This was Beattie’s first book, published when he was twenty-five, although some of the poems had first appeared in the Scots Magazine between 1756 and 1759.

Colman’s first play, billed as a ‘dramatic novel’ and attacking the fashion for romantic novels, was produced at Drury Lane by Garrick.

Diderot begins to write his second novel in 1760.

A novel in which a young couple travel to England, the land of advanced philosophy, only to hurry back home, after near-fatal encounters with English riots, prisons, highway robberies, insane asylums and English cooking. According to Lesuire’s hero, “the only difference I see between the English and the savages of Africa is that the latter spare the fair sex.” (Possibly seeing the novel as something of a joke, a London publisher rushed an English translation into print.)

The Fragments were soon followed by Fingal (1762) Temora (1763) and The Works of Ossian (1765). They were purported to be translations of poems by the 3^rd century Caelic poet Ossian. Macpherson never produced the original texts though he denied that he was guilty of forgery. However, he left £1,000 to pay for the publication of the Gaelic, which appeared in 1807. Although many were deceived then and later, it is clear that the Gaelic version is a translation of Macpherson’s English. Macpherson went on to become an MP (1780-96), and a well-paid pamphleteer for Lord North.

The ‘translations’ met with instant success. Hugh Blair, who collected money to finance Macpherson expedition to the Western Isles in 1760-1, strongly upheld the authenticity of the poems. Thomas Gray’s admiration for ‘the infinite beauty’ of the Fragments was tinged with doubt and Blake held them in high regard. Johnson, like Hume, was sceptical. When he was asked whether any modern man could have written the poems, Johnson replied: “Yes Sir, many men, many women, and many children”. Indignant, Macpherson threatened Johnson with physical violence. The poems remained popular through the Romantic period, they were admired by Goethe and Napoleon carried a copy of Macpherson on his campaigns and took it into exile to St Helena.

The Fragments were translated into German (1768), French (1777), Russian (1792), Dutch (1805), Danish (1807-09) and Czech (1827).

“Authorities on Celtic culture continued to be baffled by them for some forty years and a certain aura of mystery still envelops them today. Ossian had exactly that blend of high drama, raw nature, and primitive emotions on which the sentimentalist throve. Part of Macpherson’s skill was to establish this as a kind of cultural missing link, neatly fitting contemporary anthropological speculation. In his introduction to Fingal he explained how the warlords of the fifth century enjoyed ‘a primeval dignity of sentiment’ which later developments in the history of property and government had eroded and corrupted. Such hints to the academics were shrewdly placed. John Millar duly considered Ossian as evidence that in ‘the manners of a people acquainted with pasturage, there is often a degree of tenderness and delicacy of sentiment which can hardly be equalled in the most refined productions of a civilised age’. (Observations concerning the Distinctions of Ranks in Society, 1771, p. 43.) At least one English scholar thought that the most striking proof of Ossian’s authenticity was the fact that it contained not ‘a single image but what is taken from the views of nature, and scarcely the least allusion to any art of science whatever; an omission scarcely possible in an imposture of modern invention’. (Letters from Mrs Elizabeth Carter, to Mrs Montagu, ii, p. 292.)” (Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, p. 475-6.)

Mirabeau, following the lead of Quesnay, allied himself with the Physiocrat’s attempts to reform the tax system. Here he attacks the system of farming out indirect taxes and recommending instead direct taxes on land and personnel income. This led to his imprisonment at Vincennes and to his temporary exile to his estate at Bignon, near Nemours.

A pamphlet, published anonymously, written in mock-scriptual style, which led to Morellet’s imprisonment in the Bastille for eight weeks in 1760.

Murphy also produced adaptations of Molière and Voltaire and wrote lives of Fielding (1792), Dr Johnson (1792), and Garrick (1801).

Noverre was the leading figure in the development of the ballet d'action and came under the influence of David Garrick during a visit to London.

A comedy which, ridiculing the philosophes, Diderot in particular, enjoyed a spectacular success at the Comedie-Française. It received its premiere on 2 May. The play, modelled on Moliere’s L’Ecole des femmes, was a satire on the theories of Helvétius and savagingly lampooned the works and character of Diderot. Diderot refused to see or even read the play and viewed it and its various imitations with contempt.

A comedy, taking the form of parody of Les Philosophes, attacking the Encyclopédists staged at the Italians. In July there appeared a marionette play, The Wooden Philosophers.

Quesnay’s last work, a development of ideas put forward in Tableau économique.

