Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva of French stock on June- 28, 1712. His mother died nine days afterwards. "My birth," he said, "was the first of my misfortunes."
The apostle of affliction, Byron called him...
"The apostle of affliction, he who threw
Enchantment over passion, and from woe
Wrung overwhelming eloquence..."
Dr. Johnson, speaking to Boswell, was more severe. "Rousseau, Sir, is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations.
"Was Rousseau "a very bad man"? A lot of people thought so, many still do, and certainly, considered as an individual he was not a conspicuously good one, with such peccadilloes as lying, stealing, and untiring if unsuccessful amorousness.
He sent all his five children to the Foundling Hospital almost as soon as they were born, and thought up what seemed to him good reasons for it; he was always difficult and vain, and ended up such a prey to persecution mania that when he died he had hardly a friend left in the world. Yet his real crime in the eyes of his contemporaries was not personal: it consisted rather in being one of those great rare originals who have the effrontery and bad taste to change the course of history.