Classic French Course in English Part 23

At length I discovered it. I lay voluptuously down on the tablet of a sort of niche or false door sunk in the terrace wall. The canopy of my couch was formed by the over-arching boughs of the trees; a nightingale sat exactly above me; its song lulled me to sleep; my slumber was sweet, and my awaking still more so. It was broad day; my eyes, on opening, fell on the water, the verdure, and the admirable landscape spread out before me. I arose and shook off dull sleep; and, growing hungry, I gayly directed my steps towards the city, bent on transforming two _pieces de six blancs_ that I had left, into a good breakfast. I was so cheerful that I went singing along the whole way.

This happy-go-lucky, vagabond, grown-up child, this sentimentalist of genius, had now and then different experiences,--experiences to which the reflection of the man grown old attributes important influence on the formation of his most controlling beliefs:--

One day, among others, having purposely turned aside to get a closer view of a spot that appeared worthy of all admiration, I grew so delighted with it, and wandered round it so often, that I at length lost myself completely. After several hours of useless walking, weary and faint with hunger and thirst, I entered a peasant's hut which did not present a very promising appearance, but it was the only one I saw around. I conceived it to be here as at Geneva and throughout Switzerland, where all the inhabitants in easy circ.u.mstances are in the situation to exercise hospitality. I entreated the man to get me some dinner, offering to pay for it. He presented me with some skimmed milk and coa.r.s.e barley bread, observing that that was all he had. I drank the milk with delight, and ate the bread, chaff and all; but this was not very restorative to a man exhausted with fatigue. The peasant, who was watching me narrowly, judged of the truth of my story by the sincerity of my appet.i.te. All of a sudden, after having said that he saw perfectly well that I was a good and true young fellow that did not come to betray him, he opened a little trap-door by the side of his kitchen, went down and returned a moment afterwards with a good brown loaf of pure wheat, the remains of a toothsome ham, and a bottle of wine, the sight of which rejoiced my heart more than all the rest. To these he added a good thick omelette, and I made such a dinner as none but a walker ever enjoyed. When it came to pay, lo! his disquietude and fears again seized him; he would none of my money, and rejected it with extraordinary manifestations of disquiet. The funniest part of the matter was, that I could not conceive what he was afraid of. At length, with fear and trembling, he p.r.o.nounced those terrible words, _Commissioners_ and _Cellar-rats_. He gave me to understand that he concealed his wine because of the excise, and his bread on account of the tax, and that he was a lost man if they got the slightest inkling that he was not dying of hunger. Every thing he said to me touching this matter, whereof, indeed, I had not the slightest idea, produced an impression on me that can never be effaced. It became the germ of that inextinguishable hatred that afterwards sprang up in my heart against the vexations to which these poor people are subject, and against their oppressors. This man, though in easy circ.u.mstances, dared not eat the bread he had gained by the sweat of his brow, and could escape ruin only by presenting the appearance of the same misery that reigned around him.

A hideously false world, that world of French society was, in Rousseau's time. The falseness was full ripe to be laid bare by some one; and Rousseau's experience of life, as well as his temperament and his genius, fitted him to do the work of exposure that he did. What we emphatically call character was sadly wanting in Rousseau--how sadly, witness such an acted piece of mad folly as the following:--

I, without knowing aught of the matter,... gave myself out for a [musical] composer. Nor was this all: having been presented to M.

de Freytorens, law-professor, who loved music, and gave concerts at his house, nothing would do but I must give him a sample of my talent; so I set about composing a piece for his concert quite as boldly as though I had really been an adept in the science. I had the constancy to work for fifteen days on this fine affair, to copy it fair, write out the different parts, and distribute them with as much a.s.surance as though it had been a masterpiece of harmony.

Then, what will scarcely be believed, but which yet is gospel truth, worthily to crown this sublime production, I tacked to the end thereof a pretty minuet which was then having a run on the streets.... I gave it as my own just as resolutely as though I had been speaking to inhabitants of the moon.

