No More Learning

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349
ALEARDO ALEARDI
(1812-1878)
(
HE Italian patriot and poet, Aleardo Aleardi, was born in the
village of San Giorgio, near Verona, on November 4th, 1812.
He passed his boyhood on his father's farm, amid the
grand scenery of the valley of the Adige, which deeply impressed
itself on his youthful imagination and left its traces in all his verse.
He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-
named the mole," and afterwards he passed on to the University of
Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the
charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes
his father as saying:—“My son, be not enamored of this coquette,
Poesy; for with all her airs of a great lady, she will play thee some
trick of a faithless grisette. Choose a good companion, as one might
say, for instance the law: and thou wilt found a family; wilt par-
take of God's bounties; wilt be content in life, and die quietly and
happily. ” In addition to satisfying his father, the young poet also
wrote at Padua his first political poems. And this brought him
into slight conflict with the authorities. He practiced law for a
short time at Verona, and wrote his first long poem, Arnaldo, pub-
lished in 1842, which was very favorably received. When six years
later the new Venetian republic came into being, Aleardi was sent
to represent its interests at Paris. The speedy overthrow of the new
State brought the young ambassador home again, and for the next
ten years he worked for Italian unity and freedom. He was twice
imprisoned, at Mantua in 1852, and again in 1859 at Verona, where
he died April 17th, 1878.
Like most of the Italian poets of this century, Aleardi found his
chief inspiration in the exciting events that marked the struggle of
Italy for independence, and his best work antedated the peace of
Villafranca. His first serious effort was 'Le Prime Storie) (The Pri-
mal Histories), written in 1845. In this he traces the story of the
human race from the creation through the Scriptural, classical, and
feudal periods down to the present century, and closes with fore-
shadowings of a peaceful and happy future. It is picturesque, full of
lofty imagery and brilliant descriptive passages.
“Una Ora della mia Giovinezza' (An Hour of My Youth: 1858)
recounts many of his youthful trials and disappointments as a patriot.
Like the Primal Histories, this poem is largely contemplative and
philosophical, and shines by the same splendid diction and luxuri-
ous imagery; but it is less wide-reaching in its interests and more
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ALEARDO ALEARDI
specific in its appeal to his own countrymen. And from this time
onward the patriotic qualities in Aleardi's poetry predominate, and
his themes become more and more exclusively Italian. The Monte
Circello) sings the glories and events of the Italian land and history,
and successfully presents many facts of science in poetic form, while
the singer passionately laments the present condition of Italy. In
Le Citta Italiane Marinore e Commercianti' (The Marine and Com-
mercial Cities of Italy) the story of the rise, flourishing, and fall of
Venice, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa is recounted. His other note-
worthy poems are Rafaello e la Fornarina,' 'Le Tre Fiume) (The
Three Rivers), Le Tre Fanciulle' (The Three Maidens: 1858), I Sette
Soldati' (The Seven Soldiers: 1859), and 'Canto Politico' (Political
Songs: 1862).
A slender volume of five hundred pages contains all that Aleardi
has written. Yet he is one of the chief minor Italian poets of this
century, because of his loftiness of purpose and felicity of expression,
his tenderness of feeling, and his deep sympathies with his struggling
country.
"He has,” observes Howells in his Modern Italian Poets,' «in
greater degree than any other Italian poet of this, or perhaps of any
age, those merits which our English taste of this time demands,
quickness of feeling and brilliancy of expression. He lacks simplicity
of idea, and his style is an opal which takes all lights and hues,
rather than the crystal which lets the daylight colorlessly through.
He is distinguished no less by the themes he selects than by the
expression he gives them. In his poetry there is passion, but his
subjects are usually those to which love is accessory rather than
essential; and he cares better to sing of universal and national des-
tinies as they concern individuals, than the raptures and anguishes
of youthful individuals as they concern mankind. ” He was original
in his way; his attitude toward both the classic and the romantic
schools is shown in the following passage from his autobiography,
which at the same time brings out his patriotism. He says:-
«It seemed to me strange, on the one hand, that people who, in their
serious moments and in the recesses of their hearts, invoked Christ, should
in the recesses of their minds, in the deep excitement of poetry, persist in
invoking Apollo and Pallas Minerva. It seemed to me strange, on the other
hand, that people born in Italy, with this sun, with these nights, with so
many glories, so many griefs, so many hopes at home, should have the mania
of singing the mists of Scandinavia, and the Sabbaths of witches, and
should go mad for a gloomy and dead feudalism, which had come from the
North, the highway of our misfortunes. It seemed to me, moreover, that
every Art of Poetry was marvelously useless, and that certain rules were
mummies embalmed by the hand of pedants. In fine, it seemed to me that
there were two kinds of Art: the one, serene with an Olympic serenity, the


