383,
384. Also vii. 53.

[89] _Conf._, v. 313, 367; iv. 293; ix. 353. Also _Mem. de Mdme.
d'Epinay_, ii. 151.

[90] _Ib._ iii. 192, 193.

[91] _Conf._, iv. 301; iii. 195.

[92] _Conf._, v. 372, 373. The mistaken date assigned to the
correspondence between Voltaire and Frederick is one of many instances
how little we can trust the Confessions for minute accuracy, though
their substantial veracity is confirmed by all the collateral evidence
that we have.

[93] _Ib._ iii. 188. For his debt in the way of education to Madame de
Warens, see also _Ib._ vii. 46.

[94] _Conf._, vi. 409.

[95] _Ib._ vi. 413. He adds a suspicious-looking "_et cetera_."

[96] _Conf._, vi. 414

[97] _Conf._, iv. 295. See also v. 346.

[98] _Corr._, 1736, pp. 26, 27.

[99] _Conf._, iv. 271, where he says further that he never found
enough attraction in French poetry to make him think of pursuing it.

[100] The first part of the Confessions was written in Wootton in
Derbyshire, in the winter of 1766-1767.

[101] _Conf._, vi. 422.

[102] _Corr._, i. 43, 46, 62, etc.

[103] Musset-Pathay, i. 23, _n._

CHAPTER IV.

THERESA LE VASSEUR.

Men like Rousseau, who are most heedless in letting their delight
perish, are as often as not most loth to bury what they have slain, or
even to perceive that life has gone out of it. The sight of simple
hearts trying to coax back a little warm breath of former days into a
present that is stiff and cold with indifference, is touching enough.
But there is a certain grossness around the circumstances in which
Rousseau now and too often found himself, that makes us watch his
embarrassment with some composure. One cannot easily think of him as a
simple heart, and we feel perhaps as much relief as he, when he resolves
after making all due efforts to thrust out the intruder and bring Madame
de Warens over from theories which had become too practical to be
interesting, to leave Les Charmettes and accept a tutorship at Lyons.
His new patron was a De Mably, elder brother of the philosophic abbe of
the same name (1709-85), and of the still more notable Condillac
(1714-80).

The future author of the most influential treatise on education that has
ever been written, was not successful in the practical and far more
arduous side of that master art.[104] We have seen how little training
he had ever given himself in the cardinal virtues of collectedness and
self-control, and we know this to be the indis