ROUSSEAU, James, an eminent French painter, was born at Paris in the year 1630. He studied first under Swanevelt, who had married one of his relations; after which he improved himself by travelling into Italy, practising solely perspective, architecture, and landscape. On his return home, he was employed at Marly. He distinguished himself very much in painting buildings, and by his knowledge of, and his attention to, the principles of perspective. Louis XIV. employed him to decorate his hall of devices at St Germaine-en-Laie, where he represented the operas of Lulli; but being a Protestant, he quitted France on the persecution of his brethren, and retired to Switzerland. Louis invited him back. He refused, but sent his designs, and recommended a proper person to execute them. After a short stay in Switzerland, he went to Holland, whence he was invited to England by Ralph duke of Montague, to adorn his new house in Bloomsbury. Here he painted a great deal. Some of his pictures, both in landscape and architecture, are over doors at Hampton Court; and he etched several of his own designs. His perspectives, having been most commonly applied to decorate courts or gardens, have suffered much from the weather. Such of them as remain are monuments of an excellent genius. The colours are bright and durable, and the choice of them most judicious. He died in Soho Square about the year 1694, at the age of sixty-four.

Rousseau, John Baptist, a celebrated French poet, was born at Paris in April 1669. His father, who was a shoemaker in good circumstances, made him study in the best colleges of Paris, where he distinguished himself by his abilities. He at length applied entirely to poetry, and soon made himself known by several short pieces, that were filled with lively and agreeable images, which made him sought for by persons of the first rank, and men of the brightest genius. He was admitted, in quality of pupil, into the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres in 1701, and almost all the rest of his life he attached himself to some great men. He attended Marshal Tallard into England in quality of secretary, and there contracted a friendship with St Evremond. At his return to Paris, he was admitted into the politest company, lived amongst the courtiers, and seemed perfectly satisfied with his situation; when, in 1708, he was prosecuted for being the author of some couplets, in which the characters of several persons of wit and merit were blackened by the most atrocious calumnies. This prosecution made much noise; and Rousseau was in 1712, by a decree of the parliament of Paris, banished out of the kingdom, to which he was never more to return. However, he always steadily denied, even on his death-bed, his being the author of these couplets. From the date of this sentence he lived in foreign countries, where he found illustrious protectors. The Count de Luc, ambassador of France, in Switzerland, took him into his family, and studied to render his life agreeable. He carried him to the treaty of Baden in 1714, where he was one of the plenipotentiaries, and presented him to Prince Eugene, who, entertaining a particular esteem for him, took him to Vienna, and introduced him to the emperor’s court. Rousseau lived about three years with Prince Eugene; but having lost his favour by satirizing one of his mistresses, he retired to Brussels, where he afterwards usually resided. It was there that he commenced his disputes with Voltaire, with whom he had become acquainted at the college of Louis the Great, and who then much admired his turn for poetry. Rousseau, from the period of their dispute, always represented Voltaire as a buffoon, and as a writer possessing ( neither taste nor judgment, who owed all his success to a particular mode which he pursued. As a poet he considered him as inferior to Lucan, and little superior to Pra-don. Voltaire treated him still worse. Rousseau, according to him, was nothing better than a plagiarist, who had nothing but the talent of arranging words. He came over, in 1721, to London, where he printed a Collection of his Works, in two volumes 12mo. This edition, published in 1723, brought him near ten thousand crowns, the whole of which he placed in the hands of the Ostend Company. The affairs of this company, however, soon getting into confusion, those who had any money in their hands lost the whole of it; by which unfortunate event Rousseau, when arrived at that age when he stood most in need of the comforts of fortune, had nothing to depend upon but the generosity of some friends. He died at Brussels in February 1740. A very beautiful edition of his works was published in 1743, at Paris, in three volumes 4to, and in four volumes 12mo, containing nothing but what was acknowledged by the author as his own. It contains, 1. Four Books of Odes, of which the first are sacred odes, taken from the Psalms; 2. Two Books of Epistles, in verse; 3. Cantatas, in which species of poetry he stands unrivalled; 4. Allegories, the most of which are happy, but some of them appear forced; 5. Epigrams, after the manner of Martial and Marot; 6. A book of Poems on Various Subjects; 7. Four Comedies, in verse; 8. Three Comedies, in prose; and, 9. A Collection [7:19:507]of Letters, in prose. A good edition of his Select Pieces appeared at Paris in 1741, in a small 12mo volume.

