invective against the effeminacy and frivolity of the Parisian. One of
the most significant episodes in the discussion is the lengthy criticism
on the immortal Misanthrope of Molière. Rousseau admits it for the
masterpiece of the comic muse, though with characteristic perversity he
insists that the hero is not misanthropic enough, nor truly misanthropic
at all, because he flies into rage at small things affecting himself,
instead of at the large follies of the race. Again, he says that Molière
makes Alceste ridiculous, virtuous as he is, in order to win the
applause of the pit. It is for the character of Philinte, however, that
Rousseau reserves all his spleen. He takes care to describe him in terms
which exactly hit Rousseau's own conception of his philosophic enemies,
who find all going well because they have no interest in anything going
better; who are content with everybody, because they do not care for
anybody; who round a full table maintain that it is not true that the
people are hungry. As criticism, one cannot value this kind of analysis.
D'Alembert replied with a much more rational interpretation of the great
comedy, but finding himself seized with the critic's besetting
impertinence of improving masterpieces, he suddenly stopped with the
becoming reflection--"But I perceive, sir, that I am giving lessons to
Molière."[351]

The constant thought of Paris gave Rousseau an admirable occasion of
painting two pictures in violent contrast, each as over-coloured as the
other by his mixed conceptions of the Plutarchian antique and imaginary
pastoral. We forget the depravation of the stage and the ill living of
comedians in magnificent descriptions of the manly exercises and
cheerful festivities of the free people on the shores of the Lake of
Geneva, and in scornful satire on the Parisian seraglios, where some
woman assembles a number of men who are more like women than their
entertainers. We see on the one side the rude sons of the republic,