[61] Nouv. Hél., V. iii. "You remember Rousseau's description of an English morning: such are the mornings I spend with these good people."—Cowper to Joseph Hill, Oct. 25, 1765. Works, iii. 269. In a letter to William Unwin (Sept. 21, 1779), speaking of his being engaged in mending windows, he says, "Rousseau would have been charmed to have seen me so occupied, and would have exclaimed with rapture that he had found the Emilius who, he supposed, had subsisted only in his own idea." For a description illustrative of the likeness between Rousseau and Cowper in their feeling for nature, see letter to Newton (Sept. 18, 1784, v. 78), and compare it with the description of Les Charmettes, making proper allowance for the colour of prose.
[62] IV. x. 260.
[63] V. ii. 37.
[64] V. ii. 47-52.
[65] Rousseau considered that the Fourth and Sixth parts of the New Heloïsa were masterpieces of diction. Conf. ix. 334.
[66] VI. viii.. 298. Conf., xi. 106.
[67] The La Bédoyère case, which began in 1745. See Barbier, iv. 54, 59, etc.
[68] III. xviii. 84.
[69] III. xx. 116. In the letter to Christopher de Beaumont (p. 102), he fires a double shot against the philosophers on the one hand, and the church on the other; exalting continence and purity, of which the philosophers in their reaction against asceticism thought lightly, and exalting marriage over the celibate state, which the churchmen associated with mysterious sanctity.
[70] I. lxii.