Note 210 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The book was accorded the Monthyon prize by the French Academy. In translation (1788) it found a welcome in England among Churchmen by reason of its pro-Christian tone and its general vindication of religious institutions. The translation was the work of Mary Wollstonecraft. See Kegan Paul’s William Godwin, 1876, i, 193. Mrs. Dunlop, the friend of Burns, recommending its perusal to the poet, paid it a curious compliment: “He does not write like a sectary, hardly like a Christian, but yet while I read him, I like better my God, my neighbour, Monsieur Necker, and myself.” Robert Burns and Mrs. Dunlop, ed. by W. Wallace, 1898, p. 258. ↑