MANUSCRIPT BOUGHT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1939, Page 9

MANUSCRIPT BOUGHT

OVER TWO THOUSAND POUNDS PAID. The manuscript of Montesquieu’s “Esprit des Lois” was bought at the recent sale of manuscripts of the famous French writer of the eighteenth, century for the sum of 401,000 francs, £2,265, by the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris. The “Esprit des Lois” is a study of the legal and political institutions of the world. There was just a bit of a nervous flurry in the sale room, for as the book had an important influence on the framing of the American constitution it was feared that an American buyer would carry it off. When M. Julien Cain, curator of the Bibliotheque Nationale, made the first bid after the upset price of 400,000 francs had been announced, something of a sigh of relief accompanied the fall of the hammer with no further offers. The precious manuscript will now take its place among the three and a half million volumes of France’s national library. ■ The first lot offered was the manuscript of a philosophical story, written by a secretary and bearing marginal corrections in Montesquieu’s handwriting, but it jumped rapidly from 1,000 to 2,700 francs. Then a small lot of Discours and Memoires fetched 13,000 francs. The town of Bordeaux sent a delegate to the sale with a sum of money collected by public subscription, and he secured a number of odd manuscripts for the town near which Montesquieu was born. All the manuscripts sold had been in the possession of the family, and the sale realised a total of 670,000, francs, £3,784.