A work in which Reimarus sought to define the unique characteristics of animal life and which he continued to revise until his death.

Published between 1760 and 1769.

Publication of vols. 1 and 2 with the remaining volumes appearing between 1761-67.

A polemical and personal attack on Élie Cathérine Fréron (1718-1776), a staunch opponent of the philosophes and editor and founder in 1754 of L’Année littéraire, which produced a complete survey of French literary writings. It appears that Fréron denounced the printers of the Encyclopédie to the police. In L’Écossaise, a sentimental comedy, Fréron is portrayed as a disreputable journalist who intervenes in a quarrel between two Scottish families.

A polemical rebuttal of Lefranc de Pompignan’s attacks on threats of impiety. On 10 March Pompignan, nobleman of the robe, brother of a bishop and minor poet, was elected to the Académie française and used his opening address to claim that modern men of letters were undermining church and state and that “the true philosopher is a wise and virtuous Christian”. Voltaire, picking up a number of philosophical indiscretions and deist sentiments Pompignan had made in earlier years, laid down a list of reminders: “When one has the honour of being received into a respectable company of literary men, one should not turn one’s inaugural speech into a satire against men of letters . . . when one has translated, and ‘improved’, Pope’s Deist Prayer; when one has been suspended for six months from one’s provincial post for translating that deist creed and making it more poisonous . . . then it is an insult to good manners to give oneself airs in speaking of religion; when one delivers to an Academy one of those discourses people talk about for a day or so, but which might be carried to the foot of the throne, then, if one dares to say in that discourse that the philosophy of our time undermines throne and alter, one has committed an offense against one’s fellow citizens . . .”

Les quand was admired and imitated, for example, Morellet wrote the Pourquoi. In May Pompignan replied to Voltaire by sending an address to Loius XV, claiming to have defeated impiety and to being the king’s favourite reading. Voltaire responded in June with a collection of satires in which Pompignan appears as a poor devil, full of self-importance and misguided zeal: Et l’ami Pompignan pense être quelque chose! Pompignan never went back to the Academy.

Tancrède was first performed at the Comédie-Française on 3 September 1760 and became a popular success.

On Dying for One's Fatherland was published in Berlin.

On Merit constituted Abbt's major work in moral philosophy.

Arronville was an acquaintance of Voltaire, Gresset, Malesherbes, and Turgot who was interested in science and mathematics.

A defence of preformation.

A play based, in part, on Fielding’s Tom Jones. Reckoned to be one of the finest comedies of its time it remained part of the repertory for nearly a century.

A revised version of Treatise of Hermaphrodites that originally appeared in 1716.

Diderot writes his second Salon

Le Pére de famille (A Father and His Family)was published together with a long discourse on DramaticPoetry.

The play was performed by the Commedie Française in February 1761 and revived with great success in 1769, from which time it remained part of the repertoire for nearly a century. It also became popular in Germany, inspiring the young Schiller’s burgerlich comedy Kabale und Liebe. It was twice adapted for the English stage, by Sophie Lee in The Chapter of Accidents, first performed in 1780, and by John Burgoyne in The Heiress (1786).

“I am moving into the final period (of my life), without having attempted anything that could recommend me to the times to come.”

“Richardson is no more. What a loss for letters and for humanity!” If pressed to sell his library, Diderot remarks, “You would be left to me, you would be left on the same shelf with Moses, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles”. Richardson had “carried the torch into the bottom of the carvern”, he had known “how to make the passions speak.” “All that Montaigne, Charron, La Rochefoucauld, and Nicole have put into maxims, Richardson put into practice.” (This last view seems to have been a commonplace: on 28 October 1759, Madame de Deffand told Voltaire that Richardson’s novels were “moral treatises in action”.)

A short work, published anonymously, on the origin of language.

Gibbon’s first work, written and published in French, and appearing in English in 1764.

“The history of empires is that of men’s misery. The history of the sciences is that of their grandeur and happiness.”

Published in Nancy

Published under the name of Holbach’s deceased friend Nicolas Antoine Boulanger, who died in 1759. N. S. Bergier, canon of Notre Dame, one of the devout contributors to the Encyclopédie, condemned the book whose author “might equally well be an atheist, a skeptic, a materialist, a fatalist, or a cynic; for the one thing that matters to him is that Christianity should perish”. The book was reprinted in 1766 and 1767.

Holbach printed two posthumous books by Boulanger, L’Antiquité dévoilée and Despotisme oriental, which consisted of scientific speculations on the geological and prehistorical records on the natural origin of religion.

