doivent avoir avec la constitution de chaque gouvernement, les mœurs, le climat, la religion, le commerce, &c. It consists of thirty-one books, which in some editions are grouped in six parts. Speaking summarily, the first part, containing eight books, deals with law in general and with forms of government; the second, containing five, with military arrangements, with taxation, &c.; the third, containing six, with manners and customs, and their dependence on climatic conditions; the fourth, containing four, with economic matters; and the fifth, containing three, with religion. The last five books, forming a kind of supplement, deal specially with Roman, French, and feudal law. The most noteworthy peculiarity of the book to a cursory reader lies in the section dealing with effects of climate, and this indeed was almost the only characteristic which the vulgar took in, probably because it was easily susceptible of parody and reductio ad absurdum. The singular spirit of moderation which distinguishes its views on politics and religion was indeed rather against it than in its favour in France, and Helvétius, who was as outspoken as he was good-natured, had definitely assigned this as the reason of his unfavourable judgment. On the other hand, if not destructive it was sufficiently critical, and it thus raised enemies on more than one side. It was long suspected, but is now positively known, that the book (not altogether with the goodwill of the pope) was put on the Index, and the Sorbonne projected, though it did not carry out, a regular censure. To all these objectors the author replied in a masterly défense; and there seems to be no foundation for the late and scandalous stories which represent him as having used Mme de Pompadour’s influence to suppress criticism. The fact was that, after the first snarlings of envy and incompetence had died away, he had little occasion to complain. Even Voltaire, who was his decided enemy, was forced at length to speak in public, if not in private, complimentarily of the Esprit, and from all parts of Europe the news of success arrived.
Montesquieu enjoyed his triumph rather at La Brède than at Paris. He was becoming an old man, and, unlike Fontenelle, he does not seem to have preserved in old age the passion for society which had marked his youth. He certainly spent much of his later years in the country, though he sometimes visited Paris, and on one visit procured the release of his admirer Laurent Angliviel de La Beaumelle from an imprisonment which La Beaumelle had suffered at the instance of Voltaire. He is said also to have been instrumental in obtaining a pension for Alexis Piron. Nor did he by any means neglect literary composition. The curious little romance of Arsace et Isménie, a short and unfinished treatise on Taste, many of his published Pensées, and much unpublished matter date from the period subsequent to the Esprit des lois. He did not, however, live many years after the appearance of his great work. At the end of 1754 he visited Paris, with the intention of getting rid of the lease of his house there and finally retiring to La Brède. He was shortly after taken ill with an attack of fever, which seems to have affected the lungs, and in less than a fortnight he died, on the 10th of February 1755, aged sixty-six. He was buried in the church of St Sulpice with little pomp, and the Revolution obliterated all trace of his remains.
The literary and philosophical merits of Montesquieu and his position, actual and historical, in the literature of France and of Europe, are of unusual interest. At the beginning of the next century the vicomte de Bonald classed him with Racine and Bossuet, as the object of a “religious veneration” among Frenchmen. But Bonald was not quite a suitable spokesman for France, and it may be doubted whether the author of the Esprit des lois has ever really occupied any such position in his own country. For a generation after his death he remained indeed the idol and the great authority of the moderate reforming party in France. Montesquieu is not often quotable, or quoted, at the present day, and the exact criticism of our time challenges the accuracy of his facts. Although he was really the founder, or at least one of the founders, of the sciences of comparative politics and of the philosophy of history, his descendants and followers in these sciences think they have outgrown him. In France his popularity has always been dubious and contested. It is a singular thing that for more than a century there was no properly edited edition of his works, and nothing even approaching a complete biography of him, the place of the latter being occupied by the meagre and rhetorical Éloges of the last century. According to his chief admirers, he is hardly read at all in France to-day, and they attempt to explain the fact by confessing that Montesquieu, great as he is, is not altogether great according to French principles. It is not only that he is an Anglo-maniac, but that he is rather English than French in style and thought. He is almost entirely dispassionate in politics, but he lacks the unswerving deductive consistency which Frenchmen love in that science. His wit, it is said, is quaint and a little provincial, his style irregular and in no definite genre.
Some of these things may be allowed to exist and to be defects in Montesquieu, but they are balanced by merits which render them almost insignificant. It is on his three principal works that his fame does and must rest. Each one of these is a masterpiece in its kind. It is doubtful whether the Lettres persanes yield at their best either in wit or in giving lively pictures of the time to the best of Voltaire’s similar work, though they are more unequal. There is, moreover, the great difference between Montesquieu and Voltaire that the former is a rational reformer, and not a mere persifleur or frondeur, to whom fault-finding is more convenient than acquiescence for showing off his wit. Of course this last description does not fully or always describe Voltaire, but it often does. It is seldom or never applicable to Montesquieu. Only one of Voltaire’s own charges against the book and its author must be fully allowed. He is said to have replied to a friend who urged him to give up his habit of sneering at Montesquieu, “Il est coupable de lèse-poésie,” and this is true. Not only are Montesquieu’s remarks on poetry childish (he himself occasionally wrote verses, and very bad ones), but he is never happy in purely literary appreciation. The Considérations are noteworthy, not only for the complete change of style (which from the light and mocking tone of the Lettres becomes grave, weighty and sustained, with abundance of striking expression), but for the profundity and originality of the views, and for the completeness with which the author carries out his plan. These words—except, perhaps the last clause—apply with increasing force to the Esprit des lois. The book has been accused of desultoriness, but this arises, in part at least, from a misapprehension of the author’s design. At the same time, it is impossible to deny that the equivocal meaning of the word “law,” which has misled so many reasoners, has sometimes misled Montesquieu himself. For the most part, however, he keeps the promise of his sub-title (given above) with fidelity, and applies it with exhaustive care. It is only in the last few books, which have been said to be a kind of appendix, that something of irrelevancy suggests itself. The real importance of the Esprit des lois, however, is not that of a formal treatise on law, or even on polity. It is that of an assemblage of the most fertile, original and inspiriting views on legal and political subjects, put in language of singular suggestiveness and vigour, illustrated by examples which are always apt and luminous, permeated by the spirit of temperate and tolerant desire for human improvement and happiness, and almost unique in its entire freedom at once from doctrinairism, from visionary enthusiasm, from egotism, and from an undue spirit of system. As for the style, no one who does not mistake the definition of that much used and much misused word can deny it to Montesquieu. He has in the Esprit little ornament, but his composition is wholly admirable. Yet another great peculiarity of this book, as well as of the Considérations, has to be noticed. The genius of the author for generalization is so great, his instinct in political science so sure, that even the falsity of his premises frequently fails to vitiate his conclusions. He has known wrong, but he has thought right.
The best edition of Montesquieu is that of Edouard Laboulaye (7 vols., Paris, 1875–1879), the best biography that of Louis Vian
