ocial act which had vast social
consequences. But Jean-Jacques might well retort that the fact that his
contemporaries and the generation which followed read and judged him in
the letter and not in the spirit is no reason why we, at nearly two
centuries remove, should do the same.

A great man may justly claim our deference, if Jean-Jacques asks that
his last work shall be read first we are bound, even if we consider it
only a quixotic humour, to indulge it. But to those who read the
neglected _Dialogues_ it will appear a humour no longer. Here is a man
who at the end of his days is filled to overflowing with bitterness at
the thought that he has been misread and misunderstood. He says to
himself: Either he is at bottom of the same nature as other men or he is
different. If he is of the same nature, then there must be a malignant
plot at work. He has revealed his heart with labour and good faith; not
to hear him his fellow-men must have stopped their ears. If he is of
another kind than his fellows, then--but he cannot bear the thought.
Indeed it is a thought that no man can bear. They are blind because they
will not see. He has not asked them to believe that what he says is
true; he asks only that they shall believe that he is sincere, sincere
in what he says, sincere, above all, when he implores that they should
listen to the undertone. He has been 'the painter of nature and the
historian of the human heart.'

His critics might have paused to consider why Jean-Jacques, certainly
not niggard of self-praise in the _Dialogues_, should have claimed no
more for himself than this. He might have claimed, with what in their
eyes at least must be good right, to have been pre-eminent in his
century as a political philosopher, a novelist, and a theorist of
education. Yet to himself he is no more than 'the painter of nature and
the historian of the human heart.' Those who would make him more make
him less, because they make him other than he declares himself to be.
His whole life has been an attempt to be himself and nothing else
besides; and all his works have been nothing more and nothing less than
his attempt to make his own nature plain to men. Now at the end of his
life he has to swallow the bitterness of failure. He has been acclaimed
the genius of his age; kings have delighted to honour him, but they have
honoured another man. They have not known the true Jean-Jacques. They
have taken his parables for literal truth, and he