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ALEARDO ALEARDI
351
Art of all ages that belongs to no country; the other, more impassioned, that
has its roots in one's native soil
. . . The first that of Homer, of Phidias,
of Virgil, of Tasso; the other that of the Prophets, of Dante, of Shakespeare,
of Byron. And I have tried to cling to this last, because I was pleased to
see how these great men take the clay of their own land and their own time,
and model from it a living statue, which resembles their contemporaries. ”
In another interesting passage he explains that his old drawing-
master had in vain pleaded with the father to make his son a painter,
and he continues:-
«Not being allowed to use the pencil, I have used the pen. And pre-
cisely on this account my pen resembles too much a pencil; precisely on this
account I am often too much of a naturalist, and am too fond of losing
myself in minute details. I am as one who in walking goes leisurely along,
and stops every minute to observe the dash of light that breaks through the
trees of the woods, the insect that alights on his hand, the leaf that falls on
his head, a cloud, a wave, a streak of smoke; in fine, the thousand accidents
that make creation so rich, so various, so poetical, and beyond which we ever-
more catch glimpses of that grand mysterious something, eternal, immense,
benignant, and never inhuman nor cruel, as some would have us believe,
which is called God. ”
The selections are from Howells's (Modern Italian Poets,' copyright 1887, by
Harper and Brothers
COWARDS
I
'N THE deep circle of Siddim hast thou seen,
Under the shining skies of Palestine,
The sinister glitter of the Lake of Asphalt ?
Those coasts, strewn thick with ashes of damnation,
Forever foe to every living thing,
Where rings the cry of the lost wandering bird
That on the shore of the perfidious sea
Athirsting dies, - that watery sepulchre
Of the five cities of iniquity,
Where even the tempest, when its clouds hang low,
Passes in silence, and the lightning dies,
If thou hast seen them, bitterly hath been
Thy heart wrung with the misery and despair
Of that dread vision!
Yet there is on earth
A woe more desperate and miserable, -
A spectacle wherein the wrath of God
Avenges Him more terribly. It is
A vain, weak people of faint-heart old men,
That, for three hundred years of dull repose,


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ALEARDO ALEARDI
Has lain perpetual dreamer, folded in
The ragged purple of its ancestors,
Stretching its limbs wide in its country's sun,
To warm them; drinking the soft airs of autumn
Forgetful, on the fields where its forefathers
Like lions fought! From overflowing hands,
Strew we with hellebore and poppies thick
The way.
From The Primal Histories. )
THE HARVESTERS
W"
HAT time in summer, sad with so much light,
The sun beats ceaselessly upon the fields ;
The harvesters, as famine urges them,
Draw hitherward in thousands, and they wear
The look of those that dolorously go
In exile, and already their brown eyes
Are heavy with the poison of the air.
Here never note of amorous bird consoles
Their drooping hearts; here never the gay songs
Of their Abruzzi sound to gladden these
Pathetic hands. But taciturn they toil,
Reaping the harvests for their unknown lords;
And when the weary labor is performed,
Taciturn they retire; and not till then
Their bagpipes crown the joys of the return,
Swelling the heart with their familiar strain.
Alas! not all return, for there is one
That dying in the furrow sits, and seeks
With his last look some faithful kinsman out,
To give his life's wage, that he carry it
Unto his trembling mother, with the last
Words of her son that comes no more. And dying,
Deserted and alone, far off he hears
His comrades going, with their pipes in time,
Joyfully measuring their homeward steps.
And when in after years an orphan comes
To reap the harvest here, and feels his blade
Go quivering through the swaths of falling grain,
He weeps and thinks — haply these heavy stalks
Ripened on his unburied father's bones.
From Monte Circello. '


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ALEARDO ALEARDI
353
THE DEATH OF THE YEAR
E
RE yet upon the unhappy Arctic lands,
In dying autumn, Erebus descends
With the night's thousand hours, along the verge
Of the horizon, like a fugitive,
Through the long days wanders the weary sun;
And when at last under the wave is quenched
The last gleam of its golden countenance,
Interminable twilight land and sea
Discolors, and the north wind covers deep
All things in snow, as in their sepulchres
The dead are buried. In the distances
The shock of warring Cyclades of ice
Makes music as of wild and strange lament;
And up in heaven now tardily are lit
The solitary polar star and seven
Lamps of the bear. And now the warlike race
Of swans gather their hosts upon the breast
Of some far gulf, and, bidding their farewell
To the white cliffs and slender junipers,
And sea-weed bridal-beds, intone the song
Of parting, and a sad metallic clang
Send through the mists. Upon their southward way
They greet the beryl-tinted icebergs; greet
Flamy volcanoes and the seething founts
Of geysers, and the melancholy yellow
Of the Icelandic fields; and, wearying
Their lily wings amid the boreal lights,
Journey away unto the joyous shores
Of morning.
From (An Hour of My Youth. ”
1-23


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354
JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
(1717-1783)
EAN
as
He was
LE ROND D'ALEMBERT, one of the most noted of the
« Encyclopedists,” a mathematician of the first order, and
an eminent man of letters, was born at Paris in 1717. The
unacknowleged son of the Chevalier Destouches and of Mme. de Ten-
cin, he had been exposed on the steps of the chapel St. Jean-le-Rond,
near Notre-Dame. He was named after the place where he was
found; the surname of D'Alembert being added by himself in later
years. He was given into the care of the wife of a glazier, who
brought him up tenderly and whom he
never ceased to venerate his true
mother. His anonymous father, however,
partly supported him by an annual in-
come of twelve hundred francs.
educated at the college Mazarin, and sur-
prised his Jansenist teachers by his brill-
iance and precocity. They believed him
to be a second Pascal; and, doubtless to
complete the analogy, drew his attention
away from his theological studies to ge-
ometry. But they calculated without their
host; for the young student suddenly
D'ALEMBERT
found out his genius, and mathematics
and the exact sciences henceforth became
his absorbing interests. He studied successively law and medicine,
but finding no satisfaction in either of these professions, with the
true instincts of the scholar he chose poverty with liberty to pur-
sue the studies he loved. He astonished the scientific world by his
first published works, Memoir on the Integral Calculus(1739) and
On the Refraction of Solid Bodies) (1741); and while not yet twenty-
four years old, the brilliant young mathematician was made a member
of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1754 he entered the Acadé-
mie Française, and eighteen years later became its perpetual secretary.
D'Alembert wrote many and important works on physics and
mathematics. One of these, Memoir on the General Cause of
Winds,' carried away a prize from the Academy of Sciences of
Berlin, in 1746, and its dedication to Frederick II. of Prussia won him
the friendship of that monarch. But his claims to a place in French
literature, leaving aside his eulogies on members of the French

