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ILLUSTRATIONS

A Dream of the Orient Frontispiece

Hand-painted photogravure after the painting by Benjamin Constant

The Sword Dance 145

Photogravure after the painting by Gêrome

(vii)

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION

IF EVER satire had a distinct call to duty it was during the Regency in France. The ruling class was honeycombed with corruption. The country was groaning under its monarchical afflictions. There seemed to be no hope for the people's salvation from disastrous fate. They were patient, long-suffering beasts of burden, content to be saddled, bridled, and ridden by a pestiferous breed of heartless incompetents, whose sole object in life was selfish pleasure at anyone's expense but their own. The cauldron was seething meanwhile, but did not boil over till near the century end.

This was a splendid opportunity for great souls with great courage, if any had existed. The old prophets of Israel would have made the hills echo with their ringing denunciations of wickedness in high places. Strong champions of human rights would have flashed the sword and fired the spirits of men worthy the name into triumphant vindication of the common right to fair play. But the patriotism of the period was a sorry substitute for the genuine thing. It whined and whispered when it should have shouted. It meekly accepted the rôle of the deaf and dumb Fenella, popping out here and there with mysterious gesticulations and enigmatical signalings, which conveyed meanings of momentous importance, or none, according as one chose to interpret them. The reformer spoke with a muzzle on his mouth, and sometimes it was a golden one.

The satirist is usually a reluctant martyr. He seeks to do good but prefers to do it by stealth and suggestion. Montesquieu was more, or less, than a satirist. A man of high education, versed in the theory and practice of law, an aristocrat of title and wealth, occupying a public position of great influence. He might have given bold utterance to his sentiments and defied officialdom. Instead, he chose the smoother path. He would poke mild fun at

(ix)

x PERSIAN AND CHINESE LETTERS

the abuses of the day. To do this in his own person might not be so effective as if it purported to be the spontaneous impressions of some foreign traveler. The Oriental mind was known to be singularly penetrative, shrewd in getting at the gist of things and expressing keen judgments with a suavity which forbade the taking of offense. So Montesquieu adopted the device of a series of familiar letters exchanged by two Persian travelers in France. They were completed in 172 1.

Popular taste was captivated by the wit and pleasantry of the (< Letters. }> They gently satirized the abuses rife in church and state ; society was held up to ridicule for its pet sins, and when an occasional thrust hurt too deeply, the gentle satirist administered the palliative of a droll story, to show that censors were not necessarily ascetics. Voltaire was a master in this department, as in so many others, and in pride of conscious superiority he ventured to sneer at Montesquieu's appearance as a reformer in the masque of a Persian philosopher. Anybody, said he, could have written the "Persian Letters, }> and straightway he betook himself to the industry of concocting his serio-comic Oriental romances.

To Montesquieu, nevertheless, belongs the honor of pioneering the movement out of which grew the philosophical dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and the literary crusade against mental subjection. The quick popularity of the [< Letters • alarmed the court and its minions. Less was heard of the book during several years preceding the publication of the author's next and more serious work, Considerations sur le Grandeur et la Décadence des Romains, which appeared in 1734. This was followed in fourteen years by the Esprit des Lois, the work on which Montesquieu's philosophic reputation safely rests, as his lighter fame is upheld by the <( Persian Letters. }> Allowing for the changed times and conditions, these are still enjoyable for their literary grace and for the light they throw on frivolities and failings which have not even yet wholly vanished from the earth.

Oriental letters being a literary fad of the day, it was inevitable that Oliver Goldsmith should indulge his whim of <( leaving scarcely any kind of writing untouched B ; hence his series of Letters from Lien Chi Altangi, the Chinese

■ SPECIAL INTRODUCTION xi

philosopher in London. Whether in these he justified the rest of the clause in his famous epitaph and (( touched nothing that he did not adorn, B each reader will decide for himself. Goldsmith had the inestimable advantage over Montesquieu of having lived, struggled, suffered, and triumphed in the every-day world. The man born to wealth and ease can at best only look at or into what the handicapped struggler actually and smartingly endures. To the Grub Street starveling in Chinese petticoats life was more real than to the rich Persian in Paris. Goldsmith was in no disguise at all when posing as a philosopher. He was never anything else, even when playing the fool with his pen to earn those earlier pittances by stirring mirth that always held the essence of tears. In picturing the lighter follies of society, he never fails to wind imperceptibly right into the core of the subject, and leaves us at the brink of profound reflectiveness on the root-causes of evils at whose superficial manifestations he has made us smile.

