Rousseau, even when he repeated Locke’s precepts, caught the ear of a wider public because he appealed not so much to reason as to feeling, and instead of commending his doctrines by argument, charged them with warmth and eloquence.

Locke had been before him in exposing the shams and pedantry of schoolmasters, as in striving for a more natural method of education; but he carried out his task in a quiet professional way, regarding the child as a patient in need of a new regimen, but never setting him on a pedestal.

It was Rousseau’s inspiration to take the beauty and promise of childhood for his text, to make the child stand forth as the hope of the race, the centre of all its aspirations, the proof of its powers.[74] Thus his philosophy acquired the dignity of a new faith; and yet the child lost nothing of his personal and human interest, for in Rousseau’s scheme, he was the very core of a new conception of family life. There could be no better setting for a natural education than the family, no simpler unit of fellowship; and Rousseau drew persuasive pictures of the child at successive stages of his growth,—pictures which writers of moral tales reproduced with modifications of their own, and a greater or less amount of theory.

For there was this great difference between Locke and Rousseau, in their effect on children’s books: that Locke, beyond encouraging Fables, did no more than furnish a toy library with his Thoughts; whereas Rousseau taught two generations of writers to substitute living examples for maxims.

In making Emile an orphan, Rousseau was guarding against interference with his experiment; it is no part of his doctrine that a child should be brought up by any but his parents, unless they are unable or unwilling to do their duty. Then, indeed, a Tutor must be found, though he will never be required, after the manner of tutors, to instruct. A child needs no other teacher than Experience, no schoolroom but the open country which is also his playground; all that the tutor need do is to enter into his interests and amusements as an equal, and watch over him while he educates himself. This marks a revolutionary change in the attitude of the Philosopher to the Child. Locke’s theory of habit, his practice of reasoning with children, have no place in the new scheme. Rousseau would as soon have a child be five feet in height as to have judgment at the age of ten. Children, he declares, are incapable of reason, Nature meant them to be children before they become men. To forget this is to force a fruit that has neither ripeness nor savour, to produce old infants and child-philosophers.

Rousseau hits hard and straight at the pedantic mania for instruction that filled the early miscellanies with Geography, Chronology and other studies “remote from man and especially from the child”. Emile must never be allowed to cheat himself with words. He shall learn nothing by heart, not even Fables; for these he is sure to misinterpret. And how is a child to grow up with any respect for truth, if his first book teach him that Foxes speak and speak the same language as Ravens?

With Words and Fables, Rousseau dismisses all the inventions of primitive imagination that find their natural place in a child’s mind.

At twelve, Emile hardly knows what a book is. He has spent his whole life in the country, with a tutor whom he regards as a playfellow. In climbing among rocks and trees and leaping over brooks, he has learnt to measure himself with his surroundings and has lost all sense of danger. No human will has ever opposed him, and since it is useless to fight against circumstance, he submits to necessary evils, and bears pain without complaining.

Emile is stronger and more capable than other children; yet conscious of his dependence on others, of his need of protection. Abstract terms, such as duty and obligation, mean nothing to him, nor will he practise the empty forms of courtesy; but he has the basis of all good breeding, being candid and fearless, but neither arrogant nor self-conscious.

From twelve to fifteen, Emile’s education is equally practical. Curiosity moves him to experiment and discovery, and thus he learns the simple truths of science without teaching. Locke’s belief in utility was not greater than Rousseau’s. The word “useful”, he says, is the key to the whole situation. Emile is always to test his discoveries by the question “What is this good for?” and things which do not satisfy this test are of no account. The tutor still attends the boy like his shadow, never seeming to influence the course of events; but since Nature cannot be trusted to adapt herself to his scheme, he now finds it necessary to contrive artificial experiences which Emile accepts as natural.

Rousseau sees nothing inconsistent in this use of artifice by which the Child of Nature, though wholly dependent on the will of his tutor, thinks he is governing himself; yet everything is so planned and so foreseen that he does nothing of his own choice.

It is here that Rousseau grudgingly admits the need of books; but he takes care to restrict his Emile to a single book which deals chiefly with practical affairs. “What is this wonderful Book? is it Aristotle? is it Pliny? is it Buffon? No, it is Robinson Crusoe.”