(


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
355
Academy deceased between 1700 and 1772, are based chiefly on his
writings in connection with the Encyclopédie. ' Associated with
Diderot in this vast enterprise, he was at first, because of his
eminent position in the scientific world, its director and official head.
He contributed a large number of scientific and philosophic articles,
and took entire charge of the revising of the mathematical division.
His most noteworthy contribution, however, is the Preliminary Dis-
course,' prefixed as a general introduction and explanation of the
work. In this he traced with wonderful clearness and logical pre-
cision the successive steps of the human mind in its search after
knowledge, and basing his conclusion on the historical evolution of the
race, he sketched in broad outlines the development of the sciences
and arts. In 1758 he withdrew from the active direction of the
Encyclopédie,' that he might free himself from the annoyance of gov-
ernmental interference, to which the work was constantly subjected
because of the skeptical tendencies it evinced. But he continued to
contribute mathematical articles, with a few on other topics. One of
these, on Geneva,' involved him in his celebrated dispute with Rous-
seau and other radicals in regard to Calvinism and the suppression
of theatrical performances in the stronghold of Swiss orthodoxy.
His fame was spreading over Europe. Frederick the Great of
Prussia repeatedly offered him the presidency of the Academy of
Sciences of Berlin. But he refused, as he also declined the magnifi-
cent offer of Catherine of Russia to become tutor to her son, at a
yearly salary of a hundred thousand francs. Pope Benedict XIV.
honored him by recommending him to the membership of the Insti-
tute of Bologne; and the high esteem in which he was held in Eng-
land is shown by the legacy of £200 left him by David Hume.
All these honors and distinctions did not affect the simplicity of
his life, for during thirty years he continued to reside in the poor
and incommodious quarters of his foster-mother, whom he partly
supported out of his small income. Ili health at last drove him to
seek better accommodations. He had formed a romantic attachment
for Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, and lived with her in the same
house for years unscandaled. Her death in 1776 plunged him into
profound grief. He died nine years later, on the 9th of October, 1783.
His manner was plain and at times almost rude; he had great
independence of character, but also much simplicity and benevolence.
With the other French deists, D'Alembert has been attacked for his
religious opinions, but with injustice. He was prudent in the public
expression of them, as the time necessitated; but he makes the freest
statement of them in his correspondence with Voltaire. His literary
and philosopic works were edited by Bassange (Paris, 1891). Condor-
cet, in his “Eulogy,' gives the best account of his life and writings.


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356
JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
MONTESQUIEU
From the Eulogy published in the Encyclopédie
T"
He interest which good citizens are pleased to take in the
Encyclopédie,' and the great number of men of letters
who consecrate their labors to it, authorize us to regard
this work as the most proper monument to preserve the grateful
sentiments of our country, and that respect which is due to the
memory of those celebrated men who have done it honor. Per-
suaded, however, that M. de Montesquieu had a title to expect
other panegyrics, and that the public grief deserved to be de-
scribed by more eloquent pens, we should have paid his great
memory the homage of silence, had not gratitude compelled us
to speak. A benefactor to mankind by his writings, he was not
less a benefactor to this work, and at least we may place a few
lines at the base of his statue, as it were.
Charles de Secondat, baron of La Brède and of Montesquieu,
late life-President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, member of the
French Academy of Sciences, of the Royal Academy and Belles-
Lettres of Prussia, and of the Royal Society of London, was
born at the castle of La Brède, near Bordeaux, the 18th of
January, 1689, of a noble family of Guyenne. His great-great-
grandfather, John de Secondat, steward of the household to
Henry the Second, King of Navarre, and afterward to Jane,
daughter of that king, who married Antony of Bourbon, pur-
chased the estate of Montesquieu for the sum of ten thousand
livres, which this princess gave him by an authentic deed, as a
reward for his probity and services.
Henry the Third, King of Navarre, afterward Henry the
Fourth, King of France, erected the lands of Montesquieu into a
barony, in favor of Jacob de Secondat, son of John, first a gen-
tleman in ordinary of the bedchamber to this prince, and after-
ward colonel of the regiment of Chatillon. John Gaston de
Secondat, his second son, having married a daughter of the first
president of the Parliament of Bordeaux, purchased the office of
perpetual president in this society. He had several children, one
of whom entered the service, distinguished himself, and quitted
it very early in life. This was the father of Charles de Secon-
dat, author of the Spirit of Laws. These particulars may seem
superfluous in the eulogy of a philosopher who stands so little in