These Chinese letters are in the strictest sense by a wideexperienced Citizen of the World. They photograph many a quaint character whose types are as familiar to us as his originals were to Goldsmith. The living portrait gallery will fit generations yet to come. Not characters only but movements, political and social, great problems in government, art, education, and taste are mirrored and discussed with a breadth and charm not found elsewhere. Goldsmith's many-sidedness is displayed in these Letters, which are occasionally elaborated in other of his writings. Interest in each group of these Letters, Persian and Chinese, French and English, is enhanced by their juxtaposition in this volume. They are the best examples of a passing style in literature for which much could be said then, and perhaps might be said now, if equally gifted observers with equal charm of manner were to let us see ourselves as others see us.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction i

Some Reflections on the Persian Letters 25

Chinese Letters

The Citizen of the World 295

(xiii)

Introduction

OF all great French authors perhaps Montesquieu is the least known in this country. It is more than a hundred years since any work of his was translated into English, and no greater sign of the neglect which has befallen him could be instanced than the infrequency of the appearance of his name in our periodical and journalistic literature, at a time when our ideas of government are once more in the crucible. The greater fame of Voltaire and Rousseau, and the absorbing interest of the French Revolution, are the principal causes of this neglect ; at the same time, had there been anything in the shape of a true biography of Montesquieu, a living picture of the man, the operation of these causes might have been in some degree obviated.

It was the custom under the ancien régime in the great law-families for the eldest son to compose a life of his father : a document designed to hide the actual man behind a mask of the domestic and legal virtues so effectually that his friends and colleagues should be unable to recognize him. Such a mémoire pour servir in the highest style of the art, Montesquieu's son prepared and published in 1755. The eulogies of D'Alembert, Maupertuis, and the Chevalier de Solignac, founded, all of them, so far as they refer to Montesquieu's life, upon this filial effigy, represent only a mask with the conventional air proper to a great and good man.

This lack of a truthful picture has, of course, had a bad effect on Montesquieu's fame in France as well as in England. I,east known, until recently, as regards his life, of all the great Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, he has had perhaps the most varied fortune of all writers of that or any other age. For about fifty years after his death, his reputation was unrivaled ; but from 1789 till 181 4, the 1 (1)

alternations of feeling toward him in France were as extravagant as if he had been a living agent in the Revolution and its sequel, (( now extolled to the clouds as the master of political science, as the man of genius who had rediscovered the title deeds of the human race ; now denounced as laudator temporis acti, the apostle of privilege, and the defender of abuses. }> Abandoned and condemned in evil times, he has always reappeared when France has recognized its truest interests. Under the Consulate and the First Empire he is intentionally forgotten, but in 1814 he comes to the front once more. Publishers and editors were seized about that time with a (( sort of fury }) for the works of Montesquieu, and from 18 19 till 1834 numerous annotated editions appeared. Then again there came a period of eclipse, and it was not until the close of the Second Empire that France, once more free, resumed the study of him who first tried to show it what freedom meant.

In 1875 M. Edouard Laboulaye's edition of Montesquieu's works, perhaps the best, was published in seven volumes ; and in 1878 M. I^ouis Vian issued his Histoire de Montesquieu, the most important work on Montesquieu that has yet appeared. M. Vian had access to much unpublished matter ; and his book, which is the result of fifteen years of study and research, supplies that biography for want of which Montesquieu's personality has hitherto been as vague as a spectre. In short, they seem at last in France in a fair way to get something like the true focus of Montesquieu, to have him placed in his proper niche : to understand him, even to label him, for he is not one of the very greatest whom it is criminal, and indeed impossible, to docket and define until one can look at them through the thought of many generations.

