[12] A reprint in 1735 bears the imprint of London, with the note “Aux dépens de la Compagnie.” [↑]
[13] Lanson, p. 702. The Persian Letters, like the Provincial Letters of Pascal, had to be printed at Rouen and published at Amsterdam. Their freethinking expressions put considerable difficulties in the way of his election (1727) to the Academy. See E. Edwards, Chapters of the Biog. Hist. of the French Academy, 1864, pp. 34–35, and D. M. Robertson, Hist. of the French Academy, 1910, p. 92, as to the mystification about the alleged reprint without the obnoxious passages. [↑]
[15] “Au point de vue religieux, Montesquieu tirait poliment son coup de chapeau au christianisme” (Lanson, p. 714). E.g. in the Esprit des Lois, liv. xxiv, chs. i, ii, iii, iv, vi, and the footnote to ch. x of liv. xxv. Montesquieu’s letter to Warburton (16 mai, 1754), in acknowledgment of that prelate’s attack on the posthumous works of Bolingbroke, is a sample of his social make-believe. But no religious reader could suppose it to come from a religious man. [↑]
[16] Also of E. Edwards, as cited above. [↑]
[17] See the notes cited on pp. 405, 407 of Garnier’s variorum ed. of the Esprit des Lois, 1871. La Harpe and Villemain seem blind to irony. [↑]
[18] The flings at Bayle (liv. xxiv, chs. ii, vi) are part of a subtly ironical vindication of ideal as against ecclesiastical Christianity, and they have no note of faith. [↑]
[19] Paul Mesnard, Hist. de l’académie française, 1857, pp. 61–63. [↑]