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
357
need of ancestors; but at least we may adorn their memory with
that lustre which his name reflects upon it.
The early promise of his genius was fulfilled in Charles de
Secondat. He discovered very soon what he desired to be, and
his father cultivated this rising genius, the object of his hope
and of his tenderness. At the age of twenty, young Montesquieu
had already prepared materials for the Spirit of Laws, by a
well-digested extract from the immense body of the civil law; as
Newton had laid in early youth the foundation of his immortal
works. The study of jurisprudence, however, though less dry to
M. de Montesquieu than to most who attempt it, because he
studied it as a philosopher, did not content him. He inquired
deeply into the subjects which pertain to religion, and considered
them with that wisdom, decency, and equity, which characterize
his work.
A brother of his father, perpetual president of the Parliament
of Bordeaux, an able judge and virtuous citizen, the oracle of his
own society and of his province, having lost an only son, left his
fortune and his office to M. de Montesquieu.
Some years after, in 1722, during the king's minority, his.
society employed him to present remonstrances upon occasion of
a new impost. Placed between the throne and the people, like a
respectful subject and courageous magistrate he brought the cry
of the wretched to the ears of the sovereign — a cry which, being
heard, obtained justice. Unfortunately, this success was momentary.
Scarce was the popular voice silenced before the suppressed tax
was replaced by another; but the good citizen had done his duty.
He was received the 3d of April, 1716, into the new academy
of Bordeaux. A taste for music and entertainment had at first
assembled its members. M. de Montesquieu believed that the
talents of his friends might be better employed in physical sub-
jects. He was persuaded that nature, worthy of being beheld
everywhere, could find everywhere eyes worthy to behold her;.
while it was impossible to gather together, at a distance from
the metropolis, distinguished writers on works of taste. He
looked upon our provincial societies for belles-lettres as a shadow
of literature which obscures the reality. The Duke de la Force,
by a prize which he founded at Bordeaux, seconded these rational
views It was decided that a good physical experiment would be
better than a weak discourse or a bad poem; and Bordeaux got
an Academy of Sciences.


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
M. de Montesquieu, careless of reputation, wrote little. It
was not till 1721, that is to say, at thirty-two years of age, that
he published the Persian Letters. ' The description of Oriental
manners, real or supposed, is the least important thing in these
letters. It serves merely as a pretense for a delicate satire upon
our own customs and for the concealment of a serious intention.
In this moving picture, Usbec chiefly exposes, with as much ease
as energy, whatever among us most struck his penetrating eyes:
our way of treating the silliest things seriously, and of laughing
at the most important; our way of talking which is at once so
blustering and so frivolous; our impatience even in the midst of
pleasure itself; our prejudices and our actions that perpetually
contradict our understandings; our great love of glory and respect
for the idol of court favor, our little real pride; our courtiers so
mean and vain; our exterior politeness to, and our real contempt
of strangers; our fantastical tastes, than which there is nothing
lower but the eagerness of all Europe to adopt them; our bar-
barous disdain for the two most respectable occupations of a
citizen-commerce and magistracy; our literary disputes, so keen
and so useless; our rage for writing before we think, and for
judging before we understand. To this picture he opposes, in
the apologue of the Troglodytes, the description of a virtuous
people, become wise by misfortunes-a piece worthy of the por-
tico. In another place, he represents philosophy, long silenced,
suddenly reappearing, regaining rapidly the time which she had
lost; penetrating even among the Russians at the voice of a
genius hich invites her; while among other people of Europe,
superstition, like a thick atmosphere, prevents the all-surrounding
light from reaching them. Finally, by his review of ancient and
modern government, he presents us with the bud of those bright
ideas since fully developed in his great work.
These different subjects, no longer novel, as when the Persian
Letters' first appeared, will forever remain original - a merit the
more real that it proceeds alone from the genius of the writer;
for Usbec acquired, during his abode in France, so perfect a
knowledge of our morals, and so strong a tincture of our man-
ners, that his style makes us forget his country. This small
solecism was perhaps not unintentional. While exposing our fol-
lies and vices, he meant, no doubt, to do justice to our merits.
Avoiding the insipidity of a direct panegyric, he has more deli-
cately praised us by assuming our own air in professed satire.


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
359
Notwithstanding the success of his work, M. de Montesquieu
did not acknowledge it. Perhaps he wished to escape criticism.
Perhaps he wished to avoid a contrast of the frivolity of the
Persian Letters with the gravity of his office; a sort of reproach
which critics never fail to make, because it requires no sort of
effort. But his secret was discovered, and the public suggested
his name for the Academy. The event justified M. de Montes-
quieu's silence. Usbec expresses himself freely, not concerning
the fundamentals of Christianity, but about matters which people
affect to confound with Christianity itself: about the spirit of
persecution which has animated so many Christians; about the
temporal usurpation of ecclesiastical power; about the excessive
multiplication of monasteries, which deprive the State of subjects
without giving worshipers to God; about some opinions which
would fain be established as principles; about our religious dis-
putes, always violent and often fatal. If he appears anywhere to
touch upon questions more vital to Christianity itself, his reflec-
tions are in fact favorable to revelation, because he shows how
little human reason, left to itself, knows.
Among the genuine letters of M. de Montesquieu the foreign
printer had inserted some by another hand. Before the author
was condemned, these should have been thrown out. Regardless
of these considerations, hatred masquerading as zeal, and zeal
without understanding, rose and united themselves against the
Persian Letters. ' Informers, a species of men dangerous and
base, alarmed the piety of the ministry. M. de Montesquieu,
urged by his friends, supported by the public voice, having
offered himself for the vacant place of M. de Sacy in the French
Academy, the minister wrote « The Forty” that his Majesty would
never accept the election of the author of the Persian Letters';
that he had not, indeed, read the book, but that persons in whom
he placed confidence had informed him of its poisonous tendency.
M. de Montesquieu saw what a blow such an accusation might
prove to his person, his family, and his tranquillity. He neither
sought literary honors nor affected to disdain them when they
came in his way, nor did he regard the lack of them as a misfor-
tune: but a perpetual exclusion, and the motives of that exclus.
ion, appeared to him to be an injury. He saw the minister, and
explained that though he did not acknowledge the Persian Let-
ters,' he would not disown a work for which he had no reason to
blush; and that he ought to be judged upon its contents, and not