It is from M. Vian' s biography that the material for this introduction is mainly drawn. The writer is also indebted to M. Albert Sorel's monograph on Montesquieu, and to the prefaces of M. L,aboulaye. For the translation, the editions used were those of M. I^aboulaye and M. Tourneux, the text of the former having been followed as a rule : the notes in both have been found very serviceable.

INTRODUCTION

II

Ivike Montaigne, Montesquieu was a Gascon. His father, Jacques de Secondât, married Marie- Françoise de Penel, the descendant of an English family which had remained in France after the English rule had ceased there. She was an only child, and her husband received with her the title and barony of La Brède, an estate in Gascony, with a fantastic old Gothic donjon built in the thirteenth century. Montesquieu was the second of six children. The date of his birth is not known, but he was baptized on the 18th of January, 1689. His godfather, like the godfathers of Montaigne in 1553, of the lord of Beauvais in 1644, and of the Comte de Bufîon in 1742, was a beggar belonging to the district chosen (( in order that his godchild might remember all his life that the poor are his brothers. w He was christened Charles-Eouis, and bore, according to a curious custom of the time, the surname of De la Brède, the patronymic, De Secondât, being reserved for the head of the house.

His nurse was a miller's wife, and the first three years of his life were spent with her. Most of those who have written of Montesquieu have attributed his constant use of the Gascon accent, and of certain idioms and solecisms, to these three years. Is it likely, if he had not heard the Gascon accent in his father's household, and probably from his father's lips, that the effect of his lisping in a patois in his earliest infancy would have remained with him all his life? If, however, he heard nothing in his father's house but the best (< French of Paris, w his close and lasting friendship with his foster brother, Jean Demarennes, is a sufficient cause for the perpetuation of his Gasconisms. But the point is of small moment.

Montesquieu's mother died when he was seven years old, and four years after, in 1700, he was sent to the college of the Oratorian Fathers at Juilly, .near Meaux, in the department of Seine-et- Marne. — There he remained till 171 1. He was docile and diligent, and the solid foundation laid in Juilly enabled him to become the best-informed writer of his time in France. In the year in which he left Juilly he wrote his first non-scholastic piece — the first, at least, of which we know anything. It was a refutation, in the form of a letter, of the doctrine of the eternal damnation of idolaters : the substance of it he afterward incorporated in the <( Persian letters.®*

Ill

On leaving college Montesquieu began to study law. It was natural, as both his grandfathers had been presidents of the Parliament of Guienne, and his uncle occupied a similar position. Methodical in all things, he studied jurisprudence according to a plan of his own, the draft of which still exists ; and found plenty of time to frequent the best salons of Bordeaux, in which the rank of his family and his own reputation as a young man of talent secured him a welcome. The chief figure in Bordeaux society at that time was the Duke of Berwick, f the son of James II. and Marlborough's sister. This careful soldier and upright man, the only cool-headed and thoroughly sensible scion of the House of Stuart, perceived the merit of Montesquieu, and a friendship sprang up between them which ended only with the Duke's death. Montesquieu cherished his memory, and among his papers was found a warm and eloquent eulogy of the victor of Almanza.

In 1 71 3 Montesquieu's father died, and his uncle, the Baron de Montesquieu, took upon himself the duties of guardian. Two months after his nephew had reached his twenty-fifth year, he caused him to be appointed a laycouncilor of the Parliament of Guienne ; and a year later, on the 30th of April, 171 5, Montesquieu married the girl of his uncle's choice, the Demoiselle Jeanne L,artigue, a plain-looking Calvinist, inclined to limp,{ but frank, good natured, and with a dowry of a hundred thousand livres. Love had nothing to do with the marriage : Montesquieu's wife was his housekeeper, and the mother of his heir.

* Letter XXXV.

t Governor of Guienne, 1716-1719.

ÈSee p. 29.

In the beginning of 1716 his uncle died, leaving him sole legatee on condition that he should call himself Montesquieu. Besides the name, which he had already adopted on the day of his marriage, he inherited a house in Bordeaux, lands in Agénois, and the position of President à mortier in the Parliament of Guienne. His installation took place in July, 1716, and he retained his presidentship \/ till 1728.

