MONTESQUIEU AND VOLTAIRE

The Lettres persanes is the first book of what may be called the Philosophe movement. The criticism is scarcely yet aggressive, much less destructive, and in Montesquieu's hands it never became so ; but what it might become in the hands of others was obvions enough. It is this precursorship in his own spécial line which in ail probability made Voltaire so jealous of Montesquieu, as well as the advantage which a wealthy and well-born noble of high officiai position had over himself. It is amusing to find Voltaire describing the Lettres as a *' trumpery book," a "book which anybody might hâve written easily." It is not certain that, in its peculiar mixture of light badina ge with not merely serious purpose but gentlemanlike modération, Voltaire could hâve written it himself, and it is certain that no one else at that time could. The réputation acquired by this book brought Montesquieu much into the literary society of the capital, and he composed for, or at any rate contributed to, one of the coteries of the day the clever but rather rhetorical Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate, m which the dictator gives an apology for his conduct.

Passages for Translation into French 163