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
upon mere hearsay. At last the minister read the book, loved
the author, and learned wisdom as to his advisers. The French
Academy obtained one of its greatest ornaments, and France had
the happiness to keep a subject whom superstition or calumny
had nearly deprived her of; for M. de Montesquieu had declared
to the government that, after the affront they proposed, he would
go among foreigners in quest of that safety, that repose, and per-
haps those rewards which he might reasonably have expected in
his own country. The nation would really have deplored his loss,
while yet the disgrace of it must have fallen upon her.
M. de Montesquieu was received the 24th of January, 1728.
His oration is one of the best ever pronounced here. Among
many admirable passages which shine out in its pages is the deep-
thinking writer's characterization of Cardinal Richelieu, «who
taught France the secret of its strength, and Spain that of its
weakness; who freed Germany from her chains and gave her new
ones. »
The new Academician was the worthier of this title, that he
had renounced all other employments to give himself entirely up
to his genius and his taste. However important was his place, he
perceived that a different work must employ his talents; that the
citizen is accountable to his country and to mankind for all the
good he may do; and that he could be more useful by his writ-
ings than by settling obscure legal disputes. He was no longer
a magistrate, but only a man of letters.
But that his works should serve other nations, it was neces-
sary that he should travel, his aim being to examine the natural
and moral world, to study the laws and constitution of every
country; to visit scholars, writers, artists, and everywhere to seek
for those rare men whose conversation sometimes supplies the
place of years of observation. M. de Montesquieu might have
said, like Democritus, "I have forgot nothing to instruct myself;
I have quitted my country and traveled over the universe, the
better to know truth; I hav seen all the illustrious personages of
my time. ” But there was this difference between the French
Democritus and him of Abdera, that the first traveled to instruct
men, and the second to laugh at them.
He went first to Vienna, where he often saw the celebrated
Prince Eugene. This hero, so
This hero, so fatal to France (to which he
might have been so useful), after having checked the advance of
Louis XIV. and humbled the Ottoman pride, lived without pomp,


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
361
loving and cultivating letters in a court where they are little
honored, and showing his masters how to protect them.
Leaving Vienna, the traveler visited Hungary, an opulent and
fertile country, inhabited by a haughty and generous nation, the
scourge of its tyrants and the support of its sovereigns. As few
persons know this country well, he has written with care this
part of his travels.
From Germany he went to Italy. At Venice he met the
famous Mr. Law, of whose former grandeur nothing remained
but projects fortunately destined to die away unorganized, and a
diamond which he pawned to play at games of hazard. One day
the conversation turned on the famous system which Law had
invented; the source of so many calamities, so many colossal for-
tunes, and so remarkable a corruption in our morals. As the Par-
liament of Paris had made some resistance to the Scotch minister
on this occasion, M.
de Montesquieu asked him why he had never
tried to overcome this resistance by a method almost always
infallible in England, by the grand mover of human actions-in
a word, by money. «These are not,” answered Law, “geniuses so
ardent and so generous as my countrymen; but they are much
more incorruptible. ” It is certainly true that a society which is
free for a limited time ought to resist corruption more than one
which is always free: the first, when it sells its liberty, loses it;
the second, so to speak, only lends it, and exercises it even when
it is thus parting with it. Thus the circumstances and nature of
government give rise to the vices and virtues of nations.
Another person, no less famous, whom M. de Montesquieu saw
still oftener at Venice, was Count de Bonneval.
so
well known for his adventures, which were not yet at an end,
delighted to converse with so good a judge and so excellent a
hearer, often related to him the military actions in which he had
been engaged, and the remarkable circumstances of his life, and
drew the characters of generals and ministers whom he had
known.
He went from Venice to Rome. In this ancient capital of
the world he studied the works of Raphael, of Titian, and of
Michael Angelo. Accustomed to study nature, he knew her when
she was translated, as a faithful portrait appeals to all who are
familiar with the original.
After having traveled over Italy, M. de Montesquieu came to
Switzerland and studied those vast countries which are watered
This man,


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
by the Rhine. There was the less for him to see in Germany
that Frederick did not yet reign. In the United Provinces he
beheld an admirable monument of what human industry animated
by a love of liberty can do. In England he stayed three years.
Welcomed by the greatest men, he had nothing to regret save
that he had not made his journey sooner. Newton and Locke
were dead. But he had often the honor of paying his respects to
their patroness, the celebrated Queen of England, who cultivated
philosophy upon a throne, and who properly esteemed and val-
ued M. de Montesquieu. Nor was he less well received by the
nation. At London he formed intimate friendships with the
great thinkers.
With them he studied the nature of the govern-
ment, attaining profound knowledge of it.
As he had set out neither as an enthusiast nor a cynic, he
brought back neither a disdain for foreigners nor a contempt for
his own country. It was the result of his observations that Ger-
many was made to travel in, Italy to sojourn in, England to think
in, and France to live in.
After returning to his own country, M. de Montesquieu retired
for two years to his estate of La Brède, enjoying that solitude
which a life in the tumult and hurry of the world but makes the
more agreeable. He lived with himself, after having so long
lived with others; and finished his work 'On the Cause of the
Grandeur and Decline of the Romans,' which appeared in 1734.
Empires, like men, must increase, decay, and be extinguished.
But this necessary revolution may have hidden causes which the
veil of time conceals from us.
Nothing in this respect more resembles modern history than
ancient history. That of the Romans must, however, be excepted.
It presents us with a rational policy, a connected system of ag-
grandizement, which will not permit us to attribute the great for-
tune of this people to. obscure and inferior sources. The causes of
the Roman grandeur may then be found in history, and it is the
business of the philosopher to discover them. Besides, there are
no systems in this study, as in that of physics, which are easily
overthrown, because one new and unforeseen experiment can
upset them in an instant. On the contrary, when we carefully
collect the facts, if we do not always gather together all the
desired materials, we may at least hope one day to obtain more.
A great historian combines in the most perfect manner these
defective materials. His merit is like that of an architect, who,