Here at any rate, Rousseau made no mistake. Had Emile been free to choose, this is precisely the book he would have chosen, though for less philosophical reasons; and the very fact that it fits Rousseau’s scheme of education is a proof that the scheme is sound. Robinson Crusoe, alone on his island, with neither house nor tools, gradually providing for his needs; it is Rousseau’s allegory of the triumph of man, and failure of civilisation. Emile cannot understand this yet, but the book will be a touchstone for his taste and judgment, and serve him and his tutor as a text for all their talk on the natural sciences. The boy’s interest is wholly practical; but it stimulates “the real castle-building of that happy age when we know no other happiness than necessity and freedom”. Of free and imaginative castle-building, Rousseau has no notion, but Emile will know his Robinson Crusoe all the better, if he is allowed to act the story.

“I would have his head turned by it,” says Rousseau, “and have him always busy about his Castle, his goats and his plantation.... I would have him imagine he is Robinson himself.”

It is the reality of drama that appeals to the educator; the hint was not lost upon writers of children’s books.

And now, since Emile cannot remain always in his island, it is time to recall him to everyday life. His natural interest in handicrafts will smooth the transition. The tutor goes with him from shop to shop, that he may understand the division of labour among men. Thus he learns more in an hour than from a whole day’s explanation. And lest this should be only surface knowledge, he must learn some trade (for choice a carpenter’s) which will guard him against common prejudice, and make him independent of fortune.

Rousseau keeps the road so clear for his young traveller that he is not afraid of chance encounters. In these years, Emile is to learn nothing of the relations of man to man. His heart is not to be touched by suffering nor his imagination kindled by the “living spectacle of Nature” which Rousseau himself paints in such glowing colours. Eloquence and poetry are wasted on a child. Moral and spiritual teaching can safely be left till his sixteenth year. Up to that point Emile has studied nothing but the natural world. He has little knowledge, but what he has is real and complete. Simple surroundings have taught him to be content with what he has and to despise luxury, which, according to Rousseau, is the secret of true happiness. His body is strong and active, his mind unprejudiced; he has courage, industry, self-control,—all the virtues proper to his age.

Rousseau’s disciples had some excuse for disregarding one of his chief discoveries: the distinction between childhood and youth. It was obviously impossible to draw a hard and fast line between the two stages, and Rousseau would not give an inch to individual difference. Thus his followers were either forced back upon precedent, or had to trust to their own experience of children. On the one hand, they clung to the old encyclopædic methods; on the other, they transferred Rousseau’s provisions for youth and manhood to an earlier stage. Experience taught them that a child could be stirred by other motives besides prudence and self-love, that moral and spiritual influences in early childhood were not to be ignored, that there were such things as childish imagination and sympathy.

The greater number of moral tales owe their very existence to Rousseau’s inconsistency; for although he had exposed the fallacy of maxims and fables, he found no better substitute than the Example of a perfect Parent or Tutor—a man without passion or prejudice, detached and colourless, who, without seeming to guide or correct, should watch the child’s every movement and on occasion teach Nature herself how to go about her business.

The first generation of Emile, which proved Rousseau’s theory of Childhood, disposed, once for all, of the Infallible Parent in real life. A child might suspect that it was a literary rather than a practical idea, and the few parents who, after a vigorous course of self-discipline, felt equal to the part, would find it easier to sustain by proxy in a moral tale. They decided, at any rate, to ignore Rousseau’s veto upon books for children under twelve, and writers quickly rose to the demand for a new sort of Fables, wherein the Child of Nature, walking in the shadow of the Perfect Parent, acquired a measure of wisdom and philanthropy beyond his years. Such tales, inspired by the Emile, are a satirical comment on the writing of books to prove that books are useless.

Marmontel, though he did not write for children, was an admirable guide for lesser moralists. His vivid character-contrasts, dramatic incidents and humorous treatment of every-day life taught them that art might not be thrown away upon a child’s book, if it only served to keep alive interest and curiosity. The “Good Mother” and “Bad Mother” of the Contes Moraux[75] supplied useful variants of the good and bad child, and the “School for Fathers” encouraged the writers of little books to venture satirical comments on the faults of parents.

It is true that Marmontel’s types are less convincing when reduced for the nursery and coloured by Rousseau. “The School for Fathers” turned out a uniform pattern of the Infallible Parent, and “The Good Mother”, “La femme comme il y en a peu”, assuming the proportions of her virtues, cast a monstrous shadow over two generations; yet there were books that reflected Marmontel’s wise moderation, his sympathy with youthful follies, all that was implied in the motto of his bon Curé, “Moins de prudence et plus de bonté”.