Rousseau, John-James, one of the most renowned writers of modem times, was born at Geneva on the 28th of June 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 afterwards in a very weak and languishing state of health. But as his bodily strength increased, his mental powers gradually opened, and afforded the happiest presages of future greatness. His father, a citizen of Geneva, was a well-informed tradesman; and in the place where he wrought he kept a Plutarch and a Tacitus, authors which of course soon became familiar to his son. A rash juvenile step, however, occasioned his leaving his father’s house. “Finding himself a fugitive in a strange country, and without money or friends, he changed his religion, in order to procure a subsistence.” Bornex, bishop of Anneci, from whom he sought an asylum, committed the care of his education to Madame de Warrens, a lady, who in 1726 had left part of her wealth, and the Protestant religion, in order to throw herself into the bosom of the Catholic church. This generous lady served in the triple capacity of a mother, a friend, and a lover, to the new proselyte, whom, in fact, she regarded as her son. The necessity of procuring for himself some settlement, however, or perhaps his unsettled disposition, obliged Rousseau often to take leave of this tender mother.

He possessed more than ordinary talents for music; and the Abbé Blanchard flattered his hopes of a place in the royal chapel, which he, however, failed in obtaining for him. He was therefore under the necessity of teaching music at Chamberi. 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: “Every thing is dear here, especially bread.” But he at length began to emerge from that obscurity in which he had hitherto been buried; and 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 depute, 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 Warrens, his former benefactress. But the year 1750 proved 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. “Take the negative side of the question,” said a philosopher, who was at that time his friend, “and I’ll promise you the greatest success.”

His discourse against the sciences having been found to be the best written, and replete with brilliant reasoning, was publicly crowned with the approbation of that learned body. Never was a paradox supported with greater eloquence. It was not however a new one; but he enriched it with all the advantages which either knowledge or genius could confer upon 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 amongst Mankind, and on the Origin of Social Compacts, 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. By presenting this performance to the magistrates of Geneva, 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 returned to France, however, and lived for some time in Paris. He afterwards gave himself up to retirement, partly to escape the shafts of criticism, and partly to follow the regimen which the strangury, with which he was afflicted, necessarily required. This is an important epoch in the history of his life, as it was owing to this circumstance, perhaps, that we have the most elegant works that have proceeded 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 the year 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. Although so great an enemy to theatrical representations, he caused a comedy to be printed; and in 1752 he gave to the theatre a pastoral, called the Village Conjuror, of which he composed the poetry and the music, both of them abounding with sentiment and elegance, and full of innocent rural simplicity. His Dictionary of Music affords several excellent articles; some of them, however, are extremely 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.” Soon after the rapid success of his Village Conjuror, he published a Letter on French Music, or rather against French Music, written with equal freedom and liveliness. The exasperated partisans of French comedy treated him with as much fury as if he had conspired against the state; and a crowd of enthusiasts spent their strength and outcries against him. He was insulted, menaced, and lampooned.

That interesting and tender style which is so conspicuous throughout the Village Conjuror, animates several letters in the Nouvelle Heloise, which was published in 1761 in 12mo. This epistolary romance, of which the plot is ill managed, and the arrangement bad, like most other works of genius, has its beauties as well as its faults. Some of the letters are indeed admirable, from the force and warmth of expression, from an effervescence of sentiment, and from the irregularity of ideas which always characterize a passion carried to its height. In the Heloise, Rousseau’s unlucky talent of rendering every thing problematical appears very conspicuous. This is the case in his arguments in favour of and against duelling, which afford an apology for suicide, and a just condemnation of it; his facility in palliating the crime of adultery, and his strong reasons to make it abhorred; his declamations against social happiness, and transports in favour of humanity; his violent rhapsodies against philosophers, and his 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 by the most sublime eulogies.