Holbach's translation of Considerations upon war, upon cruelty in general and religious cruelty in particular, which was published in London in 1761.

The Moral Tales became famous at the time. They were originally published separately in the Mercure de France which Marmontel edited between 1758 and 1760.

A famous pamphlet published in Dublin on the Seven Years War. According to Peter Langford, it “belongs with Swift’s Conduct of the Allies as one of the most influential tracts in the history of diplomacy and war. Mauduit argued that Hanover had never been at risk; it had only been attacked because France knew that Great Britain would defend it. ‘They always will go thither, as long as the English councils resolve to oppose them there.’ (A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727-1783, p. 347)

An expanded edition appeared in 1768.

Publication, early in the year, met with great success. The English translation appeared in the same year.

During 1761 Rousseau works on producing editions of and essays on Saint-Pierre’s Le Projet de paix perpétuelle and Discours sur la polysynodie.

38 volumes, translated by Smollett and others, published in England between 1761 and 1774.

Pamphlet attacking Fréron.

Criticism of Hume's famous essay. Campbell drew upon the philosophy of common sense to defend the validity of early Christian miracles.

Satire influenced by Voltaire.

Volume I of plates.

Written in 1761.

RAMEAU: Imagine the universe wise and philosophical; you must admit it would be unbearably dull.

Le Nevue de Rameau was not offically published during Diderot's lifetime.

A description of London supposedly written by a Chinese traveller. After his authorship was revealed the work made Goldsmith’s name in London’s literary circles.

“Life is action”, or as Hamann said in a letter to Herder in 1765, “think less and live more”. This collection of essays included Aesthetica in Nuce (Aesthetics in a Nutshell: A Rhapsody in Cabbalistic Prose) and Miscellaneous Notes on Word Order in French.

Noted in the history of aesthetics for its attempt to equate beauty with what is pleasant to the natural senses of sight and hearing.

Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, known by the pseudonym Justinus Febronius, claimed that the bishops were successors of the apostles and not mere lackeys of the pope.

A critical study of medieval literature which help to revive an interest in the Middle Ages. The work expands and develops an argument in the third of Hurd’s Moral and Political Dialogues (1759) – a series of imaginary conversations between historical figures – in which John Arbuthnot had maintained against Joseph Addison the value of chivalric jousts and pageantry in a discussion “On the Golden Age of Queen Elizabeth”.

“Lowth was a philologist ‘more inclined to melancholy than to mirth’, who believed that Hebrew was spoken in paradise. His Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) became a standard text-book, and his name has become synonymous with prescriptive grammar. Lowth’s reputation as a prescriptivist is not entirely deserved. Though he liberally illustrated his grammar rules with errors to be found in the English Bible and in standard authors, his approach to correctness was not invariably rigid and, like most grammarians, he described English as well as prescribing its rules. . . . Lowth was convinced that English is rule-governed, and he defended the regularity and simplicity of the language against a tradition which viewed it as too primitive to possess any grammar at all. His model was Latin grammar, but he readily modified this to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of English.” (The Oxford Companion to the English Language, p. 631.

Meslier (1664-1733) was cure of Etrepigny and Brut, in Champagne. His Testament, which was put together during his last years and discovered after his death, was one of the most influential of the various freethinking texts which had been in wide circulation in France since the beginning of the century. In it Meslier disavowed the Christian doctrines that he had preached all his life in favour of materialism, Lockean ‘sensualism’ and, to all intents and purposes, atheism. Meslier spent his life as a priest, having evidently been coerced into the priesthood by his parents. Until 1711 he successfully performed his duties but his remaining years were spent in violent confrontation with his superiors. Voltaire was an admirer of the Testament and published his Extrait from it, though toning it down and giving it a Deistic slant in 1762. He wrote to d’Alembert: “Jean Meslier ought to convert the earth. Why is his gospel in so few hands? How lukewarm you are in Paris!”

The Testament was not published in full until 1864. According to Meslier, “Nature is full of prodigies, but it is Nature herself who produces them...and she produces them, not by design and consciously, but mechanically and blindly, by the natural laws of motion of the insensible parts of matter which modify themselves, unite and combine in infinite sorts and manners”.