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
363
from a few remains, traces the plan of an ancient edifice; supply-
ing, by genius and happy conjectures, what was wanting in fact.
It is from this point of view that we ought to consider the
work of M. de Montesquieu. He finds the causes of the grandeur
of the Romans in that love of liberty, of labor, and of country,
which was instilled into them during their infancy; in those
intestine divisions which gave an activity to their genius, and
which ceased immediately upon the appearance of an enemy; in
that constancy after misfortunes, which never despaired of the
republic; in that principle they adhered to of never making peace
but after victories; in the honor of a triumph, which was a sub-
ject of emulation among the generals; in that protection which
they granted to those peoples who rebelled against their kings;
in the excellent policy of permitting the conquered to preserve
their religion and customs; and the equally excellent determina-
tion never to have two enemies upon their hands at once, but to
bear everything from the one till they had destroyed the other.
He finds the causes of their declension in the aggrandizement of
the State itself: in those distant wars, which, obliging the citizens
to be too long absent, made them insensibly lose their republican
spirit; in the too easily granted privilege of being citizens of
Rome, which made the Roman people at last become a sort of
many-headed monster; in the corruption introduced by the luxury
of Asia; in the proscriptions of Sylla, which debased the genius
of the nation, and prepared it for slavery; in the necessity of
having a master while their liberty was become burdensome to
them; in the necessity of changing their maxims when they
changed their government; in that series of monsters who
reigned, almost without interruption, from Tiberius to Nerva,
and from Commodus to Constantine; lastly, in the translation
and division of the empire, which perished first in the West
by the power of barbarians, and after having languished in the
East, under weak or cruel emperors, insensibly died away, like
those rivers which disappear in the sands.
In a very small volume M. de Montesquieu explained and
unfolded his picture. Avoiding detail, and seizing only essentials,
he has included in a very small space a vast number of objects
distinctly perceived, and rapidly presented, without fatiguing the
reader. While he points out much, he leaves us still more to
reflect upon; and he might have entitled his book, A Roman
History for the Use of Statesmen and Philosophers. '


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
Whatever reputation M. de Montesquieu had thus far acquired,
he had but cleared the way for a far grander undertaking - for
that which ought to immortalize his name, and commend it to
the admiration of future ages.
He had meditated for twenty
years upon its execution; or, to speak more exactly, his whole
life had been a perpetual meditation upon it. He had made
himself in some sort a stranger in his own country, the better to
understand it. He had studied profoundly the different peoples
of Europe. The famous island, which so glories in her laws, and
which makes so bad a use of them, proved to him what Crete
had been to Lycurgus - a school where he learned much without
approving everything. Thus he attained by degrees to the noblest
title a wise man can deserve, that of legislator of nations.
If he was animated by the importance of his subject, he was
at the same time terrified by its extent. He abandoned it, and
returned to it again and again. More than once, as he himself
owns, he felt his paternal hands fail him. At last, encouraged
by his friends, he resolved to publish the Spirit of Laws. '
In this important work M. de Montesquieu, without insisting,
like his predecessors, upon metaphysical discussions, without con-
fining himself, like them, to consider certain people in certain
particular relations or circumstances, takes a view of the actual
inhabitants of the world in all their conceivable relations to each
other. Most other writers in this way are either simple moral-
ists, or simple lawyers, or even sometimes simple theologists. As
for him, a citizen of all nations, he cares less what duty requires
of us than what means may constrain us to do it; about the
metaphysical perfection of laws, than about what man is capable
of; about laws which have been made, than about those which
ought to have been made; about the laws of a particular people,
than about those of all peoples. Thus, when comparing himself
to those who have run before him in this noble and grand
career, he might say, with Correggio, when he had seen the
works of his rivals, “And I, too, am a Painter. ”
Filled with his subject, the author of the Spirit of Laws'
comprehends so many materials, and treats them with such brev-
ity and depth, that assiduous reading alone discloses its merit.
This study will make that pretended want of method, of which
some readers have accused M. de Montesquieu, disappear. Real
want of order should be distinguished from what is apparent
only. Real disorder confuses the analogy and connection of ideas;


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
365
or sets up conclusions as principles, so that the reader, after
innumerable windings, finds himself at the point whence he set
out. Apparent disorder is when the author, putting his ideas
in their true place, leaves it to the readers to supply intermedi-
ate ones. M. de - Montesquieu's book is designed for men who
think, for men capable of supplying voluntary and reasonable
omissions.
The order perceivable in the grand divisions of the Spirit
of Laws' pervades the smaller details also. By his method of
arrangement we easily perceive the influence of the different parts
upon each other; as, in a system of human knowledge well under-
stood, we may perceive the mutual relation of sciences and arts.
There must always remain something arbitrary in every compre-
hensive scheme, and all that can be required of an author is, that
he follow strictly his own system.
For an allowable obscurity the same defense exists. What
may be obscure to the ignorant is not so for those whom the
author had in mind. Besides, voluntary obscurity is not properly
obscurity. Obliged to present truths of great importance, the
direct avowal of which might have shocked without doing good,
M. de Montesquieu has had the prudence to conceal them from
those whom they might have hurt without hiding them from the
wise.
He has especially profited from the two most thoughtful his-
torians, Tacitus and Plutarch; but, though a philosopher familiar
with these authors might have dispensed with many others, he
neglected nothing that could be of use. The reading necessary
for the Spirit of Laws' is immense; and the author's ingenuity
is the more wonderful because he was almost blind, and obliged
to depend on other men's eyes. This prodigious reading contrib-
utes not only to the utility, but to the agreeableness of the work.
Without sacrificing dignity, M. de Montesquieu entertains the
reader by unfamiliar facts, or by delicate allusions, or by those
strong and brilliant touches which paint, by one stroke, nations
and men.
In a word, M. de Montesquieu stands for the study of laws, as
Descartes stood for that of philosophy. He often instructs us, and
is sometimes mistaken; and even when he mistakes, he instructs
those who know how to read him. The last edition of his works
demonstrates, by its many corrections and additions, that when he
has made a slip, he has been able to rise again.


