'During dinner we talked of the Indies and of the Greeks and Romans. Afterwards he shewed me several manuscripts, among which were a continuation of Emile, some letters on botany, a little poem in prose on a scripture subject, and some charming passages translated from Tasso. Do you intend to publish these works? "God forbid," replied he, "I wrote them merely for my amusement and that of my wife." "O yes!" said madame Rousseau, "they are very touching-poor Sophronia! I wept enough when my husband read that passage to me." She told me at length that it was nine o'clock, and I took my leave. The ten hours in succession, which I had passed, seemed but an instant.'

After this account of the commencement of their acquaintance, St Pierre enters into a number of details respecting the preceding events in the history of Rousseau, which are now much more fully known from the Confessions. The following passage describes the manner in which he disposed of his time at this period of his life, and the state of his pecuniary affairs. 'He rose in summer at five o'clock and copied music till half past seven, when he breakfasted. At breakfast he amused himself by arranging in papers the seeds, which he had collected in his walk the day before. After breakfast he copied music again till half past twelve, when he dined. At half past one he went out to a coffee house to take coffee, and we often met for this purpose at a house in the Elysian fields. In the afternoon he took his walk into the country to collect plants, always keeping his hat under his arm in the hottest weather, and in the sun. He thought that the action of the sun upon his head was beneficial. I sometimes represented to him that the covering of the head employed by different nations was uniformly thicker in proportion as their climate approached the equinoctial line, and mentioned in proof of this remark the turbans of the Turks and Persians, the high pointed hats of the Chinese and Siamese, and the mitres of the Arabians-all which nations endeavour to maintain a large volume of air between the surface of the head and the covering they wear upon it, with a view of moderating the action of the sun; while most of the northern nations wear a close cap. These remarks made no impression upon him, and he always replied by appealing to his own experience. I am inclined to think however that his subsequent illnesses were owing in part at least to this practice. He never went out when it rained. "I am just

the reverse," said he, "of the little figure in the Swiss barometer. When he comes in I go out, and when he goes out I come in." He returned from his walk a little before dark, supped and went to bed at half past nine.

'One morning I was at his house, when the servants of his customers came in the usual way to take the music he had copied or to bring him more. He received them uncovered and standing. To some he said, "the price is so much," and took their money; to others, "how soon must I return you this paper?"-to which the servants perhaps would answer, "my mistress wishes for it in a fortnight," and he would reply, "Oh that is impossible, I have a great deal of work, and cannot possibly do it in less than three weeks." Sometimes he accepted and sometimes refused the work that was proposed to him, and went through the whole business with perfect seriousness. When we were alone I could not help saying to him, "Why do not you turn your talents to some better account?" "Oh!" said he in answer, "there are two Rousseaus in the world—one rich, or capable of being so if he would, a singular, capricious, fantastic being-this is the public Rousseau. The other is obliged to work for his living, and that is the one before you." "But," said I, "why not choose some better employment than that of copying music?" "Every employment," said he, “ has its inconveniences, and copying music is an occupation I am fond of. I do it for pleasure as well as for profit; and I should continue to do it, if I had a hundred thousand livres a year. Nor is it below the situation in which I am placed by fortune. I am the son of a workman and a workman myself. I do what I have done since I was fourteen years old." "But

your works," said I, "ought to have put you at your ease: they have made the fortune of a great many booksellers." "Twenty thousand francs," said he, "is more than I have received from them. This however would have been a little fortune to me, if I had obtained it at once and invested it; but receiving it in small sums at different times, I spent it as it came. A Dutch bookseller has settled upon me out of gratitude, an annuity of six hundred francs, half of which is to be continued to my wife after my death. This is all my fortune. My little establishment costs me twenty-five hundred, and I am obliged to make up the difference by my labor." "But why," said I, "did you not sell your manuscripts dearer ?" In answer to this he observed that he had obtained as much as he could for them,

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and mentioned in particular their several prices, which I do not now remember. That of Emile was seven thousand francs. "But," said I, you might now write more." "Would to God," said he, "that I had never written any thing. My books have been the cause of all my misfortunes, as Fontenelle predicted to me that they would be. When he read my first publications he said to me-'I see what your success will be, but remember what I now tell you. I have turned my literary talents to as good an account as most persons. They have procured me wealth, rank, and reputation, but with all this I have never received so much pleasure as pain from any one of my productions. When you take your pen in hand, you must bid farewell to repose and happiness.' And I find he was right. I was never quiet again till I laid it aside. It is now ten years since I have written any thing." Racine is reported to have said the same thing. Here then are three literary men of the highest reputation and all unhappy. The profession of authorship must be a very miserable one in France.'

