A Short History of French Literature
year or two president. In 1721 he produced the _Lettres Persanes_, and
four years later the curious little prose poem called the _Temple de
Gnide_. Some objection was made by the minister Fleury, who was rigidly
orthodox, to the satirical tone of the former book in ecclesiastical
matters, but Montesquieu was none the less elected of the Academy in
1728. He had given up his position at the Bordeaux Parlement a few years
before this, and set out on an extensive course of travel, noting
elaborately the manners, customs, and constitution of the countries
through which he passed. Two years of this time were spent in England,
for which country, politically speaking, he conceived a great
admiration. On his return to France he lived partly in Paris, but
chiefly at his estate of La Brede, taking an active interest in its
management, and in the various occupations of a country gentleman, but
also working unceasingly at his masterpiece, the _Esprit des Lois_.
This, however, was not published for many years, and was long preceded
by the book which ranks second in importance to it, the _Grandeur et
Decadence des Romains_, 1734. This was Montesquieu's first serious work,
and it placed him as high among serious writers as the _Lettres
Persanes_ had among lighter authors. The _Esprit des Lois_ itself did
not appear till 1748. Montesquieu, whose life was in no way eventful,
lived for some years longer, dying in Paris on the 10th of February,
1755. Besides the works mentioned he had written several dialogues and
other trifles, a considerable number of _Pensees_, and some articles for
the earlier volumes of the Encyclopaedia.
[Sidenote: Lettres Persanes.]
[Sidenote: Gradeur et Decadence des Romains]
Montesquieu probably deserves the title of the greatest man of letters
of the French eighteenth century, the superior versatility and more
superficial brilliancy of Voltaire being compensated in him by far
greater originality and depth of thought. His three principal works
deserve to be considered in turn. The _Lettres Persanes_, in which the
opinions of a foreigner on French affairs are given, is not entirely
original in conception; the idea of the vehicle being possibly suggested
by the _Amusements Divers_ of Dufresny the comic author. The working
out, however, is entirely Montesquieu's, and was followed closely enough
by the various writers, who, with Voltaire and Goldsmith at their head,
have adopted a similar medium for satire and criticism since. It is not
too much to say that the entire spirit of the _philosophe_ movement in
its more moderate form is contained and anticipated in the _Lettres
Persanes_. All the weaknesses of France in political, ecclesiastical,
and social arrangements are here touched on with a light but sure hand,
and the example is thus set of attacking 'les grands sujets.' From a
literary point of view the form of this work is at least as remarkable
as the matter. Voltaire himself is nowhere more witty, while Montesquieu
has over his rival the indefinable but unquestionable advantage of
writing more like a gentleman. There is no single book in which the
admirable capacity of the French language for jesting treatment of
serious subjects is better shown than in the _Lettres Persanes_.
Montesquieu's next important work was of a very different character. The
_Considerations sur les Causes de la Grandeur et de la Decadence des
Romains_ is an entirely serious work. It does not as yet exhibit the
magnificent breadth of view and the inexhaustible fertility of
explanation which distinguish the _Esprit des Lois_, but it has been
well regarded as a kind of preliminary exercise for that great work.
Montesquieu here treats an extensive but homogeneous and manageable
subject from the point of view of philosophical history, after a method
which had been partially tried by Bossuet, and systematically arranged
by Vico in Italy, but which was not fully developed till Turgot's time.
That is to say, his object is not merely to exhibit, but to explain the
facts, and to explain them on general principles applicable with due
modifications to other times and other histories. Accordingly, the style
of the _Grandeur et Decadence_ is as grave and dignified as that of the
_Lettres Persanes_ is lively and malicious. It is sometimes a little too
sententious in tone, and suffers from the habit, induced probably by
_Pensee_-writing, of composing in very brief paragraphs. But it is an
excellent example of its kind, and especially remarkable for the extreme
clearness and lucidity with which the march and sequence of events in
the gross is exhibited.
[Sidenote: Esprit des Lois.]
The _Esprit des Lois_ is, however, a far greater book than either of
these, and far more original. The title may be thought to be not
altogether happy, and indeed rather ambiguous, because it does not of
itself suggest the extremely wide sense in which the word law is
intended to be taken. An exact if cumbrous title for the book would be
'On the Relation of Human Laws and Customs to the Laws of Nature.' The
author begins somewhat formally with the old distinction of politics
into democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. He discusses the principles
of each and their bearings on education, on positive law, on social
conditions, on military strength, offensive and defensive, on individual
liberty, on taxation and finance. Then an abrupt return is made from the
effects to the causes of constitutions and polity. The theory of the
influence of physical conditions, and especially of climate, on
political and social institutions--a theory which is perhaps more than
any other identified with the book--receives special attention, and a
somewhat disproportionate space is given to the question of slavery in
connection with it. From climate Montesquieu passes to the nature of
the soil, as in its turn affecting civil polity. He then attacks the
subject of manners and customs as distinct from laws, of trade and
commerce, of the family, of jurisprudence, of religion. The book
concludes with an elaborate examination of the feudal system in France.