The Nursery had its Marmontel in Armand Berquin, better known by the name of his most famous book, L’Ami des Enfans,[76] an addition that no man deserved better then he. Like Perrault, Berquin owed his reputation to a book that he wrote for children; but times had changed: education had now become of so much consequence that the writer of children’s books was regarded as a public benefactor. Perrault the Academician had never openly acknowledged the Contes of 1697; but in 1784, Berquin’s L’Ami des Enfans was crowned by the French Academy.

Perhaps it was well for Berquin that by this time fairies were discredited in France, and Perrault was gone from his old shelf, so that no child could choose between them. As it was, children of all sizes and conditions, with and without tutors, but all equally ignorant of magic, read Berquin’s stories and read them again. Something of his own sweetness and humour got into his book; they felt that he loved and understood them, and those who lived near him used to crowd round him, eager for a word or a handshake, whenever he came out of his house.

Berquin’s book owes something to Weisse’s Der Kinderfreund, from which he took some of the stories, as well as to the writings of Campe and Salzmann; but no German ever pointed a moral with such playful grace.

There is hardly a point in Rousseau’s argument that Berquin does not illustrate; but he does it in a perfectly natural way, drawing the events out of simple situations, and showing delightful glimpses of childish character.

Marmontel’s “Bad Mother”, with her blind and cruel preference for one of her two children, is easily recognised in the story of “Philippine et Maximin”. His device of moral contrast appears in every variation of Rousseau’s theme.

These are mostly little studies in black and white: Industry opposed to Idleness in “The Two Apple Trees”; a rational education preferred to riches in the story of Narcisse and Hippolyte; the character-contrast grafted on fable in a similar study of two dogs.

Emile’s gentle consciousness of his dependence on others (one of his more amiable traits) is shown in the docility of Prosper, who, by accepting the gardener’s advice, finds in due season ripe strawberries of an exquisite flavour hanging from his plants. “Ah, had I only planted some in my garden,” cries the brother who jeered at him. Whereupon the generous one replies: “You can eat them as if they were your own.”

M. Sage, who might be Emile’s tutor, believes that if he can make his boy Philippe content with what he has, instead of longing for things which he cannot get, he will do more for his happiness than by leaving him untold wealth.

When the boy envies a rich man’s garden, his father says that he himself possesses a finer one. Taking Philippe by the hand, he leads him to the top of a hill that overlooks the open country. “Shall we soon come to our garden, papa?” the boy asks eagerly. “We are already there!” answers M. Sage.

Rousseau himself was not a greater lover of gardens than Berquin. Gardening is the theme of half his stories: “Le rosier à cent feuilles et le genêt d’Espagne”; “Les cerises”; “Les tulipes”; “Les fraises et les grosseilles”; “Les deux pommiers”; the greater number deal with country life and have their setting in the family.

The tale of the farmer who brings a jar of candied fruits to his landlord’s children, is an eloquent sermon against ill-breeding and prejudice.

This is a sequence of moral contrasts. First, the insolent treatment of the farmer by the two boys is set against their little sister’s courtesy, then contrasted with the simple friendliness of their father; and the corresponding scene of their entertainment at the farm is drawn with the same delicate point. The two boys are compared with the farmer’s sons, more capable, even more accomplished than themselves; and stung to shame by the generosity and natural courtesy of their host.

Farming, according to Rousseau, is the most honourable of industries. After farmers he places blacksmiths and carpenters. Berquin brings his children into a natural contact with men of various crafts, the farmer, the blacksmith, the mason. They watch the building of a house and learn the need for division of labour. He can dispense with Rousseau’s artifice. He never hampers himself with theory, but allows Emile’s virtues to appear in common adventures with men and birds and animals.

Clementine, who loads the little peasant girl with useless gifts, learns, in a dialogue with her mother, to serve the real needs of her protegée; the dentist’s visit to Laurette and Marcellin is a test of courage; “Le menteur corrigé par lui-même” becomes a champion of truth.

Foolish wishes and false judgments are corrected according to Rousseau’s plan. Little Fleuri, who, as each new season arrives, would have it last for ever, is made to set down his fickle desires on his father’s tablets, and, faced in Autumn with his Winter, Spring and Summer wishes, decides that all the seasons of the year are good. Armand would cut away the brambles that take toll of the sheep’s wool, but in the nesting season, discovers how the wool is used.

Berquin cannot bring himself to judge the things that are merely beautiful by Rousseau’s standard of utility. Lucette, when she finds gay flowers in a place where her father planted those “tristes oignons”, learns with astonishment that these were tulip-roots; and Berquin allows her to rejoice where a rigid Rousseauist would have compared the uses of flowers and vegetables.

