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 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 sovereigns 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 themselves.  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 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