Rousseau, Robespierre and English Romanticism
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When Rousseau stood behind the chair of the master of the château of –, and smiled to hear the company dispute about the meaning of the motto of the arms of the family, which he alone knew, and stumbled as he handed the glass of wine to his young mistress, and fancied she coloured at being waited upon by so learned a young footman – then was first kindled that spark which can never be quenched, then was formed the germ of that strong conviction of the disparity between the badge on his shoulder and the aspirations of his soul – the determination, in short, that external situation and advantages are but the mask, and that the mind is the man – armed with which, impenetrable, incorrigible, he went forth conquering and to conquer, and overthrew the monarchy of France and the hierarchies of the earth.
In the sixteenth of his Conversations with Northcote (1830) William Hazlitt was to cite an episode from book III of the Confessions in an attempt to exemplify how its author had ‘stamped his own character and the image of his self-love on the public mind’. Like Robespierre before him, he believed that Rousseau's autobiography had exerted an immense influence upon the French Revolution, far more significant, in its way, than his works of educational or political theory.
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