d irritating
sensuality could accommodate itself either to sentiment or to
philosophy. Voltaire's tales are, in narrative form, criticisms of
belief or opinion which scintillate with ironic wit. His disciple,
Marmontel, would "render virtue amiable" in his _Contes Moraux_
(1761), and cure the ravage of passion with a canary's song. His more
ambitious _Belisaire_ seems to a modern reader a masterpiece in the
_genre ennuyeux_. His _Incas_ is exotic without colour or credibility.
Florian, with little skill, imitated the _Incas_ and _Telemaque_,
or was feebly idyllic and conventionally pastoral as a follower of
the Swiss Gessner. Restif de la Bretonne could be gross, corrupt,
declamatory, sentimental, humanitarian in turns or all together.
Three names are eminent--that of Diderot, who flung his good and evil
powers, mingling and fermenting, into his novels as into all else;
that of Rousseau, who interpreted passion, preached its restraints,
depicted the charms of the domestic interior, and presented the
glories of external nature in _La Nouvelle Heloise_; that of Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre, who reaches a hand to Rousseau on the one side, and
on the other to Chateaubriand.

CHAPTER II
MONTESQUIEU--VAUVENARGUES--VOLTAIRE

I

The author of _De l'Esprit des Lois_ was as important in the history
of European speculation as in that of French literature; but
inevitable changes of circumstances and ideas have caused his
influence to wane. His life was one in which the great events were
thoughts. Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de MONTESQUIEU, was born
in 1689 at La Brede, near Bordeaux. After his years of education by
the Oratorians, which left him with something of scepticism in his
intellect, and something of stoicism in his character, he pursued
legal studies, and in 1716 became President of the Parliament of
Bordeaux. The scientific researches of his day attracted him;
investigating anatomy, botany, natural philosophy, the history of
the earth, he came to see man as a portion of nature, or at least
as a creature whose life is largely determined by natural laws. With
a temper of happy serenity, and an admirable balance of faculties,
he was possessed by an eager intellectual curiosity. "I spend my
life," he said, "in examining; everything interests, everything
surprises me."

Nothing, however, interested him so much as the phenomena of human
society; he had no aptitude for metaphysical speculations; his
feeling for