litician, a naturalist, a geometrician, or whatever else he pleases; but he is always superficial, because he is not able to be deep. He could not, however, flourish as he does upon these subjects without great ingenuity. His taste is rather delicate than just; he is an ingenious satyrist, a bad critic, and a dabbler in the abstracted sciences. Imagination is his element, and yet, strange as it is, he has no invention. He is reproached with continually passing from one extreme to another; now a Philanthropist, then a cynic; now an excessive encomiast, then an outrageous satyrist. In one word, Voltaire would fain be an extraordinary man, and an extraordinary man he most certainly is!
Anecdotes of the Life of Baron Montequieu, author of the Spirit of Laws.
From the French of M. D'Alembert.
CHarles de Secondat, Baron of la Brede and Montesquieu, prefident à mortier in the parliament of Bourdeaux, member of the French academy, of the royal academy of Sciences and belles lettres at Berlin, and of the royal society of London, was descended of a noble family in Guienne, and born at the cattle of la Brede, near Bourdeaux, on the 28th of January, 1689. His father was a younger brother, and served some time in the army, from which he soon retired. Young Montesquieu gave early proofs of his superior talents, and his father was diligent to improve them. At the age of twenty he was employed in preparing the materials of his Spirit of Laws, by judicious extracts from the immense volumes that compose the body of civil law. Jurisprudence, though less dry to him than to most who apply to it, because he cultivated it as a philosopher, was not sufficient for his extensive and active genius. He entered, at the same time, into the depths of the most important and delicate subjects[1], and treated them with that judgment, decency, and justness, which distinguish all his writings. His father's brother, president à mortier of the parliament of Bourdeaux, who was the eldest branch of the family, losing his only son, left his fortune and his office to M. Montesquieu, who had been admitted a counseller in the parliament of Bourdeaux, Feb. 14, 1714, and was received president à mortier July 13, 1716. In 1722, during the king's minority, he was deputed by the parliament to make remonstrances against a new oppressive tax. He discharged this commission with so much boldnefs and address, that the tax was abolished. April 3, 1716, he was admitted a member of the infant academy of Bourdeaux, and diverted the society from the study of the fine arts, which can seldom be cultivated to advantage but in the capital, to the more useful study of physic.
- ↑ This was a tract in the form of letters; designed to shew that the idolatry of most of the Pagans did not deserve eternal damnation.
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