A response to Voltaire's essay Des Juifs, which Voltaire wrote in 1756 and used eight years later in the article, "Juifs" in his Philosophical Dictionary. De Pinto sent a copy of the Critical Reflections on the First Chapter of the Seventh Volume of Mr. de Voltaire's Works with a covering letter in which he stated: " I am sending you Critical Reflexions on a part of your immortal writings; I who am their greatest admirer, I ought to read and study them in silence. But as I respect the author more than I regard the work, I presume his maganimity will pardon me this piece of criticism, in favour of the truth which is so dear to him, and from which perhaps he has never swerved but in this single instance". In his reply, Voltaire wrote, "I shall tell you as frankly that there are many who cannot endure your laws, your books, or your superstitions. They say that your nation has done, in every age, much hurt to itself and to the human race. If you are a philosopher, as you seem to be, you will think as those gentlemen do, but you will not say it". De Pinto became more well-known after the work was included in Antoine Guérée's, Lettres de quelques Juifs portugais et allemands à M. de Voltaire (Letters of Certain Portuguese and German Jews to M. de Voltaire) in 1769. Apart from De Pinto's piece the other Letters are probably forgeries written by Guérée himself. Republished in numerous other editions it was translated into English and appeared in Philadelphia in 1795. On publication of its third French edition in 1776 Voltaire published a reply entitled One Christian Against Six Jews in which he accused Guérée of exposing "an elderly octogenarian, perhaps already lying on his deathbed, to the barbarism of a group of persecutors who, by cloaking their calumnies with ironic praise, seek respectfully to slip a dagger into his heart".

Published in April, Du Contract Social appeared in thirteen French editions in 1762 and 1763, and three English editions, one German and one Russian by 1764. However, Rousseau’s other works, especially Émile and Nouvell Héloïse, had, in France and throughout Europe, before 1789, a far wider circulation than Du Contract Social.

Voltaire noted in the chapter on social religion in the margin of his copy that compulsion to subscribe to a religion was outrageous: “All dogma is ridiculous, deadly” and again, “All coercion on dogma is abominable. To compel belief is absurd. Confine yourself to compel good living.” (George R. Havens, Voltaire’s Marginalia on the Pages of Rousseau: A Comparative Study, 1933, 68.)

Completed in the autumn of 1760, Émile finally appeared in May, bearing the imprint ‘A La Haye, chez Jean Néaulme’. Rousseau’s Parisian publisher, Duchesne, presented the work as if it had been printed in Holland; hence the imprint with the Dutch publisher’s name of Néaulme. (This common deception in publishing during the eighteenth was abetted by commerical considerations: Dutch editions were expensive). The book was translated under the title Émile, or Education, 1764), and published in May 1764.

Both Du Contrat Social and Émile were condemned, first in Paris, where on 9 June the parlement issued a warrant for the burning of Émile and the arrest of Rousseau (friends assured Rousseau that no attempt would be made to pursue him if he fled), and then in Geneva (the only place where Du Contrat Social was actually burnt), after which Rousseau fled to Switzerland to escape arrest. The government in Paris reneged on its tacit agreement to let Émile appear after the combined protests of the Sorbonne, the archbishop of Paris and the parlement. On 19 June the Genevan authorities condemned both works as “rash, scandalous, impious, tending to destroy the Christian religion and all government...”, and added a warning that Rousseau would be arrested if he set foot in Geneva. In Émile it was primarily the essay ‘Profession of Faith’, which was included in Book 4, which landed Rousseau in trouble with the French authorities. Rousseau was geniunely hurt when Émile was declared to be blasphemous.

In a letter to Philibert Cramer, dated 13 October 1764, Rousseau insisted on the theoretical character of his book: “it is impossible to make an Émile,” but, he added, “can you believe that this should have been my aim and that the book bearing this title is a true treatise on education? It is a relatively philosophical work on a principle that its author has advanced in other writings: that man is naturally good.”

A sequel to Émile, which Rousseau worked on between 1762-5, and left unfinished. Published 1780.

Written ten years before at the Prussian court.

“May this great God who is listening to me, this God who surely cannot have been born of a virgin, or have died on the gallows, or be eaten in a piece of dough, or have inspired these books filled with contradictions, madness, and horror - may this God, creator of all the worlds, have pity on this sect of Christians who blaspheme him.”

Pamphlet consisting of purported letters, written by Voltaire, from Mme Calas and her two sons recounting the events involving Jean Calas on the night of 13 October 1761. Voltaire hoped the pamphlet would exert pressure on the King and his ministers to declare the innocence of Jean Calas. It was widely circulated in Paris and Voltaire claimed it had a "prodigious effect".

Published between 1762 and 1771.

An attack on Wesley and Methodism.

