Note 408:1 — Chapter IX

See the letters in Appendix. The French bibliographical works of reference, which are in general very full, do not mention any translation of the History of the Stuarts earlier than 1760, when Querard and Brunet give the following:

Histoire de la Maison de Stuart sur le trône d'Angleterre, jusqu'au détrônement de Jacques II. traduite de l'Anglois de David Hume, (par L'Abbé Prévost.) Londres (Paris) 1760. 3 vols. in 4to.

The edition about to appear in Holland, which threw Le Blanc into despair, seems to have been overlooked. This Prévost, or Prévôt, is the well-known author of the "Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut," which still holds its place in French popular literature, though it bears but a small proportion to the bulk of his other voluminous works which are forgotten. The authors of the Dictionnaire Historique, say they find in his translation of Hume, "un air étranger, un style souvent embarrassé, sémé d'Anglicismes, d'expressions peu Françoises, de tours durs, de phrases louches et mal construites." This abbé led an irregular life, being a sort of disgraced ecclesiastic, and his death was singularly tragical. He had fallen by the side of a wood in a fit of apoplexy. Being found insensible, he was removed as a dead body to the residence of a magistrate, where a surgeon was to open the body to discover the cause of death. At the first insertion of the knife, a scream from the victim terrified all present: but it was too late; the instrument had entered a vital part.