Of the twelve provincial parliaments of France, that of Guienne, which sat at Bordeaux, ranked third with regard to the extent of its jurisdiction. It was directed by six presidents à mortier* and as it possessed political, religious, administrative, and judical attributes, the proper performance of the duties of a president entailed considerable study, and were in themselves by no means light. Montesquieu is believed to have given them sufficient attention, although on his own showing, f he did not understand legal procedure ; but no trace remains of his judical functions.

His official duties did not by any means occupy him exclusively. After the Academies of Caen and Paris, that of Bordeaux, having been established in 17 12, is the most ancient. Three years after its constitution, Montesquieu was admitted, and became one of its most enthusiastic members. Wherever he was, and in whatever he might be engaged, he had always time to attend to its interests. More than once in acknowledgment of his many services he was appointed president. Much of the work he prepared for the Academy has been lost ; of the dissertation which was considered the most remarkable, only the title remains — (< The Religious Policy of the Romans. M Medicine, physics, natural history, were all studied, and numerous discourses written. The effect of these studies is to be found throughout all his works, the principal definitions in L'Esprit des Lois itself being, not those of a lawyer or metaphysician, but rather of a geometer and naturalist.

* So called because they wore a cap of the shape of a mortar, made of black velvet, ornamented with a gold band, t Pensées.

INTRODUCTION

IV

In all likelihood the idea of the <( Persian Letters }> occurred to Montesquieu before he left college. The first of them, dated the 21st of the moon of Muharram (January), 171 1, was written in his twenty-second year ; the last in his thirty-second. Reflections of his favorite reading are to be found in their framework, and critics have pointed out many resemblances to Dufresney's (( Amusements, >} (< The Turkish Spy,* <( The Spectator, » the <( Decameron, » with borrowings from Erasmus and other less-known writers. But Montesquieu has at least spoiled nothing that he has used. The (( Letters }> were printed in Amsterdam, and published anonymously in 1721 ; and at once, as a friend of Montesquieu's had predicted, <( they sold like loaves. }> No French writer had ever before said so perfectly what all felt and were trying to say ; and it was done so skillfully, so pleasantly, like a man telling a story after supper.

At the time they appeared the social order of the ancien regime was beginning to crumble about the monarchy. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, DY exiling the Huguenots, had deprived the country of many of its most industrious subjects, and struck a disastrous blow at its trade ; the power of France, built up peacefully by Mazarin and Colbert, had been shattered at Ramilies and Malplaquet ; and Louis XIV. 's acceptance of the Bull Unigenitus directed against the Jansenists, had destroyed the last remnant of religious liberty. As for the parliaments, they were only able to mumble and grumble, endless edicts having pulled their teeth, as it were, one by one ; and the condition of the people was desperate in the extreme. It is no wonder that when Louis XIV. died, the middle and lower classes thanked God with (( scandalous frankness • as for a long-expected and certain deliverance. The upper classes were delighted also, although they hardly returned thanks in the same quarter, nor for the same relief. It was not a lightening of taxation, some liberty of conscience, more equal laws, that the latter anticipated, but the old license, the (< unchained libertinage, }> the idea of which had never disappeared, but had been handed down, as Sainte-Beuve says, in direct and uninterrupted descent from the Renaissance to the Fronde, from the Fronde to the Regency, through De Retz, Saint-Kvremond, Vendôme, Bayle, to the Epicureans, Pyrrhonists, professors of an imperturbable impiety, the unbelievers, as full and certain in their unbelief as Bossuet was in his faith, who made a byword of the eight years from the death of Louis XIV. to his successor's assumption of power. Grown sanctimonious in his old age, Louis XIV. had made his subjects hypocrites. At his death the boast of vice succeeded to ostentatious devotion ; the court like one man changed from Tartuffe into Don Juan. All things were discussed, examined, and torn to shreds. The intestine quarrels of the Church gave scoffers the opportunity they would have made. Dubois debauched politics ; Law, finance ; and the populace debauched themselves : for gaming, which had before been confined to people of quality, became the common amusement. Incest, too, was quite à la mode; and those who could not be in the height of the fashion had to be satisfied with lesser vices. The autocratic rule of the Grand Monarque gave place to the laissez-aller of Philip of Orleans, the (( unbelieving Regent. • Hope, desire, speculation, knew no bounds, all things in heaven above and in the earth beneath having become common and unclean. It is this period that is reflected and criticised in the (< Persian Letters."