Bayes published tracts defending the Newtonian calculus and was the first to establish the method of probability inference. Bayes’s Theorem concerns conditional probabilites.

One of the most successful novels of the early 1760’s. Credited as the author of the first Canadian novel, Brooke was friends with Johnson, Anna Seward and Fanny Bunny. In 1755 she married the Reverend John Brooke and after the publication of The History of Lady Julia Mandeville she joined her husband, who was serving as military chaplain in Quebec. In Quebec she composed The History of Emily Montague (1769), considered to be the first Canadian novel. The main characters in the book describe in great detail the social and political conditions prevalent in Canada at the time. Brooke returned to England in 1768.

Chalotais was an influential magistrate in Brittany. His view that the poor should not be taught to read was shared by Voltaire.

Diderot's third Salon

Warwick was an unsuccessful tragedy. In 1767 La Harpe befriended and betrayed Voltaire by unoffically circulating one of Voltaire's poems in Paris. He went on to edit Mercure de France in 1768 and was admitted in 1786 to the Académie Française and lectured at its Lycée; his lectures were published in 16 volumes as Cours de littérature (1799-1805). Although La Harpe supported the revolution he was imprisoned in April 1794. In prison he underwent a spiritual crisis, became a reactionary Catholic and attacked his former friends when he returned to the Lycée.

Published in 8 volumes. Includes criticism of David Hume's History.

Mirabeau’s last work, completing his publications, between 1759 and 1763, in defence of Quesnay’s Tableau économique.

Unauthorized publication, written when Montagu accompanied her husband, Edward Wortley Montagu, at the embassy in Constantinople.

An attack on the archbishop of Paris who had condemned Émile. In his Pastoral Letter, Mandement de Monseigneur l’Archevêque de Paris portant condamnation d’un livre qui a pour titre, Émile, ou de l’éducation, par J.J.Rousseau, citoyen de Genève, Beaumont wrote: “Saint Paul predicted, dearly beloved Brethren, that dangerous days would come when there would be men infatuated with themselves, proud, overbearing, blasphemers, impious, calumniators, inflated with conceit, seeking voluptuousness instead of God; men of corrupt minds and perverted faith”.

In denigrating Rousseau as a writer preaching man’s original innocence the Mandement exclaimed, “from the heart of error there has arisen a man filled with the language of philosophy without being truly a philosopher; his mind endowed with a mass of knowledge which has not enlightened him, and which has spread darkness in the minds of others; his character given over to paradoxical opinions and conduct, joining simplicity of manners with ostentatious displays of ideas, zeal for ancient maxims with a rage for innovation, the obscurity of seclusion with a desire for notoriety: we have seen him thunder against the sciences he was cultivating, crying up the excellence of the Gospels whose dogmas he was destroying, paint the beauty of virtues he obliterating in souls of his readers. He has made himself the preceptor of the human race only to deceive it, the mentor of the public only to mislead everyone, the oracle of the century only to secure its ruination”.

Rousseau, convinced of “the essential truths of Christianity”, presented a point by point refutation of the Letter. As a Christian, Rousseau would have nothing to do with St Paul’s doctrine of original sin, or with grace, fear or the mystery of predestination. “Yes, I am afraid of saying it; if in Europe there was a single enlightened government, whose views were really useful and sane, it would have given public honours to the author of Émile and erected statues to him.”

“My Lord, you have insulted me publicly, and I have just proved to you that you have calumniated my. If you were a private person like me, and I were able to summon you to appear before an impartial tribunal, you with your Pastoral Letter and I with my Émile, you would surely be found guilty and condemned to make me reparation as public as your libel. But you occupy a rank where you are absolved from the duty of acting with justice, and I am nothing. Nevertheless, you, Prelate, appointed to teach others their duty, you know your own in such a case. As for me, I have done mine. I have no more to say to you, and I hold my peace.”

“Spoken language is the gift of God, written the invention of men.”

Generally regarded as one of the main texts of the Milanese Enlightenment.

The Traité sur la Tolérance begins with a brilliant forensic analysis of the Calas case and ends with a moving declaration of the principle of universal tolerance. It was printed on 13 April 1763 and a small number of copies were circulated amongst key figures in Paris, including Mme de Pompadour and Ministers of State as well as King Frederick and a number of German Princes.

“Doubtless like us, the Huguenots have been intoxicated with fanaticism and sullied with blood; but is the present generation as barbarous as its parents? Time, reason which is making so much progress, good books, the decent manners of society - have they not penetrated at all among those who guide the souls of these people? And do we not see that almost all of Europe has changed its face during the last fifty years or so?”

