ness and the hypocrisy, of the great lights of the time. Granting that Pope should not himself have published, and certainly that he should not have falsified, the documents, can we deny that they are documents of the highest interest? Would we have burnt them if the alternative had been possible? In speaking of Rousseau, the only danger is that of exaggerating the importance of his work. To suppress his writings would have been to suppress the fullest utterance of the contemporary spirit; and, whether that spirit was of heaven or hell, or a strange mixture of both, its revelation to itself and us was surely desirable. Rousseau's prophecy that he would have no followers in his enterprise has hardly been fulfilled, unless in the sense that no one has been quite so reckless in self-exposure. Byron is not the only person who has exhibited to Europe the 'pageant of a bleeding heart,' and it need not be argued that the practice is often injurious to the simplicity and dignity of the performer. Even so, the world may be, on the whole, the gainer. And, if we can get rid of the degrading part of the performance, the complicity of the man exposed in his own exposure, may we not have the benefit without paying such a price? It is a natural, and