“The time of faults is the time for fables,” said Rousseau; but he put it late, when Emile was no longer a child. Berquin knows what happens in nurseries: that Josephine will forget to feed her canary, that Firmin and Julie will eat forbidden cherries, that Ferdinand, all frankness and generosity, if he cannot control his temper, will be a danger to his friends, and Camille if they give her the chance, will tyrannise over the whole family.

The remedies are mostly found in the natural consequences of these things; but Berquin brushes aside Rousseau’s strict law of necessity with a light mischievous touch; nor does he ever sanction the plan of governing a child by letting him suppose he is the master.

“The Children who wanted to govern themselves”, having tried it, do not wish to repeat the experiment; and Camille is completely reduced by the officer who advises her Mother to give her a uniform and a pair of moustaches, in which she can more appropriately indulge her fancy for ordering people about.

These children of Berquin’s are less hard and self-reliant than Emile. Even the good ones are not unnatural. There is little Alexis on a showery day in June, running first down to the garden to look at the sky, and then back, three steps at a time, to the barometer—only to find that the two are in league against him; and the eight-years-old Marthonie, a delicious picture in her white linen dress, a pair of morocco shoes on her “dear little feet”, and her hair, dark as ebony, hanging in loose curls on her shoulders; Marthonie, who insisted on being dressed for a picnic in a frock of the prettiest apple-green taffetas, with rose-coloured ribbons and shoes—and came home hatless and draggled, a tearful Cinderella with one shoe left in the mud. The Mother who met her thus and only said, “Would you like me to have another silk frock made up for you to-morrow?” owes her wisdom to Rousseau, but her playful irony to Berquin and Marmontel.

Berquin’s parents are nearly infallible, but he does not give them every point in an argument. In the affair of Charlotte and the watch, for example, it is not always M. de Fonrose who scores.

Charlotte invents a dozen reasons for wanting a watch, and her inexorable parent disposes of them all, till she is forced back on Rousseau’s final position. A watch must needs be a useful possession, since her Papa, philosopher as he is, cannot do without it. This, obviously, is a point to Charlotte. If she wants the thing for its usefulness, it is hers. The sudden capitulation is too much for Charlotte. She suspects her Papa of badinage. Not at all; he is perfectly serious. She will find the watch hanging from the tapestry by the side of his bed.

Few English children could buy the first translation of Berquin, in twenty-four volumes. A selection, including many little dramas for three or four persons, appeared later under the title of The Children’s Friend; but the true English version was the admirable Looking Glass for the Mind[77] adapted by Mr. Cooper for E. Newbery and illustrated by John Bewick’s inimitable cuts. Alexis transfers his best grace to Bewick’s “little Anthony”, standing a-tiptoe on a chair to read the barometer; Caroline walks as proudly as Marthonie in her finery; and the four little pupils of Mademoiselle Boulon are not less French for their English names.

It is odd, considering Rousseau’s attitude to the education of girls (for in his account of Sophie he reverses the whole method of Emile’s training) that the trilogy of educational romance, begun with Emile, should have been completed by two women.

Madame d’Epinay, Rousseau’s friend and benefactress, published her Conversations d’Emilie[78] at his request, and Madame de Genlis, in Adèle et Théodore,[79] worked out her own scheme of practical education on his principles.

Of the two, Madame d’Epinay is more faithful to Rousseau, and so great was the interest aroused by the Emile, that she was awarded the French Academy prize for “a work of the greatest benefit to humanity”.

She herself declared that her book contained “neither a plan of education, nor any connection in the ideas”; yet it is plain that Emilie follows Emile like an obedient younger sister.

An age that believed in freedom and equality could not long stand by the privilege of sex, and Emilie, although she suffers some of the restrictions imposed on Sophie, shares the natural education of Emile, and is taught to practise most of his virtues. She gains her knowledge, as he does, from experience; Nature is the wise Mistress who refuses her request for more lessons, and had Emilie’s mother followed her own inclination, it is likely that the little girl at ten years old “Would not yet have known how to read.”

