Details
MONTESQUIEU, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de (1689-1755). Autograph letter signed to an unidentified correspondent ('votre eccellence', the Duc de Nivernais?), Clérac, 20 June 1751, 2 pages, 4to (numbered '834' in upper margin on 1st page), integral blank.
A declaration of reluctance to engage in the bitter dispute over his work De l'esprit des lois. Montesquieu encloses a letter for Cardinal Quirini which is so dull that he hopes he will lose any wish to print it, and refers to an apologia for his De l'esprit des lois by an unknown author: 'Cest une reponse a des ouvrages de labbé de laporte. Je navois pas voulu y repondre haissant mortellement cette espece de guerre. Un autre a fait mieux que moy ce que je n'ay point voulu faire.'
The letter was written at the height of the dispute over Monstesquieu's De l'esprit des lois (1748), the product of twenty years work, setting out his understanding of the natural rights of man and the separation of powers. Widely circulated in France and translated into other languages, welcomed by the philosophes and condemned by Jesuits and Jansenists, it was at once banned by the government. Pamphlets supporting or rebutting it flowed, and the Abbé de Laporte published his Observations on it. In February 1750 Montesquieu replied to his critics in his Défense de l'esprit des lois, and asked the Duc de Nivernais, French ambassador in Rome, to present this to Pope Benedict XIV, in an unsuccessful bid to avoid a papal proscription of the work.
A declaration of reluctance to engage in the bitter dispute over his work De l'esprit des lois. Montesquieu encloses a letter for Cardinal Quirini which is so dull that he hopes he will lose any wish to print it, and refers to an apologia for his De l'esprit des lois by an unknown author: 'Cest une reponse a des ouvrages de labbé de laporte. Je navois pas voulu y repondre haissant mortellement cette espece de guerre. Un autre a fait mieux que moy ce que je n'ay point voulu faire.'
The letter was written at the height of the dispute over Monstesquieu's De l'esprit des lois (1748), the product of twenty years work, setting out his understanding of the natural rights of man and the separation of powers. Widely circulated in France and translated into other languages, welcomed by the philosophes and condemned by Jesuits and Jansenists, it was at once banned by the government. Pamphlets supporting or rebutting it flowed, and the Abbé de Laporte published his Observations on it. In February 1750 Montesquieu replied to his critics in his Défense de l'esprit des lois, and asked the Duc de Nivernais, French ambassador in Rome, to present this to Pope Benedict XIV, in an unsuccessful bid to avoid a papal proscription of the work.
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Please note that this is a letter signed by Baron de Montesquieu, and not an autograph letter as stated in the catalogue.