Rousseau’s book is great in spite of its introductory sentence; his subject after all was not unique, for each of us can follow his example and write at least one book about ourselves; and perhaps he told less of the unvarnished truth than he intended, for being an artist in every fiber of his body, he selected from his experience not his most singular adventures, but his adventures in those realms of experience—in sex, for example—which his readers were surest to understand and find interesting. But with his famous announcement, whether or not he followed it, our malady began. Hence all the poems and novels of autobiography, all the diaries of young men and maidens, old men and children, all the bouquets of verse still showered upon us in which the poet confides his intimate symptoms. In all this there is little to remind us of great art, or of the times in which great art has been made; the resemblance is rather to a hospital or an old folks’ home, where the inmates find importance in the fact that they have been there longer than their fellows, or are younger, or a little less blind and deaf. Hence also our difficulty in understanding earlier literature, of a date when not originality but excellence was the aim. When we first read Shakespeare’s sonnets or Sidney’s, we conclude with satisfaction that the poet was writing out of his heart, in the Rousseau fashion. But when we learn that these stories are works of art, dramatic renderings of life, and that the “I” who speaks in the lines is first of all the hero of the story, whether or not he is the poet too; and when we learn further that much of the material is adapted from earlier poets, used over again as we use old words to make up new sentences—then perhaps our respect for the master vanishes, our ideal is cracked; they were not such original poets after all. It is the defect of our taste. We forget that the oldest phrases, if they have the poetic excellence of being true to all of us, are renewed and become personal in the adventure of each individual. Though Job ought to get the credit, by all modern standards, of uttering that very original profession of faith, “I know that my redeemer liveth”, yet the words were too full of possible meanings to remain linked with Job’s private misfortunes; being already immortal, they seem never to have been said for a first time. Lover after lover has found in his own passion the meaning of some old song, perhaps “My love is like the red, red rose”, which until the passion fell on him seemed sentimental and silly. And Rousseau himself in the _Confessions_, at the very outset of his egotism, of his originality, of his indecorous opposing of the individual to the race, records his boyhood love of an old folk-song—precisely the kind of art from which his doctrine led us away.