They a.s.sembled to perform my piece. I explain to each the nature of the movement, the style of execution, and the relations of the parts--I was very full of business. For five or six minutes they were tuning; to me each minute seemed an age. At length, all being ready, I rap with a handsome paper _baton_ on the leader's desk the five or six beats of the "_Make ready_." Silence is made--I gravely set to beating time--they commence! No, never since French operas began, was there such a _charivari_ heard. Whatever they might have thought of my pretended talent, the effect was worse than they could possibly have imagined. The musicians choked with laughter; the auditors opened their eyes, and would fain have closed their ears. But that was an impossibility. My tormenting set of symphonists, who seemed rather to enjoy the fun, sc.r.a.ped away with a din sufficient to crack the tympanum of one born deaf. I had the firmness to go right ahead, however, sweating, it is true, at every pore, but held back by shame; not daring to retreat, and glued to the spot. For my consolation I heard the company whispering to each other, quite loud enough for it to reach my ear: "It is not bearable!" said one. "What music gone mad!" cried another. "What a devilish din!" added a third. Poor Jean Jacques, little dreamed you, in that cruel moment, that one day before the King of France and all the court, thy sounds would excite murmurs of surprise and applause, and that in all the boxes around thee the loveliest ladies would burst forth with, "What charming sounds! what enchanting music! every strain reaches the heart!"

But what restored every one to good humor was the minuet. Scarcely had they played a few measures than I heard bursts of laughter break out on all hands. Every one congratulated me on my fine musical taste; they a.s.sured me that this minuet would make me spoken about, and that I merited the loudest praises. I need not attempt depicting my agony, nor own that I well deserved it.

Readers have now had an opportunity to judge for themselves, by specimen, of the style, both of the writer and of the man Jean Jacques Rousseau. The writer's style they must have felt, even through the medium of imperfect anonymous translation, to be a charming one. If they have felt the style of the man to be contrasted, as squalor is contrasted with splendor, that they must not suppose to be a contrast of which Jean Jacques himself, the confessor, was in the least displacently conscious. Far from it. In a later part of his "Confessions," a part that deals with the author as one already now acknowledged a power in the world of letters, though with all his chief works still to write, Rousseau speaks thus of himself (he was considering at the time the ways and means available to him of obtaining a livelihood):--

I felt that writing for bread would soon have extinguished my genius, and destroyed my talents, which were less in my pen than in my heart, and solely proceeded from an elevated and n.o.ble manner of thinking.... It is too difficult to think n.o.bly when we think for a livelihood.

Is not that finely said? And one need not doubt that it was said with perfect sincerity. For our own part, paradoxical though it be to declare it, we are wholly willing to insist that Rousseau did think on a lofty plane. The trouble with him was, not that he thus thought with his heart, rather than with his head,--which, however, he did,--but that he thought with his heart alone, and not at all with his conscience and his will. In a word, his thought was sentiment rather than thought. He was a sentimentalist instead of a thinker. One ill.u.s.tration of the divorce that he decreed for himself, or rather--for we have used too positive a form of expression--that he allowed to subsist, between sentiment and conduct, will suffice. It was presently to be his fortune, as author of a tract on education (the "emile"), to change the habit of a nation in the matter of nurture for babes. French mothers of the higher social cla.s.s in Rousseau's time almost universally gave up their infants to be nursed at alien bosoms. Rousseau so eloquently denounced the unnaturalness of this, that from his time it became the fas.h.i.+on for French mothers to suckle their children themselves. Meantime, the preacher himself of this beautiful humanity, living in unwedded union with a woman (not Madame de Warens, but a woman of the laboring cla.s.s, found after Madame de Warens was abandoned), sent his illegitimate children, against the mother's remonstrance, one after another, to the number of five, to be brought up unknown at the hospital for foundlings!

He tells the story himself in his "Confessions." This course on his own part he subsequently laments with many tears and many self-upbraidings.

But these, alas, he intermingles with self-justifications, nearly as many,--so that at last it is hard to say whether the balance of his judgment inclines for or against himself in the matter. A paradox of inconsistencies and self-contradictions, this man,--a problem in human character, of which the supposition of partial insanity in him, long working subtly in the blood, seems the only solution. The occupation finally adopted by Rousseau for obtaining subsistence, was the copying of music. It extorts from one a measure of involuntary respect for Rousseau, to see patiently toiling at this slavish work, to earn its owner bread, the same pen that had lately set all Europe in ferment with the "emile" and "The Social Contract."

From Rousseau's "Confessions," we have not room to purvey further. It is a melancholy book,--written under monomaniac suspicion on the part of the author that he was the object of a wide-spread conspiracy against his reputation, his peace of mind, and even his life. The poor, shattered, self-consumed sensualist and sentimentalist paid dear in the agonies of his closing years for the indulgences of an unregulated life.

The tender-hearted, really affectionate and loyal, friend came at length to live in a world of his own imagination, full of treachery to himself.

