The novel of the winter season of 1760-61, was “The New Eloïsa,” by Jean Jacques Rousseau.
It is hardly possible to write a life of Rousseau or of Voltaire without comparing them. Voltaire, all sharp sense: and Rousseau all hot sensibility; Rousseau, visionary, dreamer, sensualist, sentimentalist, madman: and Voltaire, the sanest genius who ever lived, practical, businesslike, brilliant, easy, sardonic. The one’s name stands as a synonym for a biting wit, the other’s for a wild passion.
Yet they had much in common. Both belonged to the great philosophic party. In the burning zeal of their mutual hatred of l’infâme Voltaire sometimes lost his head; and Rousseau lost his heart. Both fought tooth and nail all their lives for Tolerance and for Liberty. Both foresaw that stupendous change called the French Revolution, and both foresaw it bloodless, serene, and glorious.
By January 21, 1761, “Eloïsa”, which had been written in the little cottage Madame d’Épinay had lent Rousseau in the Montmorency forest, had been read at Ferney.
Rousseau had already been in opposition to Voltaire both on the subject of a theatre in Geneva, and on optimism.
But still, though they had greatly disagreed, they had not been (“Candide” notwithstanding) exactly enemies.
And then, in the October of 1760, Voltaire had written gaily on the theatre subject—“Jean Jacques showed that a theatre was unsuitable to Geneva: and I, I built one.” Jean Jacques was at once too womanish, too impulsive, and too vain to keep long on good terms with a cynical person who could airily agree to differ in that way. He admired his rival’s “beaux talents,” but he was jealous of them. He was jealous, too, of his power and influence in Geneva. By the June of 1760 he had worked himself into something like hating this Voltaire; and, Rousseau-like, he sat down and wrote a letter to tell him so. Voltaire, still perfectly cool, observed to Theriot on June 26th that Jean Jacques had become quite mad. “It is a great pity.”
And then came “The New Eloïsa.”
That tissue of absurdities and genius, of fine, false sentiments and highly ridiculous social views—set forth with the warmth, the energy, and the passion which are Rousseau’s alone—would in any case have aroused Voltaire’s contempt.
But when he added to it their present differences on the theatre topic, and their past differences on optimism, and the childish rancour of Rousseau’s last letter—above all, when he saw that those owls, the public, opened their stupid eyes and were quite dazzled and delighted with the sham glitter of this false romance about the highly improper Julie and her no more respectable tutor—his ire was roused.