As it is, she is allowed to spend ten years (for Emile’s twelve) in jumping and running, and her enlightened Parent (the counterpart of Emile’s guardian) believes that the time has not been wasted. Not that Emilie is ever allowed to forget Rousseau’s Salic Law concerning obedience and restraint. She is sternly snubbed for romping with her brothers, and after a disastrous adventure with a beautiful green ladder, admonished that “the modesty of her sex requires a decorum which should restrain the giddiness and warmth even of childhood”. This sends her back to her doll, the care of which has so far exercised her ingenuity that her mother “will not oppose a continuation of it for some time to come”. And to Sophie’s sewing and embroidery, Emilie adds a new amusement: that of passing these instructive conversations on to her doll.

Thus even “moments of relaxation” are to be employed by a vigilant mother in order to form the understanding of her child. There is no escape for little Emilie, she must be educated every minute of the day. Her play is always under supervision, always liable to interference and criticism. Her mother, usually her sole companion, is present at all interviews between Emilie and other human creatures.

The book is, in one sense, a simplified Emile, intended for children as well as parents; but Madame d’Epinay has not a vestige of Berquin’s humour to help her along the “paths of pleasure and amusement”. These repeated portraits of Emilie and her mother look dull indeed beside Berquin’s dainty groups, and her insistent doctrine almost hides the one beauty of the book: the character of Emilie.

There is no merit in Madame d’Epinay’s fancy portrait of herself as the Perfect Parent, but Emilie is lifelike, and holds out for a number of years in her stronghold of childhood. It is only on the eve of her tenth birthday that she remarks resignedly, “To-morrow will be an important day. When I rise, I shall no longer be a child”.

The tyranny of reason had, in fact, begun much sooner, when Emilie, curious about her own small part in the Universe, learnt that in time she would become a Reasonable Being.

This is a priceless opportunity to impress the lesson of dependence,—to prove that it is only by mildness, docility and attention that she can hope for a continuation of help and protection.

Punishment, says the Maternal Governess, is proper only for intractable and servile dispositions; but she is willing, before Rousseau, to correct faults by means of Fables.

This is how she deals with her pupil after a courageous burst of naughtiness:

(The very snap of the consonants can be heard.)

Madame d’Epinay was too true a disciple of Rousseau to follow him slavishly. Not only did she ignore his strictures upon reading, through the fear of being singular, and still more that of making an unfortunate experiment, but she was even ready to tolerate myths for the sake of morality, and to compare them with modern instances; on the other hand, it must be confessed that she only once talked of fairies, and regretted it afterwards.

Emilie herself has a child’s love of fairies; but she is made to reason about them:

“Mamma, you will make me umpire between you and the fairies,” says the intelligent little person, making the most of her dull game; and she obediently works it out against herself: “They were, perhaps, two fairies and a genii I met this morning. Well, no matter, Heaven bless them, I say, you are the fairy Luminous and have disenchanted me!”

The Mother never shrinks from this grave responsibility. Berquin, though he made war upon ghosts, was wise enough to let the fairies alone. At least he could laugh like one of them. But Madame d’Epinay, in her first Conversation with Emilie, finds it hard to be amused, and in the twelfth, the little girl declares: “In my whole life I never saw you play at anything”.

This, indeed, is a mother that sends Love himself to school:

Madame de Genlis’s Adèle et Théodore, published in the same year as Emilie, gives her interpretation of Rousseau in the form of correspondence with a mother who desires to be enlightened, but as yet clings to the ordinary customs of Society:

“You prevent your children till the age of thirteen from reading Telemachus, Fontaine’s Fables and all such books, yet you would inspire them with a taste for reading! What books would you give them instead of those I have mentioned? Are they only to read the Arabian Nights and Fairy Tales till they are thirteen?”

The answer gives the author’s convictions about children’s books:

“I neither give my children Fairy Tales to read nor Arabian Nights; not even Madame d’Aulnoy’s Fables, which were composed for this purpose. There is scarcely one of them which has a moral tendency.”

To provide works “proper for infancy” she wrote Les Veillées du Château,[80] tales which carry Rousseau’s theories along a facile stream of conversation and incident. Adèle, until she is seven, is allowed to read no other books. “I shall then”, says Madame de Genlis, “give her the Conversations of Emilie, a book you have often heard me praise, and this will employ her till she is eight.”

The apparent generosity to her rival, however, did not prevent the writer of Adèle et Théodore from attributing the success of Emilie to the good will of the Encyclopædists. “Madame d’Epinay was a philosopher,” she remarks, “and took good care not to talk of religion to her Emilie.”

It is certainly true that Madame de Genlis had many qualifications for her task which Madame d’Epinay lacked; and when for a moment she allows herself to forget her theories, there are glimpses of autobiography in her books. Her own life, in fact, was the most interesting of her tales, and the rest are interesting chiefly for reflections of it.

