Montesquieu: Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu. Volume VIII. Œuvres et écrits divers I (review)

Those who favour (and find greater logic in) the chronological editions of the Complete Worksof Voltaire, Baudelaire, Hugo, Zola and so on, and who may not therefore be entirely convinced by the format imagined for the Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu(and who are unwilling to change perspective), will surely none the less welcome Pierre Rétat's introduction to this volume, which is a most careful and enlightening examination of the notion of œuvres diversessuch as it has been evolving since the Restoration. The texts in the present volume are 'œuvres préparatoires ou secondaires' (as he terms them), and being, as they are, so many coherent if discrete parts of a career, or a system, or a 'genius' in the process of formation, touch upon the eternal and unquestioned importance of the others (for instance, the Lettres persanes; the Considérations sur les Romains; De l'esprit des lois), via what Gaëtan Picon elsewhere calls 'points de tengeance.' Whether the sceptical will be convinced by his careful argument or not, they will have to recognize ungrudgingly the sheer interest of the thirty-three texts that are here gathered together (including some of the material that was famously dispersed — and thereby 'lost' — in the 1939 manuscript sale). The texts in question, which have all been carefully dated and presented chronologically, cover a wide variety of fields of intellectual interest (history, politics, ethics, economics, poetry, science, in particular, in its many specialist avatars). All the latter allow the reader to glimpse the ebbs and flows of Montesquieu's interests and activities in the period running from about 1700 to about 1728. Many of them will moreover be welcome additions to the corpus available to dix-huitiémistessince they are known to them only by title. Even more particularly welcome among the latter writings are those that have direct links to significant themes of enquiry during Montesquieu's career. Chief among these are the Lettres de Xénocrate à Phérès(1724) — a penetrating pen portrait of the Régent, Philippe d'Orléans — which have much in common with the Lettres persanes; readers of the Considérationswill immediately grasp the significance of the Disssertation sur la politique des Romains dans la religion(1716), along with its logical companion the Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate(1724), while no one who knows the thrust of De l'esprit des loiscan possibly mistake the importance of his Considérations sur les richesses de l'Espagne. However, those scholars, who are just as equally — maybe even more — favoured by this volume are the historians of science: at least half of the texts presented here (including the totally unpublished Mémoire sur l'extrait de l''Optique' de Newtonof c.1720) either record Montesquieu's contributions to debate within the Académie de Bordeaux, or chronicle his studied reactions to the work of fellow academicians.

Each text, which relies, wherever possible, for its authenticity on the original manuscript (which is practically always the case), has been edited with great tact and sensitivity. Not all, of course, have warranted exhaustive attention because each single one has been judged on its respective merits, on its repercussions within the overall corpus, and no less on the difficulties that it might present for the generality of dix-huitiémistes. Thus, Le Temple de Gnide(the only 'household' text in the volume) deserves the extended treatment so impressively devoted to it by Cecil Courtney and Carole Dornier, whereas the Éloge de la sincérité( c.1717) or the Dialogue de Xantippe et de Xénocrate( c. 1727) can be content with the rapid but sensitive elucidation that the late, regretted Sheila Mason affords them. In sum, this volume which consistently illustrates the sheer quality of its general editorial principles, is another...