THE REVOLUTION OF IDEAS
The early part of the eighteenth century witnessed a great change in the current of ideas in France. The death of Louis XIV, and the coming to power of Philippe Duc d’Orléans as regent, dispelled all the old prestige of glittering Versailles, and gave France a wit and debauchee for ruler who cared nothing for pomp or etiquette. He enjoyed life after his own unedifying fashion; he gambled and encouraged stock exchange speculation; he relaxed the muzzle and let slip the courtier’s leash with which Louis had curbed the great men of letters of his epoch. And immediately French writers dashed away into the boundless field of political satire and criticism. Montesquieu led off with his “Lettres Persanes,” in 1721, and Voltaire followed hard at his heels with his “Letters on the English,” in 1734. The hounds of spring were at winter’s traces.