David Hume, the Scotchman, tried to befriend him; but the monomaniac was incapable of being befriended. Nothing could be more pitiful than were the decline and the extinction that occurred of so much brilliant genius, and so much lovable character. It is even doubtful whether Rousseau did not at last take his own life. The voice of accusation is silenced, in the presence of an earthly retribution so dreadful. One may not indeed approve, but one may at least be free to pity, more than he blames, in judging Rousseau.

Accompanying, and in some sort complementing, the "Confessions," are often published several detached pieces called "Reveries," or "Walks."

These are very peculiar compositions, and very characteristic of the author. They are dreamy meditations or reveries, sad, even sombre, in spirit, but "beautiful exceedingly," in form of expression. Such works as the "Rene" of Chateaubriand, works but too abundant since in French literature, must all trace their pedigree to Rousseau's "Walks." We introduce two specimen extracts. The shadow of Rousseau's monomania will be felt thick upon them:--

It is now fifteen years since I have been in this strange situation, which yet appears to me like a dream; ever imagining that, disturbed by indigestion, I sleep uneasily, but shall soon awake, freed from my troubles, but surrounded by my friends....

How could I possibly foresee the destiny that awaited me?... Could I, if in my right senses, suppose that one day, the man I was, and yet remain, should be taken, without any kind of doubt, for a monster, a poisoner, an a.s.sa.s.sin, the horror of the human race, the sport of the rabble, my only salutation to be spit upon, and that a whole generation would unanimously amuse themselves in burying me alive? When this strange revolution first happened, taken by unawares, I was overwhelmed with astonishment; my agitation, my indignation, plunged me into a delirium, which ten years have scarcely been able to calm: during this interval, falling from error to error, from fault to fault, and folly to folly, I have, by my imprudence, furnished the contrivers of my fate with instruments, which they have artfully employed to fix it without resource....

Every future occurrence will be immaterial to me; I have in the world neither relative, friend, nor brother; I am on the earth as if I had fallen into some unknown planet; if I contemplate any thing around me, it is only distressing, heart-rending objects; every thing I cast my eyes on conveys some new subject either of indignation or affliction; I will endeavor henceforward to banish from my mind all painful ideas which unavailingly distress me.

Alone for the rest of my life, I must only look for consolation, hope, or peace in my own breast; and neither ought nor will, henceforward, think of any thing but myself. It is in this state that I return to the continuation of that severe and just examination which formerly I called my Confessions; I consecrate my latter days to the study of myself, and to the preparation of that account which I must shortly render up of my actions. I resign my thoughts entirely to the pleasure of conversing with my own soul; that being the only consolation that man cannot deprive me of. If by dint of reflection on my internal propensities, I can attain to putting them in better order, and correcting the evil that remains in me, these meditations will not be utterly useless; and though I am accounted worthless on earth, shall not cast away my latter days. The leisure of my daily walks has frequently been filled with charming contemplations, which I regret having forgot; but I will write down those that occur in future; then, every time I read them over, I shall forget my misfortunes, disgraces, and persecutors, in recollecting and contemplating the integrity of my own heart.

Rousseau's books in general are now little read. They worked their work, and ceased. But there are in some of them pa.s.sages that continue to live. Of these, perhaps quite the most famous is the "Savoyard Curate's Confession of Faith," a doc.u.ment of some length, incorporated into the "emile." This, taken as a whole, is the most seductively eloquent argument against Christianity that perhaps ever was written. It contains, however, concessions to the sublime elevation of Scripture and to the unique virtue and majesty of Jesus, which are often quoted, and which will bear quoting here. The Savoyard Curate is represented speaking to a young friend as follows:--

I will confess to you further, that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scripture! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the Sacred Personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he a.s.sumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity, in his manners! What an affecting gracefulness in his delivery! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses!

What presence of mind, what subtilety, what truth, in his replies!

How great the command over his pa.s.sions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and die, without weakness and without ostentation? When Plato described his imaginary good man loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest reward of virtue, he described exactly the character of Jesus Christ: the resemblance was so striking that all the Fathers perceived it.

What prepossession, what blindness, must it be to compare the son of Sophroniscus to the Son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there is between them! Socrates, dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was any thing more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals.

Others, however, had before put them in practice; he had only to say what they had done, and reduce their examples to precepts.

Aristides had been _just_ before Socrates defined justice; Leonidas gave up his life for his country before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans were a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety; before he had even defined virtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where could Jesus learn, among his compatriots, that pure and sublime morality of which he only has given us both precept and example? The greatest wisdom was made known amidst the most bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on the earth.

