ABSTRACT
Human nature is in general fond of riddles. We delight to unravel a knotty point, and we study with the greatest pleasure those characters, whose ruling feeling we do not entirely comprehend. They oblige us to disentangle our ideas with delicate precision, and to make subtle differences, at once exercising our talents and our patience. It is for this reason, in a great measure, that so many books have been written about Rousseau.b His sensibility, his genius, his pride, his alleged ingratitude and subsequent madness, have made him one of the most interesting personages of modern times: the misrepresentations of his enemies have given a spur to our researches: and we may safely assert that we know more of his character and actions than his contemporaries: just as we are better acquainted with the course of a river, looking down on it from a distant eminence, than sitting on its banks, listening to the murmur of its waters. From the character of Rousseau, our attention has been turned to that of his friends; we have become familiar with them also, and the merits of Diderot, Grimm, Madame d’Epinay, and Therese, have undergone a severe scrutiny, and their falsehood or truth have received their merited judgment.c
