(1823-6) edition making a few changes which older of his at Ven Introduction Lettre du 12 janvier, 1762.. Lettre du 26 janvier, 1762... BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712, the son of a watchmaker whose character, like that of his illustrious descendant, was somewhat unstable. He spent less than two years at the school of M. Lambercier and after various vicissitudes was apprenticed to an engraver who treated him badly and whom the "temperamental" lad repaid in kind. Seeing the gates of Geneva locked in his face one Sunday evening, at the age of sixteen he turned his back upon his native city. He encountered Mme de Warens, a recent convert to Catholicism, who gave him harborage in the intervals between his many tramp trips, and to whom he seems to have been in turn, ward, lover and intendant. For a while he devoted himself to music and at her little farm Les Charmettes near Chambery, spent some time in desultory study. In 1741 we find him in Paris which was to be his base during the next period of his life, 1741-1756. In 1743 for a brief and stormy interval he acted as secretary to the French ambassador at Venice. In 1749 he wrote his famous Discours sur les Arts et les Sciences. At this time he had established friendly relations with a number of the Encyclopaedists, especially with Diderot, and as Secretary to Mme Dupin and to her son-in-law, M. de Francueil had undergone a partial initiation into the life of the beau monde of Paris. He had already, however, con z ཝཱ「r* {1 ༔,་་ ceived an attachment for Thérèse Le Vasseur, a dull and unattractive servant, by whom he had five children who were consigned to a foundlings' home. He decided to "reform" and live the simple life; and after a journey to Geneva, retired (1756) to a cottage near the forest of Montmorency. Here he broke with most of his old friends, including Diderot and his benefactress, Mme d'Épinay; and in this neighborhood in the next six years wrote or rewrote his La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), Emile (1762) and Le Contrat Social (1762). His misanthropy and distrust of the world at large were increased by the condemnation of the Émile at Paris which forced him to flee from France to escape arrest. Geneva having shown itself equally hostile to both Emile and the Contrat, he set out on a painful period of wandering (1762-1770) during which he believed that he was seeking asylum from his persecutors. Among other places, he stops at Motiers; on the Ile de Saint-Pierre in the Lake of Bienne; in England, and the South of France. To defend himself he writes Les Confessions, and later Rousseau Juge de Jean-Jacques, and the Rêveries. In 1770 he returns to Paris where he lived simply, and, save for his own now settled delusion, in peace, until his death at Ermenonville in 1778. |