The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, cursed by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared.

Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a G.o.d. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction; on the contrary, the history of Socrates, which n.o.body presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ.

Such a supposition, in fact, only s.h.i.+fts the difficulty without removing it; it is more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonis.h.i.+ng character than the hero.

So far in eloquent ascription of incomparable excellence to the Bible and to the Founder of Christianity. But then immediately Rousseau's Curate proceeds:--

And yet, with all this, the same gospel abounds with incredible relations, with circ.u.mstances repugnant to reason, and which it is impossible for a man of sense either to conceive or admit.

The compliment to Christianity almost convinces you,--until suddenly you are apprised that the author of the compliment was not convinced himself!

Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the preface to his "Confessions," appealed from the judgment of men to the judgment of G.o.d. This judgment it was his habit, to the end of his days, thanks to the effect of his early Genevan education, always to think of as certainly impending. Let us adjourn our final sentence upon him, until we hear that Omniscient award.

XVII.

THE ENCYCLOPaeDISTS.

A cenotaph is a monument erected to the memory of one dead, but not marking the spot in which his remains rest. The present chapter is a cenotaph to the French Encyclopaedists. It is in the nature of a memorial of their literary work, but it will be found to contain no specimen extracts from their writings.

Everybody has heard of the Encyclopaedists of France. Who are they? They are a group of men who, during the eighteenth century, a.s.sociated themselves together for the production of a great work to be the repository of all human knowledge,--in one word, of an encyclopaedia. The project was a laudable one; and the motive to it was laudable--in part.

For there was mixture of motive in the case. In part, the motive was simple desire to advance the cause of human enlightenment; in part, however, the motive was desire to undermine Christianity. This latter end the encyclopaedist collaborators may have thought to be an indispensable means subsidiary to the former end. They probably did think so--with such imperfect sincerity as is possible to those who set themselves, consciously or unconsciously, against G.o.d. The fact is, that the Encyclopaedists came at length to be nearly as much occupied in extinguis.h.i.+ng Christianity, as in promoting public enlightenment. They went about this their task of destroying, in a way as effective as has ever been devised for accomplis.h.i.+ng a similar work. They gave a vicious turn of insinuation against Christianity to as many articles as possible. In the most unexpected places, throughout the entire work, pitfalls were laid of anti-Christian implication, awaiting the unwary feet of the reader. You were nowhere sure of your ground. The world has never before seen, it has never seen since, an example of propagandism altogether so adroit and so alert. It is not too much to say further, that history can supply few instances of propagandism so successful. The Encyclopaedists might almost be said to have given the human mind a fresh start and a new orbit. The fresh start is, perhaps, spent; the new orbit has at length, to a great extent, returned upon the old; but it holds true, nevertheless, that the Encyclopaedists of France were for a time, and that not a short time, a prodigious force of impulsion and direction to the Occidental mind. It ought to be added that the aim of the Encyclopaedists was political also, not less than religious. In truth, religion and politics, Church and State, in their day, and in France, were much the same thing. The "Encyclopaedia" was as revolutionary in politics as it was atheistic in religion.

The leader in this movement of insurrectionary thought was Denis Diderot. Diderot (1713-1784) was born to be an encyclopaedist, and a captain of encyclopaedists. Force inexhaustible, and inexhaustible willingness to give out force; unappeasable curiosity to know; irresistible impulse to impart knowledge; versatile capacity to do every thing, carried to the verge, if not carried beyond the verge, of incapacity to do any thing thoroughly well; quenchless zeal and quenchless hope; levity enough of temper to keep its subject free from those depressions of spirit and those cares of conscience which weigh and wear on the over-earnest man; abundant physical health,--gifts such as these made up the manifold equipment of Diderot for rowing and steering the gigantic enterprise of the "Encyclopaedia" triumphantly to the port of final completion, through many and many a zone of stormy adverse wind and sea, traversed on the way. Diderot produced no signal independent and original work of his own; probably he could not have produced such a work. On the other hand, it is simply just to say that hardly anybody but Diderot could have achieved the "Encyclopaedia." That, indeed, may be considered an achievement not more to the glory, than to the shame, of its author; but whatever its true moral character, in whatever proportion shameful or glorious, it is inalienably and peculiarly Diderot's achievement; at least in this sense, that without Diderot the "Encyclopaedia" would never have been achieved.

We have already, in discussing Voltaire, adverted sufficiently to Mr.

