[328] _Dissertation_, p. 42.

[329] P. 52.

[330] _Conf._, vii. 18, 19. Also _Dissertation_, pp. 74, 75.




CHAPTER IX.

VOLTAIRE AND D'ALEMBERT.


Everybody in the full tide of the eighteenth century had something to do
with Voltaire, from serious personages like Frederick the Great and
Turgot, down to the sorriest poetaster who sent his verses to be
corrected or bepraised. Rousseau's debt to him in the days of his
unformed youth we have already seen, as well as the courtesies with
which they approached one another, when Richelieu employed the
struggling musician to make some modifications in the great man's
unconsidered court-piece. Neither of them then dreamed that their two
names were destined to form the great literary antithesis of the
century. In the ten years that elapsed between their first interchange
of letters and their first fit of coldness, it must have been tolerably
clear to either of them, if either of them gave thought to the matter,
that their dissidence was increasing and likely to increase. Their
methods were different, their training different, their points of view
different, and above all these things, their temperaments were different