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He confesses himself "quite moved to read poor Rousseau's mournful epistle." "You shall see his letter," he writes to Hume, "the first opportunity; but God help him, I can't for pity give a copy; and 'tis so much mixed with his own poor little private concerns, that it would not be right in me to do it."
Rousseau's letter remained unanswered, nor is there any reason to suppose that Voltaire ever got through it, though Rousseau chose to think that Candide was meant for a reply to him.
"They have played us an evil turn," cried Madame d'Houdetot; "they have been unjust to me, but that is no matter. Either let us break off at once, or be what you ought to be." This was Rousseau's first taste of the ashes of shame into which the lusciousness of such forbidden fruit, plucked at the expense of others, is ever apt to be transformed.
Yet he was in so dreamy, absent, and distracted a state, that neither his good-will nor his assiduity availed, and he could learn nothing, not even music. His teacher, one Le Mâitre, belonged to that great class of irregular and disorderly natures with which Rousseau's destiny, in the shape of an irregular and disorderly temperament of his own, so constantly brought him into contact.
The failure in the pulpit is not wonderful; nor yet that in the law, which he tried next. He turned again to his first pursuit, and published some philological writings. While eager about a new method of teaching Latin, he one day took up Rousseau's "Émile," and the book determined the whole course of his life.
In the perspective of history, no one feels that he has said the last word about a philosophy like Rousseau's after demonstrating its "untruth." Good or bad, it has meant too much for any such easy disposal. What shall we call an idea, objectively untrue, but practically of the highest importance?
The aim of natural development translates into the aim of respect for physical mobility. In Rousseau's words: "Children are always in motion; a sedentary life is injurious." When he says that "Nature's intention is to strengthen the body before exercising the mind" he hardly states the fact fairly.
Henry George; and a patriotic Scotchman published the book with biographical notes that constitute one of the most amazing curiosities in English political literature. Against the school of Rousseau's English disciples it is comparatively easy to multiply criticisms. They lacked any historic sense. Government, for them, was simply an instrument which was made and unmade at the volition of men.
Rameau apostrophised the unlucky composer with much violence, declaring that one-half of the piece was the work of a master, while the other was that of a person entirely ignorant of the musical rudiments; the bad work therefore was Rousseau's own, and the good was a plagiarism. This repulse did not daunt the hero.
Kirk having arrived, McCook moved Rousseau's brigade across a ravine to a rising ground a few hundred yards in advance, and placed Kirk's brigade in reserve of Rousseau's right, to protect the exposed flank. In less than an hour the skirmishers were driven back and followed by the Fourth Kentucky Regiment and Fourth Alabama Battalion belonging to Trabue's brigade.
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