V

The (( Persian Letters w are the correspondence of several Persians, on a visit to Europe, with each other and their friends in Ispahan. Rica, the younger of the two principal writers, is good humored, sarcastic, and represents the lighter side of Montesquieu's nature. His lively intellect makes him a keen observer ; his youth and health enable him to go everywhere, see everybody, and experience everything. He describes the surface of society with a quick glance that sometimes pierces deep enough, too. The King of France, although he has no mines of gold and silver, like the King of Spain, is much wealthier, deriving supplies from an inexhaustible source, the vanity of his subjects. He is likewise a magician, for his dominion extends to the minds of his subjects. If he has a costly war on hand, and is short of money, he simply suggests that a piece of paper is a coin of the realm, and his people are straightway convinced of it. But this is a small matter. There is a much more powerful magician, the Pope, to wit, who sometimes makes the King believe that three are no more than one ; that the bread he eats is not bread, and the wine he drinks is not wine. It is Rica who makes the discovery that the Christian religion practically consists in the nonfulfillment of an immense number of tedious duties ; and it is he who quotes the epitaph on the diner-out, which recalls by its numerical exactness Teufelsdrock's epitaph on Philippus Zaehdarm. (< Here, >} it runs, (< rests one who never rested before. He assisted at five hundred and thirty funerals. He made merry at the birth of two thousand six hundred and eighty children. He wished his friends joy, always varying the phrase, upon pensions amounting to two millions six hundred thousand livres ; in town he walked nine thousand six hundred furlongs, in the country thirty-six furlongs. His conversation was pleasing ; he had a ready-made stock of three hundred and sixty-five stories ; he was acquainted also from his youth with a hundred and eighteen apophthegms derived from the ancients, which he employed on special occasions. He died at last in the sixtieth year of his age. I say no more, stranger ; for how could I ever have done telling you all that he did and all that he saw. }> * It is Rica who sketches the alchemist in his garret, praying fatuously that God would enable him to make a good use of his wealth ; the people whose conversation is a mirror which reflects only their own impertinent faces ; the professional wits planning a conversation of an hour's length to consist entirely of bonsmots ; the compilers who produce masterpieces by shifting the books in a library from one shelf to another ; the universal <( decider, • who knew more about Ispahan than his Persian interlocutor ; the French Academy, a body with * Letter LXXXVHI.

forty heads, all of them chokeful of tropes, metaphors, and antitheses; the geometer, a martyr to his own accuracy, who was offended by a witty remark, as weak eyes are annoyed by too strong a light ; the quidnuncs, petits-maîtres, lazy magistrates, financiers, bankrupts, and opera dancers.

Usbek is older, graver, given to meditation and reflection. Although from his earliest youth a courtier, he has remained uncorrupted. As he could not flatter, his sincerity made him enemies, and brought upon him the jealousy of the ministers. His life being in danger, he forsook the court, and retired to his country-house. Even there persecution followed him, and he determined on the journey to Europe. Rica went as his companion.

The opening paragraph of Letter XLVIIL, in which Usbek characterizes himself, is undoubtedly descriptive of Montesquieu. (( Although I am not employed in any business of importance, I am yet constantly occupied. I spend my time observing, and at night I write down what I have noticed, what I have seen, what I have heard during the day. I am interested in everything, astonished at everything : I am like a child, whose organs, still oversensitive, are vividly impressed by the merest trifles. }) Usbek can be as brilliant and satirical on occasion as his younger companion, but his aim is to probe to the heart of things, and he knows that truth will only reveal itself to a reverent search. To him all religions are worthy of respect, and their ministers also, for <( God has chosen for Himself, in every corner of the earth, souls purer than the rest, whom He has separated from the impious world that their mortification and their fervent prayers may suspend His wrath. }) He thinks that the surest way to please God is to obey the laws of society, and to do our duty toward men. Every religion assumes that God loves men, since He establishes a religion for their happiness ; and since He loves men we are certain of pleasing Him in loving them, too. Usbek' s prayer in Letter XLVI. is not yet out of date. (< Lord, I do not understand any of those discussions that are carried on without end regarding Thee : I would serve Thee according to Thy will ; but each man whom I consult would have me serve Thee according to his." He insists that religion is intended for io INTRODUCTION

