Note 14 — OF DES MAIZEAUX, AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF ANTHONY COLLINS’S MANUSCRIPTS.

Van Effen was a Dutch writer of some merit, and one of a literary knot of ingenious men, consisting of Sallengre, St. Hyacinthe, Prosper Marchand, &c., who carried on a smart review for those days, published at the Hague under the title of “Journal Littéraire.” They all composed in French; and Van Effen gave the first translations of our “Guardian,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and the “Tale of a Tub,” &c. He did something more, but not better; he attempted to imitate the “Spectator,” in his “Le Misanthrope,” 1726, which exhibits a picture of the uninteresting manners of a nation whom he could not make very lively.