subdued irony of its apparent submission to orthodoxy, this little book
forestalled a method of controversy which came into great vogue at a
later date. But a more important work, published at the very end of the
seventeenth century, was the _Dictionary_ of BAYLE, in which, amid an
enormous mass of learning poured out over a multitude of heterogeneous
subjects, the most absolute religious scepticism is expressed with
unmistakable emphasis and unceasing reiteration. The book is an
extremely unwieldy one--very large and very discursive, and quite devoid
of style; but its influence was immense; and during the long combat of
the eighteenth century it was used as a kind of armoury, supplying many
of their sharpest weapons to the writers of the time.

It was not, however, until a few years after the death of the great king
that a volume appeared which contained a complete expression of the new
spirit, in all its aspects. In the _Lettres Persanes_ of MONTESQUIEU
(published 1721) may be discerned the germs of the whole thought of the
eighteenth century in France. The scheme of this charming and remarkable
book was not original: some Eastern travellers were supposed to arrive
in Paris, and to describe, in a correspondence with their countrymen in
Persia, the principal features of life in the French capital. But the
uses to which Montesquieu put this borrowed plot were all his own. He
made it the base for a searching attack on the whole system of the
government of Louis XIV. The corruption of the Court, the privileges of
the nobles, the maladministration of the finances, the stupidities and
barbarisms of the old autocratic régime--these are the topics to which
he is perpetually drawing his reader's attention. But he does more than
this: his criticism is not merely particular, it is general; he points
out the necessarily fatal effects of all despotisms, and he indicates
his own conception of what a good constitution should be. All these
discussions are animated by a purely secular spirit. He views religion