“Let all men remember that they are brothers! Let them hold in horror the tyranny that is exercised over men’s souls...If the curse of war is still inevitable, let us not hasten to destroy each other where we have civil peace. From Siam to California, in a thousand different tongues, let us each use the brief moment of our existence, to bless God’s goodness which has given us this precious gift.”

“It (reason) is mild, it is humane; it teaches us forbearance and dispels discord; it fosters virtue and makes obedience to the laws agreeable rather than compulsory”.

An English translation appeared in 1764 entitled A Short Account of the Death of John Calas.

The history of the human spirit “shows us errors and prejudices succeeding one another in turn, and driving out truth and reason. We see the clever and the lucky enslaving the stupid and crushing the unfortunate; and yet, these clever and lucky people are themselves the playthings of fortune as much as those whom they dominate. In the end, men enlighten themselves a little through this account of their misfortunes and their stupidities. As time goes by, societies manage to amend their ideas; men learn to think”.

French collection of Hume’s philosophical writings translated by J. B. Mérian, J.B.R. Robinet and Mlle. de la Chaux.

Rousseau admired and quoted from a manuscript copy the maxim that “in the republic everybody is perfectly free in what does not hurt others”.

“The English think they have taken from the government of the Romans all that is best, and corrected its faults.”

Beccaria ascribed his “conversion to philosophy” to Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes and claimed he had rid himself from the effects of his “fanatical” Jesuit education by studying Helvétius, Buffon, Diderot, Hume, d’Alembert, Condillac and Rousseau. He acknowledged in his book the legal philosophy of “the immortal Montesquieu”, the libertarianism of Rousseau’s Contrat social and the rationalist methodology of Helvétius.

Beccaria’s book caused immediate controversy in Italy, after only two years it appeared in six editions. In France, where it was translated by Morellet in 1765, it was enthusiastically reviewed in learned and popular journals. Grimm wrote that it would be desirable “if all the legislators of Europe would take M. Beccaria’s ideas into consideration,” d’Alembert said he was “enchanted” and “enthusiastic” and that he had spread the news of the book, “which should give its author an immortal reputation,” and in a letter to Beccaria, dated 30 May 1768, Voltaire called him a labourer “in behalf of reason and humanity.” Voltaire also wrote and published a commentary on the book, applying its ideas to France. In Britain, Bentham called Beccaria “my master, first evangelist of reason, who hast raised thy Italy so much above England and also France” and credited him for setting him “on the principle of utility” and the calculus of pleasures. Eden and Romilly also paid tribute. Jefferson copied passages from Dei delitti by the page and became an outspoken opponent of the death penalty and Catherine of Russia called herself a supporter with the famous Nakaz of 1768 reproducing long sections from Beccaria’s work. Beccaria’s ideas stimulated many reforms, perhaps the most important being the Tuscan code, instituted in 1789 by Beccaria’s disciple, Archduke Leopold.

Beccaria described the laws of the eighteenth century “the dregs of the most barbarous of centuries” and claimed that all governments should guide their actions by the principle by which all law must be judged: “La massima felicità divisa nel maggior numero - the greatest happiness divided among the greatest number.”

Beccaria, diffident, often depressed, always reluntant to enter public debate, was modest in his expectations: “A philosopher’s voice is too weak for the tumults and the shouting of so many men guided by blind habit. But the few wise men scattered over the face of the earth will echo me in their hearts.” In another passage - one which John Adams used to defend the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre - Beccaria writes, “if I have no other merit then to have been the first of offer Italy, with some good evidence, what other nations have dared to write and are beginning to practice, I should consider myself fortunate; but if, by upholding the rights of man and of unconquerable truth, I should contribute to saving, from the spasms and agonies of death, some miserable victim of tyranny or of equally fatal ignorance, the thanks and tears of one innocent man in his transports of joy would console me for the disdain of mankind.”

Dei delitti e delle pene was translated into English in 1767.

One of Bonnet’s more popular works (it was translated into Italian, German, English and Dutch), it contains the theory that all the beings in nature form a gradual scale rising from lowest to highest, without any break in continuity.