The conviction here expressed by St Pierre of the wretchedness of the literary profession in France did not prevent him from devoting himself to it for the rest of his life, and from finding much more tranquillity and happiness in the pursuit, than he had derived from the more active enterprises of his earlier years. In reality the misery inflicted upon two or three distinguished authors, by their own morbid sensibility, is no argument against the profession of letters. This unfortunate disposition of mind is more the result of temperament than of particular intellectual qualities or professional pursuits. It may be observed in persons of every employment, and we are not inclined to think that the proportion of those who suffer from it is unusually great among literary men of eminence. If Pascal, Racine, and Rousseau in Franceif Swift, Cowper, and Johnson in England were the victims of nervous disease, we may find among their contemporaries in both countries examples not less illustrious of an opposite kind. Fontenelle himself, one of the luckless wights mentioned by St Pierre, sustained the weight of its sorrows for a century, and was acknowledged to the last to be the gayest and most gallant man in Paris. In general it has been observed that men of letters are uncommonly vivacious-no bad proof that their condition is at least tolerable. Montesquieu says of himself, that every morning when he opened his eyes,

he enjoyed a secret satisfaction at beholding the light of another day; and that he had never in the course of his life felt a chagrin which was not removed by an hour or two of reading. The cheerfulness and gaiety of Voltaire are sufficiently known, and are the more remarkable as his health was generally bad. In England, if report say true, we need not go beyond the wits of the present age to find examples of the happiest and most amiable social qualities united with the highest poetical and literary talent: although it must be allowed on the other hand that the sentimental sorrows of lord Byron and the Lake poets are entitled to their full share of compassion. Dr Johnson was morose; but his great contemporaries, Burke, Hume, and Adam Smith, were uncommonly amiable; and our own Franklin, not inferior to any of them in genius, was still more remarkable for the cheerful sweetness of his temper. If Pope was occasionally splenetic, his disposition seems to have been radically good, and his life on the whole as happy a one as could well have been passed by a man of so many infirmities. He tells us himself that Rowe would laugh all day, and dwells with enthusiasm on the social qualities of Bolingbroke. Shakspeare and his contemporary poets we know were happy to a fault; and the wits of Charles will not be accused of having been uncommonly miserable. In short, we apprehend that a general survey of the private history of men of literary eminence would shew that instead of being as wretched as they are here and elsewhere represented, they enjoy life as much as any other class of persons.

For, to touch the matter a little more deeply and not to rest wholly in examples, it would be rather singular if the case were otherwise. If literary talent supposes an acuteness of sensibility which makes its possessor more vulnerable to the common accidents of life, it implies in like manner the divine philosophy,' which cures the wounds they inflict, and is itself, as the poet says, ' a perpetual feast of nectared sweets.' Success in letters, if not so intoxicating and brilliant at the moment as some others, is a pure and lasting source of enjoyment. It is true that like all other success it makes enemies; but their malicious attacks are only testimonials of merit in a particular form, and will be so considered by an author who makes a just estimate of his own worth. The radiant queen of the ball room regards the sneers and sidelong looks of rival belles as not less essential to her triumph, than the homage of the admiring beaux. The mistake seems to arise from confounding the New Series, No. 11. 2

condition of the successful and unsuccessful candidates for literary distinction. The profession of letters is rather a dangerous one to embark in, at least as a means of support; because while the highest talents are requisite for success, mediocrity is less valued and worse paid than in most other pursuits. The ansuccessful candidates in this as in all other professions are necessarily dissatisfied and unhappy; nor is it unnatural that they should attribute their misfortunes to the injustice of the world, rather than their own defect of talent. These persons complain of course very loudly of slighted merit and public caprice. But to say that the few who have reached the envied heights of literary eminence, and are basking in the full sunshine of general favor, are also of necessity miserable, is, we apprehend, a rash and hazardous assertion, neither consistent with abstract probability, nor supported by actual experience. We might as well predicate unhappiness of a young beauty at the opening of her first winter in town-of a king on his coronation day-or of a pair of lovers at the close of a novel.

But however this may be in general, there have been doubtless individual cases, in which the highest and most extensive reputation has failed to secure the happiness of its possessor, and that of Rousseau was among the number. The nervous disease under which he labored embittered all his triumphs in the field of letters, rendered him through the whole of his life one of the most miserable of human beings, and quite deprived him at times of the use of his reason. His irritability displayed itself occasionally in forms bordering very nearly on the comic, as in the following instance related by St Pierre.

'One day I was going to call upon Rousseau to return a botanical work which I had borrowed of him, and met his wife coming down the stair case of his lodgings. She gave me the key of his apartment, saying that her husband was at home, and I opened the door. He received me in perfect silence and with a severe and solemn air. I spoke to him, but he replied only in monosyllables, still copying his music, and often erasing and blotting what he had written. To relieve the embarrassment of the situation, I opened a book which was lying on the table. "The gentleman is fond of reading," said he with a troubled voice. Upon this I rose to go, and he, rising at the same time, conducted me to the head of the stairs. I begged of him not to take this trouble, and he observed in answer, that this was the proper way to treat strangers. I made no reply,