112 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

father devoted herself to him. According to his ownaccount, his childish years were happy. Loved andcaressed by many relations, and watched over by hisaunt, he was indulged without being spoiled. His fa-ther taught him to read, after the business of the daywas over. That his attention might be excited, thelong romances of Scuderi and the elder Crebillon were put into his hands. His father shared the plea-sure he took in this occupation, and parent and childoften sat up all night to indulge in it: a taste for theromantic, and a precocious knowledge of the languageof passion and sentiment, were thus impressed upon theboy. When the collection of romances was ended, theyturned to other books. They had a good collection,being a portion of the library of his mother’s father, aminister of the church. The “ History of the Churchand the Empire," by Le Seur ; Bossuet ’s “ Discourseon Universal History ; ” Plutarch ’s. “ Lives;" Ovid’s“ Metamorphosesthe works of Moliere, La Bruyere ,and Fontenelle, were among them. The boy read to1720. his father as he sat at work. “ I thus," RousseauiEtat. wr i teSj “ imbibed a singular taste, perhaps unexampled8 ’ at my age. Plutarch , above all, became my favouritereading, and the pleasure I took in it cured me some-what of my love for romances, and I soon learnt toprefer Agesilaus , Brutus, and Aristides, to Oorondates,Artamenes, and Juba. These delightful books, andthe conversations to which they gave rise between myfather and me, formed that independent and republicanspirit, that proud untameable character, impatient ofyoke and servitude, which has tormented me throughlife, in situations ill adapted to foster it. With mythoughts continually occupied by Rome and Greece , —living, so to speak, with their great men, born myselfthe citizen of a republic, and the son of a father whosestrongest passion was love of his country,— I warmedby his example—I fancied myself Greek or Roman —I became the man whose life I read. The account ofacts of constancy and intrepidity which struck me