Good night to all the world!--to the unfortunate and
to the happy. Rest and refreshment, renewal and hope; a day is
dead--_vive le lendemain!_ Midnight is striking. Another step made
toward the tomb.
August 13, 1865.--I have just read through again the letter of J. J.
Rousseau to Archbishop Beaumont with a little less admiration than I
felt for it--was it ten or twelve years ago? This emphasis, this
precision, which never tires of itself, tires the reader in the long
run. The intensity of the style produces on one the impression of a
treatise on mathematics. One feels the need of relaxation after it in
something easy, natural, and gay. The language of Rousseau demands an
amount of labor which makes one long for recreation and relief.
But how many writers and how many books descend from our Rousseau! On my
way I noticed the points of departure of Chateaubriand, Lamennais,
Proudhon. Proudhon, for instance, modeled the plan of his great work,
"De la Justice dang l'Eglise et dans la Revolution," upon the letter of
Rousseau to Beaumont; his three volumes are a string of letters to an
archbishop; eloquence, daring, and elocution are all fused in a kind of
_persiflage_, which is the foundation of the whole.
How many men we may find in one man, how many styles in a great writer!
Rousseau, for instance, has created a number of different _genres_.
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