John Morley's volumes in honor of Diderot and his compeers. Diderot is therein ably presented in the best possible light to the reader; and we are bound to say, that, despite Mr. Morley's friendly endeavors, Diderot therein appears very ill. He married a young woman, whose simple and touching self-sacrifice on her husband's behalf, he presently requited by giving himself away, body and soul, to a rival. In his writings, he is so easily insincere, that not unfrequently it is a problem, even for his biographer, to decide when he is expressing his sentiments truly and when not; insomuch that, once and again, Mr. Morley himself is obliged to say, "This is probably hypocritical on Diderot's part," or something to that effect. As for filthy communication out of his mouth and from his pen,--not, of course, habitual, but occasional,--the subject will not bear more than this mention. These be thy G.o.ds, O Atheism! one, in reading Mr. Morley on Diderot, is tempted again and again to exclaim. To offset such lowness of character in the man, it must in justice be added that Diderot was, notwithstanding, of a generous, uncalculating turn of mind, not grudging, especially in intellectual relations, to give of his best to others, expecting nothing again. Diderot, too, as well as Voltaire, had his royal or imperial friends, in the notorious Empress Catherine of Russia, and in King Stanislaus of Poland. He visited Catherine once in her capital, and was there munificently entertained by her. She was regally pleased to humor this gentleman of France, permitting him to bring down his fist in gesture violently on the redoubtable royal knee, according to a pleasant way Diderot had of emphasizing a point in familiar conversation. His truest claim to praise for intellectual superiority is, perhaps, that he was a prolific begetter of wit in other men.

D'Alembert (Jean le Rond, 1717-1783) was an eminent mathematician. He wrote especially, though not at first exclusively, on mathematical subjects, for the "Encyclopaedia." He was, indeed, at the outset, published as mathematical editor of the work. His European reputation in science made his name a tower of strength to the "Encyclopaedia,"--even after he ceased to be an editorial coadjutor in the enterprise. For there came a time when D'Alembert abdicated responsibility as editor, and left the undertaking to fall heavily on the single shoulder, Atlantean shoulder it proved to be, of Diderot. The celebrated "Preliminary Discourse," prefixed to the "Encyclopaedia," proceeded from the hand of D'Alembert. This has always been esteemed a masterpiece of comprehensive grasp and lucid exposition. A less creditable contribution of D'Alembert's to the "Encyclopaedia" was his article on "Geneva," in the course of which, at the instance of Voltaire, who wanted a chance to have his plays represented in that city, he went out of his way to recommend to the Genevans that they establish for themselves a theatre.

This brought out Rousseau in an eloquent harangue against the theatre as exerting influence to debauch public morals. D'Alembert, in the contest, did not carry off the honors of the day. D'Alembert's "eloges," so called, a series of characterizations and appreciations written by the author in his old age, of members of the French Academy, enjoy deserved reputation for sagacious intellectual estimate, and for clear, though not supremely elegant, style of composition.

Diderot and D'Alembert are the only men whose names appear on the t.i.tle-page of the "Encyclopaedia;" but Voltaire, Rousseau, Turgot, Helvetius, Duclos, Condillac, Buffon, Grimm, D'Holbach, with many others whom we must not stay even to mention, contributed to the work.

The influence of the "Encyclopaedia," great during its day, is by no means yet exhausted. But it is an influence indirectly exerted, for the "Encyclopaedia" itself has long been an obsolete work.

There is a legal maxim that the laws are silent, when a state of war exists. Certainly, amid the madness of a Revolution such as, during the closing years of the eighteenth century, the influence of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopaedists, with Beaumarchais, reacting against the acc.u.mulated political and ecclesiastical oppressions of ages, precipitated upon France, it might safely be a.s.sumed that letters would be silent. But the nation meantime was portentously preparing material for a literature which many wondering centuries to follow would occupy themselves with writing.

XVIII.

EPILOGUE.

In looking backward over the preceding pages, we think of many things which we should like still to say. Of these many things, we limit ourselves to saying here, as briefly as we can, some four or five only.

To begin with, in nearly every successive case, we have found ourselves lamenting afresh that, from the authors to be represented, the representative extracts must needs be so few and so short. We have, therefore, sincerely begrudged to ourselves every line of room that we felt obliged to occupy with matter, preparatory, explanatory, or critical, of our own. Whatever success we may have achieved in fulfilling our purpose, our purpose has been to say ourselves barely so much as was indispensable in order finally to convey, upon the whole, to our readers, within the allotted s.p.a.ce, the justest and the fullest impression of the selected authors, through the medium of their own quoted words.