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Updated: June 20, 2025
Montaigne's language is not Rabelais's, Pascal's is not Montaigne's, Montesquieu's is not Pascal's. Each of the four languages, taken by itself, is admirable because it is original. Every age has its own ideas; it must have also words adapted to those ideas. Languages are like the sea, they move to and fro incessantly.
I would also refer my readers to my "Old Roman World," to Sismondi's Fall of the Roman Empire, and to Montesquieu's treatise on the Decadence of the Romans. The original Roman authorities which have come down to us are meagre and few.
In Montesquieu's time it was said that the cause of the maintenance of great armaments was the despotic power of kings, who made war in the hope of augmenting by conquest their personal revenues and gaining glory.
We see therefore how justly flattering and profound, and at the same time how ominous, was Montesquieu's saying that the principle of democracy is virtue. Natural society unites beings in time and space; it fixes affection on those creatures on which we depend and to which our action must be adapted.
That box, again, as he notes, was restored by 'La Grandemain. This fact, with Grimm's anecdote, identifies 'La Grandemain, not with Madame d'Aiguillon, but with Madame de Vasse, 'the Comtesse, as Goring calls her, though Grimm makes her a Marquise. If Montesquieu's private papers and letters in MS. had been published in full, we should probably know more of this matter.
Sometimes, however, the future gravity of Montesquieu's genius reveals itself amidst the shrewd or biting judgments. It is in the Lettres persanes that he seeks to set up the notion of justice above the idea of God himself.
There were one or two clever Englishmen present; Vincent and I joined them. "Have you met the Persian prince yet?" said Sir George Lynton to me; "he is a man of much talent, and great desire of knowledge. He intends to publish his observations on Paris, and I suppose we shall have an admirable supplement to Montesquieu's Lettres Persannes!"
A history of its influence would be a history of one of the most important sides of speculative activity. In the social writings of Rousseau himself there is hardly a chapter which does not contain tacit reference to Montesquieu's book.
And he continues his criticism, having in view Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, an excellent book at bottom, but sub-divided: the famous author, worn out before the end, was unable to infuse inspiration into all his ideas, and to arrange all his matter.
'There can't? said I; 'well, my friend, let me tell you there can. Now compare this name: "Montesquieu's Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans, with illustrative notes," etc., with a name like this: "The Roman Aristocrats Ripped, Rooted, and Routed"; or, "How the Roman Plutocrats were Peppered and Pounded."
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