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
But what is within the reach of all the world is the spirit of
the Spirit of Laws,' which ought to endear the author to all
nations, to cover far greater faults than are his. The love of the
public good, a desire to see men happy, reveals itself everywhere;
and had it no other merit, it would be worthy, on this account
alone, to be read by nations and kings. Already we may perceive
that the fruits of this work are ripe. Though M. de Montesquieu
scarcely survived the publication of the Spirit of Laws,' he had
the satisfaction to foresee its effects among us; the natural love of
Frenchmen for their country turned toward its true object; that
taste for commerce, for agriculture, and for useful arts, which
insensibly spreads itself in our nation; that general knowledge of
the principles of government, which renders people more attached
to that which they ought to love. Even the men who have
indecently attacked this work perhaps owe more to it than they
imagine. Ingratitude, besides, is their least fault. It is not with-
out regret and mortification that we expose them; but this history
is of too much consequence to M. de Montesquieu and to philoso-
phy to be passed over in silence. May that reproach, which at
last covers his enemies, profit them!
The Spirit of Laws' was at once eagerly sought after on
account of the reputation of its author; but though M. de Montes-
. quieu had written for thinkers, he had the vulgar for his judge.
The brilliant passages scattered up and down the work, admit-
ted only because they illustrated the subject, made the ignorant
believe that it was written for them. Looking for an entertaining
book, they found a useful one, whose scheme and details they
could not comprehend without attention. The Spirit of Laws
was treated with a deal of cheap wit; even the title of it was
made a subject of pleasantry. In a word, one of the finest literary
monuments which our nation ever produced was received almost
with scurrility. It was requisite that competent judges should
have time to read it, that they might correct the errors of the
fickle multitude. That small public which teaches, dictated to
that large public which listens to hear, how it ought to think and
speak; and the suffrages of men of abilities formed only one
voice over all Europe.
The open and secret enemies of letters and philosophy now
united their darts against this work. Hence that multitude of
pamphlets discharged against the author, weapons which we shall
not draw from oblivion. If those authors were not forgotten, it


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367
might be believed that the Spirit of Laws' was written amid a
nation of barbarians.
M. de Montesquieu despised the obscure criticisms of the
curious. He ranked them with those weekly newspapers whose
encomiums have no authority, and their darts no effect; which
indolent readers run over without believing, and in which sov-
ereigns are insulted without knowing it. But he was not equally
indifferent about those principles of irreligion which they accused
him of having propagated. By ignoring such reproaches he
would have seemed to deserve them, and the importance of the
object made him shut his eyes to the meanness of his adversaries.
The ultra-zealous, afraid of that light which letters diffuse, not to
the prejudice of religion, but to their own disadvantage, took
different ways of attacking him; some, by a trick as puerile as
cowardly, wrote fictitious letters to themselves; others, attacking
him anonymously, had afterwards fallen by the ears among them-
selves. M. de Montesquieu contented himself with making an
example of the most extravagant. This was the author of an
anonymous periodical paper, who accused M. de Montesquieu of
Spinozism and deism (two imputations which are incompatible);
of having followed the system of Pope (of which there is not a
word in his works); of having quoted Plutarch, who is not a
Christian author; of not having spoken of original sin and of
grace. In a word, he pretended that the Spirit of Laws' was a
production of the constitution Unigenitus, a preposterous idea.
Those who understand M. de Montesquieu and Clement XI. may
judge, by this accusation, of the rest.
This enemy procured the philosopher an addition of glory as
a man of letters: the ‘Defense of the Spirit of Laws appeared.
This work, for its moderation, truth, delicacy of ridicule, is a
model. M. de Montesquieu might easily have made his adversary
odious; he did better – he made him ridiculous. We owe the
aggressor eternal thanks for having procured us this masterpiece.
For here, without intending it, the author has drawn a picture of
himself; those who knew him think they hear him; and posterity,
when reading his Defense,' will decide that his conversation
equaled his writings- an encomium which few great men have
deserved.
Another circumstance gave him the advantage. The critic
loudly accused the clergy of France, and especially the faculty of
theology, of indifference to the cause of God, because they did


