Charles Louis de Secondat was born in 1689, a year after the Revolution which ended the Stuart dynasty, five years before the birth of Voltaire, 100 years before the outbreak of the French Revolution. He died in 1755, four years after the publication of the first volume of the French Encyclopedia, the year before the Seven Years' War, five years before George III came to the throne, and seven years before Rousseau preached to the world, in the first chapter of his Social Contract, that man is born free and is everywhere in chains. His birthplace was the Chateau of La Brède, a thirteenth-century castle some ten miles from Bordeaux[1]. Thus he was a countryman of Montaigne,.
- ↑ Sixteen and a half miles by railway.
has been severely criticized by M. Brunetière (Revue des deux Mondes, 1879). The best contemporary appreciation of Montesquieu is by the Marquis d'Argenson (Mémoires, p. 428, edition of 1825). The standard edition of Montesquieu is that by Laboulaye in 7 vols., Paris, 1873–9. This must now be supplemented by the 'Collection Bordelaise,' which contains further materials supplied by the Montesquieu family, and which includes Deux opuscules de Montesquieu, 1891: Mélanges inédits de Montesquieu, 1892: Voyages de Montesquieu, 2 vols., 1894: Pensées et fragments inédits, 2 vols., 1899, 1901. The literature on Montesquieu is very extensive. A list of books, articles, and éloges relating to him will be found in an appendix to Vian's Histoire. Among subsequent works the first place is taken by M. Sorel's Montesquieu in the series called Les grands écrivains français, a little book of which I can only speak with the most respectful admiration. Reference may also be made to Oncken, Zeitalter Friedrichs des Grossen, i. 80, 457: Taine, Ancien Régime, pp. 264, 278, 339: Janet, Histoire de la science politique, vol. ii: Faguet, Dix-huitième siècle: Faguet, La politique comparée de Montesquieu, Rousseau et Voltaire: Brunetière, Études critiques sur l'histoire de la littérature française, 4me série: Flint, The Philosophy of History, 262–79: Sir Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i. 186: Henry Sidgwick, The Development of European Polity: Sir F. Pollock, History of the Science of Politics.