Published between 1764 and 1770). “Brooke’s novel, The Fool of Quality, is a rambling and digressive narrative which has as its central thread the education of an ideal nobleman. It oscillates between hectic incident and pathetic reflection and owes its reputation largely to its “passionate and tearful sensibility.” In date and feeling it may be linked with Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey (and the more pathetic passages of Tristam Shandy) and Henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling. Its humanity and religious temper recommended it to John Wesley, who edited and abridged version in 1780, and to Charles Kingsley, who published it with an enthusiastic biographical preface in 1859.” (Encyclopædia Britannica)

At the outbreak of the Revolution, Chamfort joined the Jacobins - he became secretary of the Jacobin club and a member of the Club de 1789 - and wrote republican articles for the Mercure de Frence; he later attacked the excesses of Terror and the National Convention. In July 1793 he was arrested and imprisoned for two days. The threat of further imprisonment caused him to attempt suicide, and failing to fully recover from his self-inflicted wounds, died on 13 April, 1794.

Chamfort was the author of the 18^th centuries most celebrated definition of love as “nothing but the contact of two epidermises.”

La Jeune indienne, a play that received Voltarie’s approval, premiered on 30 April at the Comédie Française. “Critics confirmed the qualities of this glittery trifle set in Charlestown, Virginia, as well as the talent of its author, kindly described as a ‘lad’”. (Arnaud, Chamfort, p.14)

Grimm sent a favourable review to Catherine II and the play was performed throughout Germany (Goethe thought of dealing with the play’s subject himself), in Holland, Spain, Russia and was translated into Danish.

In August 1764 Chamfort’s Epistle won the Académie française poetry prize, based on a subject inspired by Rousseau’s Emile: A Father Writes to His Son on the Birth of a Grandson. Both Duclos and D’Alembert, two of Chamfort’s patrons, sat on the jury. Grimm praised “the young, poor, yet proud poet” whom the Jesuit press itself acclaimed, whilst a Jansenist unsuccessfully demanded the “the puny sprout from the encyclopedic colossus” be censored. (Claude Arnaud, Chamfort: A Biography)

Written in celebration of the 1763 Treaty of Paris. An English translation, under the title The Englishman in Bourdeaux, was published in London in 1764 though there is no record that it was performed in England.

"The English think; the French enjoy . . . take my friendly advice, renounce philosophy, it is good for nothing but to give the spleen, and rob the heart of tender sensibility".

A philosophic poem which established Goldsmith’s literary reputation.

“A constructed dialogue. It is not easy to identify in the speeches of “Locke” any passages from his writings. Education may be the source, but the speakers are rather free in using material from both men. A comment on p.3 may refer to Locke: a reference to a recent conversation with an esteemed philosopher. He does not like the talk of ideas and the rejection of innate principles. However, this philosopher’s writings on government, trade, liberty and education deserve the popularity they have. Locke is finally named: no one is more ‘privileged by his experience, to give us Lectures on the good old chapters of Education.’” (Yolton 1764)

Jones argues that Celtic was the origin of all languages.

Radical proposals for legal reforms.

The Treatise, which compared the demonstratability of metaphysical and mathematical propositions, received the Berlin Academy prize in 1763 for which Kant also competed and who received the second prize. It was also the first of Mendelssohn’s works to be printed under his own name. As a result of winning the prize Frederick the Great exempted Mendelssohn from the restrictions Jews were normally forced to endure.

In 1764 Mendelssohn translated Rousseau’s second Discours.

A defence of free trade.

In order to strenghten his anti-British sentiments Otis quoted and translated excepts from Rousseau's Contrat social

The text was put on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1766 because of Pilati's enthusiasm for the work of Michel de Montaigne's ideas, Baruch de Spinoza, Claude-Adrien Helvétius, and Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger, and others who spoke against “the invention of religion.” A German translation was published in 1767.

A German translation appeared in 1782. One effect of the Enquiry was draw attention to Berkeley’s philosophy, which had found little appreciation during his own day.

A reply to Jean-Robert Tronchin, procurator-general of the Genevan republic, who had written Lettres écrites de la campagne, in which he defended the executive council of Geneva (the Petit Conseil) for having ordered the burning of Émile and Du contrat social. The parlemant of Paris ordered the Letters to be burnt alongside Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary in April 1765. It was also burnt at the Hague on 22 January 1765.

In September Rousseau was asked by Matteo Buttafuoco, a friend of Pasquale Paoli, to prepare a constitution for Corsica. Rousseau never completed the project, though a rough draft was published with the above title in 1861.

Published in Geneva, with a false London imprint. Voltaire revised and expanded the Dictionary through several editions between 1764 and 1769. It was translated in 1764 under the title The Portable Philosophic Dictionary.

“What does a dog owe a dog, a horse owe a horse? Nothing. No animal depends upon his fellow beast; but as man has received the ray of divinity we call reason, what has been the result? To be enslaved almost the whole world over.”