Throughout it the reader is equally surprised at the varied and exact
knowledge of the author, and at his extraordinary fertility in general
views. This fertility is indeed sometimes a snare to him, and leads to
rash generalisation. But what has to be remembered is, that he was one
of the pioneers of this method of historical exploration, and that
hundreds of principles which, after correction by his successors, have
passed into general acceptance, were discovered, or at least enunciated,
by him for the first time. Nothing is more remarkable in Montesquieu,
and nothing more distinguishes him from the common run of his somewhat
self-satisfied and short-sighted successors, than the steady hold he
keeps on the continuity of history, and his superiority to the shallow
view of his day (constantly put forward by Voltaire), according to which
the middle ages were a dark period of barbarism, the study of which
could be of no use to any one but a mere curiosity hunter. Montesquieu
too, almost alone of his contemporaries, had a matured and moderate plan
of political and social reform. While some of them indulged in an idle
and theoretical Republicanism, and others in the old unpractical
_frondeur_ spirit, eager to pull down but careless about building up,
Montesquieu had conceived the idea of a limited monarchy, not identical
with that of England, but in many ways similar to it; an ideal which in
the first quarter of the eighteenth century might have been put in
practice with far better chance of success than in the first quarter of
the nineteenth. The merely literary merits of this great book are equal
to its philosophical merits. The vast mass of facts with which the
author deals is selected with remarkable judgment, and arranged with
remarkable lucidity. The style is sober, devoid of ornament, but
admirably proportioned and worked out. There are few greater books, not
merely in French but in literature, than the _Esprit des Lois_.
[Sidenote: Voltaire.]
With Voltaire the case is very different. Very many of his innumerable
works have directly philosophical titles, but no one of them is a work
of much interest or merit. His 'Philosophic Letters,' 1733, published
after his return from England, and the source of much trouble to him,
are the lively but not very trustworthy medium of a contrast between
English liberty and toleration and French arbitrary government. His
'Discourses on Man,' and other verse of the same kind, are
verse-philosophy of the class of Pope's. The pompously named 'Treatise
on Metaphysics,' 1734, is very much the same in substance if not in
form. The remarks on Pascal's _Pensees_ are unimportant contributions to
the crusade against superstition; the Philosophical Dictionary, 1764, is
a heterogeneous collection of articles with the same object. The _Essai
sur les Moeurs_, 1756, composed not improbably in rivalry with
Montesquieu, contains much acute reflection on particulars, but is
injured by the author's imperfect information as to the subjects of
which he was treating, by his entirely unphilosophical contempt for the
'Dark Ages,' and indeed by the absence of any general conception of
history which can be called philosophical. Voltaire's real importance,
however, in connection with the _philosophe_ movement is to be found,
not in the merit or value of any one of his professedly philosophical
books, but in the fact that all his works, his poems, his plays, his
histories, his romances, his innumerable flying essays and papers of all
sorts, were invariably saturated with its spirit, and helped to
communicate it to others. It cannot be said that Voltaire had any clear
conception of the object which he wished to attain, except in so far as
the famous watchword 'Ecrasez l'Infame' goes. This means not, as has
been erroneously thought, 'crush Christianity,' but 'crush persecuting
superstition.' He was by no means in favour of any political reform,
except as far as private rights were concerned. He would have liked the
exaggerated political privileges of the Church (which enabled it to
persecute dissidents, and inflicted on laymen an unfair share of
taxation) to be revoked, the cruel and irrational procedure of the
French tribunals to be reformed, Church lands to be in great part
secularised, and so forth; but he never seems to have faced the
necessity of connecting these reforms with a radical alteration of the
whole system of government. The sharp point of his ridicule was,
however, always at the service of the aggressive party, especially for
what he had most at heart, the overthrow of dogmatic and traditional
theology and ecclesiasticism. For this purpose, as has been said
already, he was willing to make, and did make, all his works, no matter
of what kind (except a few scattered writings on mathematics and
physics, pure and simple, in which he took great interest), into more or
less elaborate pamphlets, and to put at the service of the movement his
great position as the head of French and indeed of European letters. His
habitual inaccuracy, and the inferiority of his mind in strictly logical
faculty and in commanding range of view, disabled him from really
serious contributions to philosophy of any kind. The curious mixture of
defects and merits in this great writer is apt to render piecemeal
notice of him, such as is necessitated by the plan of this book,
apparently unfavourable. But no literary historian can take leave of
Voltaire with words of intentional disfavour. The mere fact that it has
been necessary to take detailed notice of him in every one of the last
six chapters, is roughly indicative of his unequalled versatility. But,
versatile as he is, there is perhaps no department of his work, save