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 misfortune:  but a perpetual exclusion, and the motives of that exclusion, appeared to him to be an injury.  He saw the minister, and explained that though he did not acknowledge the ’Persian Letters,’ 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 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 perhaps 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 writings 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 necessary 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 have 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.