No child could have reproached Madame de Genlis with never playing at anything. She had an extraordinary childhood, and her early years in the quiet Château of St. Aubin were filled with unusual interests.[81] At eight years old she dictated little romances and comedies to her governess, and amused herself by playing schoolmistress to some Burgundian peasant children who came to cut rushes under her window; at eleven she was the chief attraction of her mother’s theatrical fêtes. It was characteristic of the society of the day to seek refuge in private theatres from political and social realities; most owners of country houses had their own companies composed of friends and neighbours, and thus Félicie, before her twelfth year, had mixed freely with gentlefolk and villagers, and had shown the aptitude for teaching and acting which marked her whole career. Her dramatic talent, indeed, might be said to cover all her other activities, for with her, teaching was little more than a favourite and particularly successful rôle. She was active, curious and enterprising as any child; before her marriage she was an accomplished harpist and fluent writer; afterwards she acquired a knowledge of literature, anatomy, music and flower-painting; but there were other occupations which fitted her even better to be the exponent of Rousseau’s theories. Writing in the Memoirs of her early married life, “I endeavoured”, she says, “to gain some insight into field-labour an gardening. I went to see the cider made. I went to watch all the workmen in the village at work, the carpenter, the weaver, the basket maker”.

Rousseau thought her the most natural and cheerful girl he had ever met. Their friendship was short, but she never wavered in her loyalty to his teaching, and could say at the age of seventy, “What I pride myself on, is knowing twenty trades, by all of which I could earn my bread.”

In 1777, Madame de Genlis was made governess to the daughters of the Duchess of Chartres, for whom, with her own children, she established a school at the Convent of Belle Chasse. Her success was so great that, in 1782, the Duke of Orleans took the unusual step of appointing her as “governor” to his three sons. The result fully justified his courage and silenced the critics who ridiculed this new method of using revolutionary theory to educate princes.

The Duke purchased a country estate at St. Leu, and here the boys made experiments in chemistry, studied botany, practised gardening, carpentry, and other forms of handwork. But Madame de Genlis did more than play the part of Rousseau with three Emiles. She handed on to her pupils the delights of her own childhood. These boys could laugh at Emile marooned in his island. They played out a dozen different Voyages in the park of St. Leu; and had a theatre of their own in which they acted moral plays from the Théâtre d’Education.[82]

Madame de Genlis had long ago added authorship to her list of trades and had written stories for the children of Belle Chasse. It was easy enough to invent new ones for St. Leu. “There is no great wisdom required in the composition,” she declared, “but only Nature and common sense.”

Doubtless her books deserved Madame Guizot’s criticism, “toujours bien et jamais mieux”. She is discursive, even garrulous, and often loses the thread of the story in moral dialogues; but there are tales in the Veillées du Château that suggest her own enjoyment of the “delicious life” with her children; and if none of them betray her love of mischief and adventure, it is but a fresh proof that she was acting a part, that she could not move freely under the cloak of the Infallible Parent. For in actual life she could take either side in a moral contrast, bear her part in the maddest pranks, assume every virtue of a heroine and hide with complete success a thousand faults.

Her books, after all, were simply properties reserved for her parts of Moralist and Schoolmistress. She dramatised the theories of Rousseau, and although her wonderful energy hardly atoned for her lack of depth and soundness, she left a rich legacy of device and suggestion to those who could use it better.

Rousseau’s affinity to Locke on the side of theory, and to Richardson in sentiment may account for some common features of French and English tales, but it does not explain the writing of “Lilliputian” books by two such authors as Berquin and Madame de Genlis.

There is, of course, no great difference between “writing down” Rousseau’s doctrine for children, and making miniature versions of Richardson and La Bruyère; but Berquin’s humour should have saved him from Le Petit Grandison,[83] and Madame de Genlis might have reflected on the undramatic qualities of Le Petit La Bruyère.[84] Berquin’s Lilliputian hero reveals himself in letters to his mother as a perfect miniature of Sir Charles Grandison, not less insufferable for his youth; and the little La Bruyère is made up of conventional homilies: “Of Reading, Study and Application”; “Of Personal Merit”; “Of the Heart” (introduced by a quotation from Marmontel); “Of Insipidity” (perhaps evoked by the other platitudes).

It was Rousseau himself who saw that the subject of education was entirely new, even after Locke’s treatise, and would be new after his own. The closest of his followers overlooked his chief discovery.