t_, Emile and
Sophie, she still refusing to be pardoned her fault, are brought
together after all, and are married, in an actual though not consummated
cross-bigamy, with a mysterious couple, also marooned on a desert
island, is the sort of thing that Rousseau never could have managed,
though Voltaire, probably to the discontent of Mrs. Grundy, could have
done it in one way, and Sir William Gilbert would have done it
delightfully in another. But Jean-Jacques's absolute lack of humour
would have ensured a rather ghastly failure, relieved, it may be, by a
few beautiful passages.

[Sidenote: _La Nouvelle Heloise._]

If, therefore, Rousseau had nothing but _Emile_, or even nothing but
_Emile_ and the _Confessions_ to put to his credit, he could but obtain
a position in our "utmost, last, provincial band," and that more because
of his general literary powers than of special right. But, as everybody
knows, there is a third book among his works which, whether universally
or only by a majority, whether in whole or in part, whether with heavy
deductions and allowances or with light ones, has been reckoned among
the greatest and most epoch-making novels of the world. The full title
of it is _Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise, ou Lettres de deux Amans,
habitans d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes, recueillies et publiees,
par J. J. Rousseau_.[364] Despite its immense fame, direct and at
second-hand--for Byron's famous outburst, though scarcely less
rhetorical, is decidedly more poetical than most things of his, and has
inscribed itself in the general memory--one rather doubts whether the
book is as much read as it once was. Quotations, references, and those
half-unconscious reminiscences of borrowing which are more eloquent
than anything else, have not recently been very common either in English
or in French. It has had the fate--elsewhere, I think, alluded to--of
one of the two kinds of great literature, that it has in a manner seeded
itself out. An intense love-novel--it is some time since we have seen
one till the other day--would be a descendant of Rousseau's book, but
would not bear more than a family likeness to it. Yet this, of itself,
is a great testimony.

[Sidenote: Its numerous and grave faults.]

Except in rhetoric or rhapsody, the allowances and deductions above
referred to must be heavy; and, according to a custom honoured both by
time and good result, it is well to get them off first. That peculiarity
of being a n