Argens, Jean-Baptiste le Boyer, marquis d' (1704-71). Voltairean free-thinker, author of capacious works modelled on Montesquieu's Lettres persanes and displaying curiosity, scepticism, and a cosmopolitan spirit: Lettres juives (1736); Lettres cabbalistiques (1737); Lettres chinoises (1739-40). He also wrote an unsystematic treatise, La Philosophie du bon sens (1737), memoirs, and libertine novels.
[Peter France]
