when Saint-Simon sat down to write his Memoirs, it never occurred to him
for a moment to give any real account of what, in all the highly
personal transactions that he describes, he intimately felt. He tells us
nothing of his private life; he mentions his wife once, and almost
apologizes for doing so; really, could a gentleman--a duke--dwell upon
such matters, and preserve his self-respect? But, to us, it is precisely
such matters that form the pivot of a personality--the index of a soul.
A man's feelings are his very self, and it is around them that all that
is noblest and profoundest in our literature seems naturally to centre.
A great novelist is one who can penetrate and describe the feelings of
others; a great poet is one who can invest his own with beauty and
proclaim them to the world. We have come to set a value upon
introspection which was quite unknown in the eighteenth
century--unknown, that is, until Rousseau, in the most valuable and
characteristic of his works--his _Confessions_--started the vast current
in literature and in sentiment which is still flowing to-day. The
_Confessions_ is the detailed, intimate, complete history of a soul. It
describes Rousseau's life, from its beginning until its maturity, from
the most personal point of view, with no disguises or reticences of any
kind. It is written with great art. Rousseau's style, like his matter,
foreshadows the future; his periods are cast in a looser, larger, more
oratorical mould than those of his contemporaries; his sentences are
less fiery and excitable; though he can be witty when he wishes, he is
never frivolous; and a tone of earnest intimate passion lingers in his
faultless rhythms. With his great powers of expression he combined a
wonderful aptitude for the perception of the subtlest shades of feeling
and of mood. He was sensitive to an extraordinary degree--with the
sensitiveness of a proud, shy nature, unhardened by the commerce of the
world. There is, indeed, an unpleasant side to his _Confessions_.
Rousseau, like most explorers, became obsessed by his own discoveries;