man's happiness; and that, in ordei to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to our beliefs — not necessary even to attempt to convert them. Indeed, he holds that variety of belief is beneficial to a state. A new sect is always the surest means of correcting the abuses of an old faith ; and those who profess tolerated creeds usually prove more useful to their country than those who profess the established religion, because, being excluded from all honors, their endeavor to distinguish themselves by becoming wealthy improves trade and commerce. Proselytism, with its intolerance, its affliction of the consciences of others, its wars and inquisitions, is an epidemic disease which the Jews caught from the Egyptians, and which passed from them to the Christians and Mohammedans, a capricious mood which can be compared only to a total eclipse of human reason. (< He who would have me change my religion is led to that, without doubt, because he would not change his own, although force were employed ; and yet he finds it strange that I will not do a thing which he himself will not do, perhaps for the empire of the world. >} * Usbek is a sophist, but it is quite evident that he is no bigot ; he even goes further than Montesquieu himself, a wit of the Regency, felt to be right ; and which he praises suicide as being no more a disturbance of the order of Providence than the making a round stone square, he is rapped over the knuckles with the reminder that the preservation of the union of body and soul is the chief sign of submission to the decrees of the Creator.

Usbek has his character sketches as well as Rica. He gives a lively description of those geniuses who frequent the coffeehouses, and on quitting them believe themselves four times wittier than when they entered. The savage king sitting on his block of wood, dressed in his own skin, and inquiring of the sailors if they talked much of him in France, is an illustration of his. One letter, the fortyeighth, is quite a picture gallery. Usbek is in the country at the house of a man of some note ; and he describes to his friend Rhedi various members of the company he meets.

* Letter LXXXVI.

INTRODUCTION u

There are vulgar farmers-general who brag of their cooks ; jaunty confessors, necessities of female existence, who can cure a headache better than any medicine ; poets, the grotesquest of humankind, declaring that they are born so; the old soldier, who cannot endure the thought that France has gained any battles without him ; and last, but not least, the lady-killer who has a talk with Usbek. <( ( It is fine weather,* he said. ( Will you take a turn with me in the garden ?) I replied as civilly as I could, and we went out together. (I have come to the country,* said he, *to please the mistress of the house, with whom I am not on the worst of terms. There is a certain woman in the world who will be rather out of humor ; but what can one do ? I visit the finest women in Paris ; but I do not confine my attentions to one ; they have plenty to do to look after me, for, between you and me, I am a sad dog. * ( In that case, sir,* said I, ( you doubtless have some office or employment which prevents you from waiting on them more assiduously?* ( No, sir; I have no other business than to provoke husbands, and drive fathers mad ; I delight in alarming a woman who thinks me hers, and in bringing her within an ace of losing me. A set of us young fellows divide up Paris among us in this pursuit, and keep it wondering at everything we do.* (From what I understand,* said I, ( you make more stir than the most valorous warrior, and are more regarded than a grave magistrate. If you were in Persia you would not enjoy all these advantages ; you would be held fitter to guard our women than to please them.* The blood mounted to my face; and I believe had I gone on speaking, I could not have refrained from affronting him.** Then there are casuists, great lords, men of sense and men of none, bishops, philosophers and philosophasters, all pricked off as deftly as any of Rica's acquaintances, and with less exaggeration, if with more sobriety. One brief dramatic sketch must not be omitted. Has any one failed to meet the gentleman who says, (< I believe in the immortality of the soul for six months at a time ; my opinions depend entirely on my bodily condition : I am a Spinozist, a Socinian, a Catholic, ungodly or devout, according to the state of my animal spirits, the quality of my digestion, the rarity or heaviness of the air I breathe, the lightness or solidity of the food I eat"?*