dismiss them, she prevented their return by invariably refusing them admittance. By these means she the more easily led her husband into inconsistencies of conduct, which the originality of his character as well as of his opinions so much contributed to assist. Nature had perhaps but given him the embryo Rousseau, by reason of his character, and art had probably united to make it more singular. He did not incline to associate with any person; and as this method of thinking and living was uncommon, it procured him a name, and he displayed a kind of fantastic nature in his behaviour and his writings. Like Diogenes of old, he united simplicity of manners with all the pride of genius; and a large stock of indolence, with an extreme sensibility, served to render his character still more uncommon. "An indolent mind (says he), terrified at every application, a warm, bilious, and irritable temperament, sensible also in a high degree to every thing that can affect it, appear not possible to be united in the same person; and yet these two contrarieties compose the chief of mine. An active life has no charms for me. I would an hundred times rather consent to be idle than to do any thing against my will; and I have an hundred times thought that I would live not amiss in the Baile, provided I had nothing to do but just continue there. In my younger days I made several attempts to get in there; but as they were only with the view of procuring a refuge and rest in my old age, and, like the exertions of an indolent person, only by fits and starts, they were never attended with the smallest success. When misfortunes came, they afforded me a pretext of giving myself up to my ruling passion." He often exaggerated his misfortunes to himself as well as to others. He endeavoured particularly to render interesting by his description his misfortunes and his poverty, although the former were far less than he imagined, and notwithstanding he had certain resources against the latter. In other respects he was charitable, generous, sober, just, contenting himself with what was purely necessary, and refusing the means which might have procured him wealth and offices. He cannot, like many other persons, be accused of having often repeated with a studied emphasis the word Virtue, without inspiring the sentiment. When he is speaking of the duties of mankind, of the principles necessary to our happiness, of the duty we owe to ourselves and to our equals, it is with a copiousness, a charm, and an impetuosity, that could only proceed from the heart. He said one day to M. de Buffon, "You have asserted and proved before J. J. Rousseau, that mothers ought to fuckle their children," "Yes (says this great naturalist), we have all said so; but M. Rousseau alone forbids it, and causes himself to be obeyed." Another academician said, "that the virtues of Voltaire were without heart, and those of Rousseau without head." He was acquainted at an early age with the works of the Greek and Roman authors; and the republican virtues there held forth to view, the rigorous austerity of Cato, Brutus, &c. carried him beyond the limits of a simple estimation of them. Influenced by his imagination, he admired every thing in the ancients, and saw nothing in his contemporaries but enervated minds and degenerated bodies.

His ideas about politics were almost as eccentric as his paradoxes about religion. Some reckon his Social Compact, which Voltaire calls the Unsocial Compact, the greatest effort his genius produced. Others find it full of contradictions, errors, and cynical passages, obscure, ill arranged, and by no means worthy of his shining pen. There are several other small pieces wrote by him, to be found in a collection of his works published in 25 vols 8vo and 12mo, to which there is appended Rousseau: a very insignificant supplement in 6 vols.

The most useful and most important truths in this collection are picked out in his Thoughts; in which the confident sophist and the impious author disappear, and nothing is offered to the reader but the eloquent writer and the contemplative moralist. There were found in his port-folio his Confessions, in twelve books; the first six of which were published. "In the preface to these memoirs, which abound with characters well drawn, and written with warmth, with energy, and sometimes with elegance, he declares (says M. Paléologue), like a peevish misanthrope, who boldly introduces himself on the ruins of the world, to declare to mankind, whom he supposes assembled upon these ruins, that in that innumerable multitude, none could dare to say, I am better than that man. This affectation of seeing himself alone in the universe, and of continually directing everything to himself, may appear to some morose minds a fantastic form of pride, of which we have no examples, at least since the time of Cardan." But this is not the only blame which may be attached to the author of the Confessions. With uneasiness we see him, under the pretext of sincerity, dishonouring the character of his benefactress Lady Warren. There are innuendos no less offensive against obscure and celebrated characters, which ought entirely or partly to have been suppressed. A lady of wit said, that Rousseau would have been held in higher estimation for virtue, "had he died without his confession." The same opinion is entertained by M. Sennebier, author of the Literary History of Geneva: "His confessions (says he) appear to me to be a very dangerous book, and paint Rousseau in such colours as we would never have ventured to apply to him. The excellent analyses which we meet with of some sentiments, and the delicate anatomy which he makes of some actions, are not sufficient to counterbalance the detestable matter which is found in them, and the unceasing obloquies everywhere to be met with." It is certain, that if Rousseau has given a faithful delineation of some persons, he has viewed others through a cloud, which formed in his mind perpetual suspicions. He imagined he thought justly and spoke truly; but the simplest thing in nature, says M. Servant, if diffused through his violent and suspicious head, might become poison. Rousseau, in what he says of himself, makes such acknowledgements as certainly prove that there were better men than he, at least if we may judge him from the first six books of his memoirs, where nothing appears but his vices. They ought not perhaps to be separated from the six last books, where he speaks of the virtues which make reparation for them; or rather the work ought not to have been published at all, if it be true (which there can be little doubt of) that in his confessions he injured the public manners, both by the benefits of the vices he disclosed, and by the manner in which he united them with the virtues. The other pieces which we find in this new edition of his works are, 1. The Reveries of a Solitary Wanderer, being a journal of the latter part of his life. In this he confesses, that he liked better to send his children into hospitals destined for orphans, than to take upon himself the charge of their maintenance and education; and endeavours to palliate this error which nothing can exculpate. 2. Considerations upon the Government. government of Poland. 3. The Adventures of Lord Edward, a novel, being a kind of supplement to the new Heloïsa. 4. Various Memoirs and Fugitive Pieces, with a great number of letters, some of which are very long, and written with too much study, but containing some eloquent passages and some deep thought. 5. Emilia and Sophia. 6. The Levite of Ephraim, a poem in prose, in 4 cantos; written in a truly ancient style of simplicity. 7. Letters to Sara. 8. An Opera and a Comedy. 9. Translations of the first book of Tacitus's History, of the Epistle of Olinde and Sophronia, taken from Tasso, &c., &c. Like all the other writings of Rousseau, we find in these posthumous pieces many admirable and some useful things; but they also abound with contradictions, paradoxes, and ideas very unfavourable to religion. In his letters especially we see a man chagrined at misfortunes, which he never attributes to himself, suspicious of every body about him, calling and believing himself a lamb in the midst of wolves; in one word, as like Pascal in the strength of his genius, as in his fancy of always seeing a precipice about him. This is the reflection of M. Servant, who knew him, afflicted him, and cared for him during his retreat at Grenoble in 1768. This magistrate having been very attentive in observing his character, ought the rather to be believed, as he inspected it without either malice, envy, or resentment, and only from the concern he had for this philosopher, whom he loved and admired.