"Montesquieu is infinitely French when he could turn this shameful species of tyranny into a bon mot; for he boldly observes on this: 'C'était bien ces trois nuits là qu'il fallait choisir; car pour les autres on n'aurait pas donné beaucoup d'argent.' The legislator, in the wit, forgot the feelings of his heart."
I have never been able to conceive what meaning D'Israeli could have attached to this quotation from Montesquieu, so as to torture it into a bon mot. Not only is there nothing of the kind in the words he quotes, but there is not even an attempt at it. The writer merely suggests a reason for the preference given to the first three nights; and in doing so he expresses the sentiments of the barons, and not his own. And yet, it is upon this strange misapprehension of Montesquieu's meaning, that D'Israeli lays at the door of that illustrious man the imputation of being "infinitely French," and of forgetting, for the sake of a bon mot, the feelings of his heart!
Henry H. Breen.
St. Lucia.
"TO SPEAK IN LUTESTRING."
(Vol. iii., p. 188.)
The Query on the meaning of the phrase "to speak in lutestring," used by Philo-Junius, has remained so long without an answer, that to attempt to give one now seems almost to require an apology. I will however do so. In Letter XLVII., dated May 28, 1771, Philo-Junius says:
"I was led to trouble you with these observations by a passage, which, to speak in lutestring, 'I met with this morning in the course of my reading,' and upon which I mean to put a question to the advocates for privilege."
Now we know, that if two lutes, or other stringed instruments, be placed near each other, when a chord of one of them is struck, the corresponding chord of the other will vibrate in unison, and give a similar note; one lutestring will echo the other. The story of the maiden who believed that the spirit of her dead lover was near her, because his harp sounded responsive notes to hers, and who died heart-broken when she was undeceived, is sufficiently well known. "To speak in lutestring" is then to speak as another man's echo; and Philo-Junius here was the echo of the Duke of Grafton, and used this affected phrase derisively, as being a favourite, or at least well-known expression of his. In a letter which is appended as a note to Letter XX., and which is dated six days previous to the one just quoted, viz. May 22, 1771, he says: