REVIEWS 377 voice of the author, whose philosophy is that, at the deepest level of human experience , there is a rational moral order. To demonstrate this, Goldzink follows a procedure not easily distinguishable from Mornet's, which is to assume that certain "enlightened" ideas expressed by the Persians are endorsed by Montesquieu. Thus he refers to letter 83, where Usbek offers a rational proof of the existence of God and Natural Law; but the reader will surely feel that this tells us nothing about Montesquieu's alleged rationalism , for (leaving aside the problem of the status of the énoncé), Usbek's "proof is hedged around with reservations ("S'il y a un Dieu ...") and such reservations abound in the work, as when Rica says that all our judgments are subjective, so that if triangles had a God they would give him three sides (letter 59). However, Goldzink, undaunted by such pronouncements, produces what he considers his trump card, an "experimental" proof of Montesquieu's metaphysical principles: "Les maux dont s'accable le despotisme fournissent la preuve expérimentale de l'existence de lois naturelles, que la raison découvre par le seul effort de l'entendement," and he adds, with a side glance at Mornet , "// est par conséquent impossible de déboucher sur une philosophie du relativisme" (p. 69, author's emphasis). Again, the reader will be unconvinced; indeed, this "proof is based on an egregious non sequitur. it is impossible to deduce an ought (Natural Law) from an is (the existence of despotism) and the only "law" that can be inferred from the fact that men are wicked and cruel is the law of the jungle. Goldzink is at his best when he focuses on the brilliant rhetorical patterns on the surface of the text; his attempt to penetrate beneath the surface and to bring Montesquieu into the picture is clumsy and, in fact, inconsistent with his narcological method which requires that the author should be placed between brackets. He would have been more successful in dealing with the Lettres persanes as a philosophical work had he studied the problem of the norm of the satire. This norm is "reason" (or "nature"): the Persians are philosophers who appeal to reason, and it is in the light of this standard that they satirize human vice and folly. The norm is unstable, however, for in the first place (as has been seen above), they have doubts about the reliability of reason, and secondly, Usbek, the man of reason par excellence (at least initially in the mind of the reader), soon reveals that he behaves just as irrationally as those he condemns. When the satirist is satirized the norm collapses, leaving the reader disorientated. This disorientation, at the level of ideas and standards, could probably be grafted on to Goldzink's analysis of disorientation at the level of rhetoric; it would not, however, harmonize with his views on the author's idealism, for, if the collapse of the norm tells us anything about the Lettres persanes as a work of ideas, it is that men (even philosophers) and women (one should not forget the women in the harem) find it impossible to be governed by any immutable standard. This points to scepticism and relativism, suggesting that, at whatever level one analyses the text, it is difficult to find in it any convincing evidence of that moral order which is central to Montesquieu's later writings. CP. Courtney Christ's College—Cambridge Edward Tomarken. Johnson, "Rasselas, " and the Choice of Criticism. Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, 1990. xii + 210pp. US$29.00. This book calls itself the first full-length study of Rasselas, but only in the sense that the half devoted to other works by Johnson applies to them "a method derived from the story 378 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 3:4 of the Prince of Abyssinia" (p. 1). This paradox falls into place among others: that the "little story book" (p. 37) written in the evenings of one week is now regularly used to convey to students the misleading impression that Johnson (of whom they know nothing else) is a novelist, and that we still lack any book-length engagement with...