His Emilius afterwards made more noise than the New Heloise. This moral romance, which was published in the year 1762, in four volumes 12mo, treats chiefly of education. Rousseau washed to follow nature in every thing; and though his system in several places differs from received ideas, it deserves in many respects to be put in practice, and with some necessary modifications it has been so. His precepts are expressed with the force and dignity of a mind frill of the leading truths of morality. If he has not always [7:19:508]been virtuous, nobody at least has felt it more, or made it appear to greater advantage. What is most to be lamented is, that in wishing to educate a young man as a Christian, he has filled a volume with objections against Christianity. It must be confessed that he has 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 reserve. Admitting only natural religion, he weighs every thing in the balance of reason; and this reason being false, leads him into dilemmas which are very unfavourable to his own repose and happiness. 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, but it shut its gates upon him. Proscribed in the place where he had first drawn breath, he sought an asylum in Switzerland, and found one in the principality of Neufchatel. But the protection of the king of Prussia, to whom the principality 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 amongst the people. On the night between the 6th and the 7th of September 1765, some fanatics, inspired by wine and the declamations of their minister, threw stones at the windows of the Genevan philosopher, who, fearing new insults, in vain sought 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, who was proscribed by that republic. Neither his broken state of health, nor the approach of winter, could soften the hearts of these obdurate Switzers. To prevent them from the fear they had of the spreading of his opinions, he in vain beseeched them to shut him up in prison till the spring. But even this favour was denied him. Obliged to set out on a journey in the beginning of a most 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 became milder, when he went to Paris, where Mr Hume then was. The English philosopher determined upon taking him with him to England. After having made some stay in Paris, Rousseau, in 1766, actually set out for London. Hume, much affected with his situation and his misfortunes, procured for him a very agreeable retreat in the country. The Genevan philosopher, however, did not long remain satisfied. He made less impression on the minds of the English than he had done on the French. His free disposition, and his obdurate 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, imagining there was a plot between Hume and some philosophers in France to destroy his glory and repose, 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; a foolish and chimerical idea, which 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 philosophical vanity, cherished by the false informations of his governess, who possessed an uncommon power over him; all these taken together might have tended to prepossess him with unfavourable sentiments of some innocent freedoms his benefactor might have taken with him, and might have rendered 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, returned to France, spited with the world, and particularly offended with the English philosopher. On the let of July 1770, he appeared for the first time at the regency coffee-house, dressed in his ordinary clothing, having for some time previous to this worn 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 as 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, however, procured for him the liberty of staying, on condition that he should write neither on religion nor on politics; and he kept his word, for he wrote none at all. He was contented with living in a calm and philosophical manner, cultivating the society of a few tried friends, shunning the company of the great, appearing to give up all his whimsies, and affecting neither the character of a philosopher nor a wit. He died of an apoplexy, at Ermenonville, about ten leagues from Paris, on the 2d of July 1778, aged sixty-six years. Rousseau, during his stay in the environs of Lyons, married Mademoiselle le Vasseur, a woman who, without either beauty or talents, had gained over him a great ascendency, and waited on him both 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 he 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. He did not incline to associate with any person; and as this method of thinking and living was uncommon, it made him an object of curiosity, and procured him a name. Like Diogenes of old, he united simplicity of manners with pride of genius; and a very 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 Bastille, 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 for giving myself up to my ruling passion.”

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 of his genius; whilst others find it full of contradictions, errors, and cynical passages, obscure, ill arranged,
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and by no means worthy of his pen. There were found in his portfolio his Confessions, in twelve books; the first six of which were published. “His Confessions,” says Sen-nebier, in his Literary History of Geneva, “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.” Amongst his other posthumous pieces are the following. 1. The Reveries of a Solitary Wanderer, being a journal of the latter part of his life. ^[1. 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 offence, which nothing can exculpate. ] 2. Considerations upon the Government of Poland. 3. The Adventures of Lord Edward, a novel, being a kind of supplement to the new Heloisa. 4. Various Memoirs and Fugitive Pieces, with a great number of letters, containing some eloquent passages and deep thoughts. 5. Emilia and Sophia. 6. The Levite of Ephraim, a poem in prose, in four cantos, written in a style of ancient simplicity. 7. Letters to Sara. 8. An Opera and a Comedy. 9. Translations of the first book of Tacitus’s History, of the Episode of Olinda and Sophronia, from Tasso, &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. Viewing him solely as a writer, his character is perhaps described with truth and accuracy in the following words of Mr Hume. “Though I see some tincture of extravagance in all his writings, I also think I see so much eloquence and force of imagination, such an energy of expression, and such a boldness of conception, as entitle him to a place amongst the first writers of his age.” His works, in the best edition, published in 1788 and the following years, extend to thirty-seven volumes octavo.