Note 743 — Chapter XXVIII

The Biographie Universelle, art. Leslie, says: Cet ouvrage, qui passe pour ce qu’il a fait de mieux, lui a été contesté. Le Docteur Gleigh [sic] a fait de grands efforts pour prouver qu’il appartenait à Leslie, quoiqu’il fût publié parmi les ouvrages de l’Abbe de Saint Real, mort en 1692. It is melancholy to see this petty spirit of cavil against an English writer in so respectable a work as the Biographic Universelle. No grands efforts could be required from Dr. Gleig or anyone else, to prove that a book was written by Leslie, which bore his name, which was addressed to an English peer, and had gone through many editions; when there is literally no claimant on the other side; for a posthumous edition, forty years after an author’s death, without attestation, is no literary evidence at all, even where a book is published for the first time, much less where it has a known status as the production of a certain author. This is so manifest to anyone who has the slightest tincture of critical judgment, that we need not urge the palpable improbability of ascribing to Saint Real, a Romish ecclesiastic, an argument which turns peculiarly on the distinction between the scriptural miracles and those alledged upon inferior evidence. I have lost, or never made, the reference to Prosper Marchand; but the passage will be found in his Dictionnaire Historique, which contains a full article on Saint Real.