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
not proscribe the Spirit of Laws. The faculty resolved to
examine the Spirit of Laws. ' Though several years have passed,
it has not yet pronounced a decision. It knows the grounds of
reason and of faith; it knows that the work of a man of letters
ought not to be examined like that of a theologian; that a bad
interpretation does not condemn a proposition, and that it may
injure the weak to see an ill-timed suspicion of heresy thrown
upon geniuses of the first rank. In spite of this unjust accusa-
tion, M. de Montesquieu was always esteemed, visited, and well
received by the greatest and most respectable dignitaries of the
Church. Would he have preserved this esteem among men of
worth, if they had regarded him as a dangerous writer ?
M. de Montesquieu's death was not unworthy of his life.
Suffering greatly, far from a family that was dear to him, sur-
rounded by a few friends and a great crowd of spectators, he
preserved to the last his calmness and serenity of soul. After
performing with decency every duty, full of confidence in the
Eternal Being, he died with the tranquillity of a man of worth,
who had ever consecrated his talents to virtue and humanity.
France and Europe lost him February 10th, 1755, aged sixty-six.
All the newspapers published this event as a misfortune. We
may apply to M. de Montesquieu what was formerly said of an
illustrious Roman: that nobody, when told of his death, showed
any joy or forgot him when he was no more. Foreigners were
eager to demonstrate their regrets: my Lord Chesterfield, whom
it is enough to name, wrote an article to his honor- an article
worthy of both. It is the portrait of Anaxagoras drawn by
Pericles. The Royal Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres of
Prussia, though it is not its custom to pronounce a eulogy on
foreign members, paid him an honor which only the illustrious
John Bernoulli had hitherto received. M. de Maupertuis, though
ill, performed himself this last duty to his friend, and would not
permit so sacred an office to fall to the share of any other. Το
these honorable suffrages were added those praises given him,
in presence of one of us, by that very monarch to whom this
celebrated Academy owes its lustre; a prince who feels the losses
which Philosophy sustains, and at the same time comforts her.
The 17th of February the French Academy, according to
custom, performed a solemn service for him, at which all the
learned men of this body assisted. They ought to have placed
the Spirit of Laws' upon his coffin, as heretofore they exposed,


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
369
opposite to that of Raphael, his Transfiguration. This simple and
affecting decoration would have been a fit funeral oration.
M. de Montesquieu had, in company, an unvarying sweetness
and gayety of temper. His conversation was spirited, agreeable,
and instructive, because he had known so many great men.
It
was, like his style, concise, full of wit and sallies, without gall,
and without satire. Nobody told a story more brilliantly, more
readily, more gracefully, or with less affectation.
His frequent absence of mind only made him the more amus-
ing. He always roused himself to reanimate the conversation.
The fire of his genius, his prodigality of ideas, gave rise to
flashes of speech; but he never interrupted an interesting conver-
sation; and he was attentive without affectation and without con-
straint. His conversation not only resembled his character and
his genius, but had the method which he observed in his study.
Though capable of long-continued meditation, he never exhausted
his strength; he always left off application before he felt the
least symptom of fatigue.
He was sensible to glory, but wished only to deserve it, and
never tried to augment his own fame by underhand practices.
Worthy of all distinctions, he asked none, and he was not
surprised that he was forgot; but he has protected at court men
of letters who were persecuted, celebrated, and unfortunate, and
has obtained favors for them.
Though he lived with the great, their company was not
necessary to his happiness. He retired whenever he could to the
country; there again with joy to welcome his philosophy, his
books, and his repose. After having studied man in the com-
merce of the world, and in the history of nations, he studied him
also among those simple people whom nature alone has in-
structed. From them he could learn something; he endeavored,
like Socrates, to find out their genius; he appeared as happy
thus as in the most brilliant assemblies, especially when he made
up their differences, and comforted them by his beneficence.
Nothing does greater honor to his memory than the economy
with which he lived, and which has been blamed as excessive in
a proud and avaricious age. He would not encroach on the pro-
vision for his family, even by his generosity to the unfortunate,
or by those expenses which his travels, the weakness of his sight,
and the printing of his works made necessary. He transmitted
to his children, without diminution or augmentation, the estate
1-24


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JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT
which he received from his ancestors, adding nothing to it but
the glory of his name and the example of his life. He had
married, in 1715, dame Jane de Lartigue, daughter of Peter de
Lartigue, lieutenant-colonel of the regiment of Molevrier, and
had by her two daughters and one son.
Those who love truth and their country will not be displeased
to find some of his maxims here. He thought: That every part
of the State ought to be equally subject to the laws, but that the
privileges of every part of the State ought to be respected when
they do not oppose the natural right which obliges every citizen
equally to contribute to the public good; that ancient possession
was in this kind the first of titles, and the most inviolable of
rights, which it was always unjust and sometimes dangerous to
shake; that magistrates, in all circumstances, and notwithstand-
ing their own advantage, ought to be magistrates without par-
tiality and without passion, like the laws which absolve and
punish without love or hatred. He said upon occasion of those
ecclesiastical disputes which so much employed the Greek empe-
rors and Christians, that theological disputes, when they are not
confined to the schools, infallibly dishonor a nation in the eyes
of its neighbors: in fact, the contempt in which wise men hold
those quarrels does not vindicate the character of their country;
because, sages making everywhere the least noise, and being the
smallest number, it is never from them that the nation is judged.
We look upon that special interest which M. de Montesquieu
took in the Encyclopédie' as one of the most honorable rewards
of our labor. Perhaps the opposition which the work has met
with, reminding him of his own experience, interested him the
more in our favor. Perhaps he was sensible, without perceiving
it, of that justice which we dared to do him in the first volume
of the Encyclopédie,' when nobody as yet had ventured to say a
word in his defense. He prepared for us an article upon ‘Taste,'
which has been found unfinished among his papers. We shall
give it to the public in that condition, and treat it with the same
respect that antiquity formerly showed to the last words of
Seneca. Death prevented his giving us any further marks of his
approval; and joining our own griefs with those of all Europe,
we might write on his tomb:-
« Finis vite ejus nobis luctuosus, patriæ tristis, extraneis etiam ig notisque
non sine cura fuit. ”
.


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