upon. But does this imply a corresponding unity of art and literature; a fusion of different types, and an influence of Northern, for example, upon Southern races? That is where I hesitate. Critics trace the growth of 'sentimentalism,' 'romanticism,' 'love of nature,' and so forth; they show their acuteness by recognising early symptoms of each type; and then speak as though its first representative had made a discovery of a new product as a chemist discovers a gas which nobody had ever before perceived. Rousseau, or somebody else, has then the credit of all the subsequent developments, as Watt gets the credit of the steam-engine. Each new critic pushes the origin a little further back, because in reality there is no origin but only a gradual change of form. The real process seems to me to be very different. 'Sentimentalism' was due, I should guess, to the truly 'cosmopolitan' movement: to the social, political, and philosophical changes which were common to all Europe. The emotions, of course, are as old as human nature; they only required a new form of utterance. Rousseau, as abnormally sensitive to the great impulses of the time, was bound to find some appropriate form, and in the Nouvelle Héloïse he imitated Richardson, the man
Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/288
This page has been validated.
274
STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Studies_of_a_Biographer_4.djvu/page288-1024px-Studies_of_a_Biographer_4.djvu.jpg)