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Thomson and Voltaire's Socrate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Scholarly biographers of James Thomson have shown a tendency to credit the statements made by Voltaire in the Preface to his tragedy, Socrate, which he represented to be a translation of an English original by Thomson given to the supposed translator, one “Mr. Fatema,” by “Mr. Littleton” when the latter was on a visit to Holland. Morel attempted to identify this play with a tragedy which was undertaken by Thomson in 1731: “Il se pourrait bien que ce fût cette même tragédie de ‘Socrate’ dont Rundle lui avait inspiré l'idée, et que plus tard d'autres amis, Mr. Pitt …, Mr. Lyttelton et Gilbert West lui conseillèrent d'abandonner.” Macaulay believes that Socrate was the drama “suggested by Mrs. Sandys” which Thomson referred to in a letter to Rundle in December, 1736. He admits that Voltaire's preface is a “piece of mystification”; but adds:
it does not follow that all the statements made in it are untrue, and we know that Voltaire was in correspondence with Lyttelton shortly after Thomson's death.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934
References
1 Thomas Rundle (1688?–1743), bishop of Derry from 1735. See Lyttelton's letter to Griffths below.
2 Leon Morel, James Thomson, sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris, 1895), p. 96.
3 G. C. Macualay: James Thomson in English Men of Letters Series (London: Macmillan, 1907), p. 44.—The reference is to a letter which Voltaire wrote to Lyttelton in 1750, acknowledging the receipt of presentation copies of an edition of Thomson's Works supervised by Lyttleton after Thomson's death. The original of this letter is in the Hagley MSS, Vol. ii, f. 139–140, in the possession of Viscount Cobham at Hagley Hall. It is printed with some inaccuracies in Phillimore's Memoirs and Correspondence of George, Lord Lyttleton (London, 1854), i, 323–325; and also appears in the review of Phillimore in the Gentlemen's Magazine, 1854, New Series, xxiv, 451; in Mrs. Maud Wyndham's Chronicles of the Eighteenth Century (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1924), i, 234–235; and in Morel, James Thomson, p. 193 n.
4 Melitus is one of the judges who conducts the trial and condemnation of Socrates.
5 The play was composed in June, 1759, and printed the same year. The British Museum has a copy of this edition. The use of the date 1755 has been taken as another proof that Voltaire sometimes antedated his works. See Œuvres Complètes (Garnier Frères: Paris, 1877–85), v, 361, n. 1.
6 For a denial of this statement see the Monthly Review, xxii (1760), 153–154, and the Journal Encyclopédique, Tome 1, Troisième Partie (1760), p. 112. There is no mention in Genest of any play on this subject between 1755 and 1759.
7 Voltaire, Œuvres (Paris: Beuchot, 1832), lviii, 413.—For a recent inquiry as to the authorship of Socrate and the answer, see the London Times Literary Supplement for January 31 and February 14, 1929.
8 Voltaire, Œuvres Complètes (Garnier Frères), v, 361, n. 2, 363 & n. 2. See also the Monthly Review, xxii (1760), 153–154; and the Journal Encyclopédique, Tome 1, Troisième Partie, 112.
9 MS. Bodl. Add. C. 89, f. 215.
10 xxii, 153–154.
11 Tome 1, Troisième Partie (1760), 110–112.
12 The London Chronicle, or, Universal Evening Post. Feb. 12–14, 1760.—See also the London Magazine, xxix (1760), 111, and the Gentleman's Magazine, xxx (1760), 96.
13 ix (1760), 221–225.
14 P. X.
15 xxii (1760), 284–291.
16 See Œuvres Complètes (Garnier Frères), v, 361, n. 1.—Voltaire in the Preface to this 1761 edition gives as an additional reason why Mr. Lyttelton did not wish the play performed: “… ce Drame était une esquisse, plutot qu'un ouvrage achevé” (p. 135).
17 Sokrates, in tooneelstik feu J. Thomson; unt it Frans forfryske feu Knillis Jorrits Posthumus te Sint Ama (Ljeeeuwert, 1848).
18 Voltaire et la Societé au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris, 1875), v, 483.
19 Voltaire, Œuvres Complètes (Garnier Frères), v, 365, n. 1; and 382, n. 1.
20 Voltaire, Œuvres (ed. Beuchot), lviii, 413.
21 Voltaire's method of procedure in this case may be compared with that used by him in the case of L'Ecossaire, first represented on July 26, 1760, and furnishing an episode in the warfare between Voltaire and Fréron, the critic of L'Année Littéraire, who is satirised under the thin disguise of Frélon. The play was represented as the work of one Hume, a relative of David Hume, and as having been translated into French by M. Jerome Carré. See Œuvres Completes (Garnier Frères), v. 365, n. 1, and 382, n. 1.).
22 The originals are at Hagley (Hagley MSS., vol. iii, f. 73–74), and are printed in Phillimore, ii, 555–558—See also B. M. Add. MSS. 36, 270, f. 92–93; Gentlemen's Magazine, xxxi (1761), 54–55; L'Année Littéraire (1761), iii, 281–285; Annual Register, iv, Part 2 (1761), 33–36; Voltaire, Œuvres (ed. Beuchot), lix, 15–16, 111–113. A corrupt version of Voltaire's letter appears in the Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire (Kehl, 1785), lvi, 498–499. This is said to have originated in Robinet's Lettres de M. de Voltaire à ses amis du Parnasse: see Œuvres (ed. Beuchot), lix, 15 n. A copy of Lyttelton's reply also appears in B. M. Add. MSS. 4291, f. 277. The letters are used as a basis for a comparison between the characters of the two correspondents in Original Letters, ed. Rebecca Warner (1817), p. 274–275, 280–283. According to Walpole (Letters, ed. Toynbee, v, 32) Voltaire's letter was printed in the London Chronicle. A second letter from Voltaire to Lyttelton was printed in the Annual Register, iv, Part 2 (1761), 35–36, and in the Gentleman's Magazine, xxxii (1762), 192–193; but the original is not at Hagley.
23 This study was pursued while European Fellow, The American Association of University Women, 1931–32.