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Such impressions ramify very widely, and masque themselves very subtly, in historical works written in the modern fashion; but I find the trace of their presence in the domain of jurisprudence in the praise which is frequently bestowed on the little apologue of Montesquieu concerning the Troglodytes, inserted in the Lettres Persanes.
The University of Paris, under the direction of Rollin, was developing the intelligence and lively powers of burgessdom; and Montesquieu, as yet full young, was shooting his missiles in the Lettres persanes at the men and the things of his country with an almost cynical freedom, which was, as it were, the alarum and prelude of all the liberties which he scarcely dared to claim, but of which he already let a glimpse be seen.
Elsewhere the same great writer adds: "You may see in Paris individuals who have enough to live upon for the rest of their days, yet they labour so arduously as to shorten their days, in order, as they say, to assure themselves of a livelihood." These two marked characteristics are as true of the French peasant now-a-days as of the polite society described in the "Lettres Persanes."
He was to live and die a fighter in the ranks of progress, a champion in the mighty struggle which was now beginning against the powers of darkness in France. The first great blow in that struggle had been struck ten years earlier by Montesquieu in his Lettres Persanes; the second was struck by Voltaire in the Lettres Philosophiques.
England is the freest country in the world; I do not except any republic." He returned to France so smitten with the parliamentary or moderate form of government, as he called it, that he seemed sometimes to forget the prudent maxim of the Lettres persanes.
At about the same time as the publication of the Lettres Persanes, there appeared upon the scene in Paris a young man whose reputation was eventually destined far to outshine that of Montesquieu himself.
Ratsch; though, indeed, too, when Ivan Matveitch addressed him at table with some such question as: 'N'est-ce pas, M. le Commandeur, c'est Montesquieu qui a dit cela dans ses Lettres Persanes? he had still, sometimes dropping a spoonful of soup on his ruffle, responded profoundly: 'Ah, Monsieur de Montesquieu?
Whoso wil thanne gon toward Tarterie, toward Persie, toward Caldee, and toward Ynde, he most entre the see, at Gene or at Venyse or at sum other havene, that I have told zou before. And than passe men the see, and arryven at Trapazond, that is a gode cytee; and it was wont to ben the havene of Pountz. There is the havene of persanes and of medaynes and of the marches there bezonde.
The success of the Lettres persanes was great; Montesquieu had said what many people thought without daring to express it; the doubt which was nascent in his mind, and which he could only withstand by an effort of will, the excessive freedom of the tone and of the style scared the authorities, however; when he wanted to get into the French Academy, in the place of M. de Sacy, Cardinal Fleury opposed it formally.
The new century was not long in, the Regent Philip of Orléans had not long been in power, before France showed that Versailles had ceased to control her literature. A new Rabelais with an 18th century lisp, Montesquieu, by seasoning his Lettres Persanes with a sauce piquante compounded of indecency and style, succeeded in making the public swallow some incendiary morsels.
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