The Persian Letters; With Introduction and Notes, Now Completely Done Into English - Tapa blanda

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This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1901. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... PREFACE. In 1721 Montesquieu was thirty-two years old. He had been entered as counsellor in the parliament of Bordeaux in 1714; had married Mademoiselle Jeanne de Lartigues, who bore him three children; in the following year had become president d mortier in the same parliament, on the death of an uncle, in 1716; and had been now for five years a member of the Bordeaux Academy of Science, Belles-Lettres and Arts, established by letters patent on the 5th of September, 1712. He founded, during the year of his reception, a prize for anatomy, and read, at various sessions of the society, dissertations on the causes productive of echo, the renal glands, the weight and transparency of bodies, etc. He announced his intention of writing a physical history of the globe, and sent forth circulars throughout the scientific world inviting communications and memoirs on the subject, and expressing his willingness to pay for the expense of carriage. In the mean time, although he was equipping himself for the two works that were destined to render him immortal by writing the Politique des Romains dans la Religion, the Systetne des Id/es (1716), and the Difference des Genies (1717), he was not known as the author of any important literary production until the appearance of two little volumes entitled Lettres persanes, "which he did not own, but which he did not disown either." It is unnecessary to say that the paternity of these letters has never been seriously disputed. The famous epigraph prefixed to the Esprit des Lois -- Prolem sine matre creatam -- cannot, however, be applied to them; indeed, it is doubtful if there ever has been an instance of spontaneous generation in literature, even in the case of a work of genius. It is probable that Mo...