The Dictionnaire philosophique was one of the books thrown into the flames when in July 1766 the French government decapitated and burned the 19 year old Chevalier de La Barre at the stake (1 July 1766) for acts of blasphemy (insulting a religious procession and damaging a crucifx) - a book, Diderot latter said, La Barre did not own. After this incident Voltaire fled Fernay to Geneva. In a letter to Morellet, dated 7 July 1766, Voltaire wrote, “the scene which has just taken place in Paris conclusively proves that the brethren must carefully hide their mysteries and the names of their fellows. . . . In such baneful circumstances sages must keep quiet and wait”. (Correspondence, LXII, 14-15) He also suggested that the philosophes should leave French territory and settle in the town of Cleves offered to them by Frederick II. In spite of his protestations, Voltaire was unable to obtain a review of the trial.

In a letter dated 19 September 1764 to his Paris correspondent Damilaville, Voltaire said about the book, “I never want it said that I wrote this book; I have written to M. Marin in this vein, since he spoke to me about it in his last letter. I flatter myself that the true brethen will back me up. This work must be regarded as a collection from several writers put together by a Dutch editor. It is extremely cruel to name me: it would deprive me henceforth of the freedom to render services. The philosophes must make the truth public and hide their persons”.

Pamphlet published anonymously in December but generally regarded now as by Voltaire. It contains a violent attack on Rousseau - Voltaire revealed that Rousseau and his gouvernante, Levasseur, had had five children whom Rousseau had “exposed at the gates of an orphanage” - who received and read it on the last day of the year. (After he had recovered from the shock, Rousseau decided to write the Confessions.)

Rousseau never suspected the pamphlet was written by Voltaire, so effective was Voltaire’s imitation of the style of the local Calvinist clerics. He sent it to Paris to be reprinted with notes of his own, refuting its allegations. He gave the names of doctors who could verify that he had never suffered from venereal disease (which was true); he asserted that Mme Levasseur was alive and in good health (which was also true; and that he had never exposed any children at the door of a foundling hospital (which was true in letter but not in spirit, for the children had been carried safely inside the hospital by the midwife).

Voltaire had by this time realised that Rousseau had been trying, in his Letter Upon Stage-Performances, to make trouble for him in Geneva, where even private theatricals - by now his great passion in life - were forbidden by law. In the Sentiments Voltaire described Rousseau as “a man who, disguised as a mounteback, drags with him from village to village, from mountain to mountain, the unfortunate woman whose mother he brought to her death and whose children he exposed at the door of the Foundlings’ Hospital”.

The pamphlet was also a direct response to Rousseau’s Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont. Pretending to a citzen of Geneva Voltaire asked who is this man who thinks statues ought to be erected to him, and with the same humility compares his life with that of Jesus.

Short story translated with the title The Two Genies in 1895.

Short story.

A romance in imitation of Don Quixote in which Wieland ridiculed his earlier Pietistic faith in ironical terms and announced his new lighthearted philosophy embracing sensual pleasure and frivolity.

Winckelmann’s masterpiece, written between 1756 and 1762. Winckelmann treated Greek culture and art as a cycle of growth and decline. He distinquished four periods: early or primitive; the age of Phidias, comparable in simplicity and grandeur to the Doric order; the era of the ‘graceful and charming’ style of Praxiteles, similar to the Ionic; and the period of imitation and decline following the death of Alexander the Great.

Goethe called Winckelmann a new Columbus who had discovered art as a living entity, as a part of a developing cultural organism.

Published “by an disinterested author”, first anonymously, then in d’Alembert’s own name, a contemporary account of the suppression of the Jesuits in 1760-1. D’Alembert sought to show that the Jesuits had destroyed themselves through their overweening desire for power.

Written by the Editor of the Christian Magazine

A critique of Rousseau's Émile. Bergier's work had an influence on both Elie Fréron and Friedrich Melchior Grimm.

Translated into German as De Brosse uber Sprache und Schrift in 1777.

Buyrette, who wrote under the pseudonym Dormont de Belloy, was one of the first French dramatists to compose tragedies based on national history rather than on classics. Le Siège de Calais, a famous Anglophobe epic caused a sensation in 1765.

A book-length study of the biennial exhibition at the Louvre. It was accompanied by Essays on Painting.

Attributed to Fréret the Lettre appeared in an edition of Fréret's complete works. The Lettre is a radical critique of religious belief.

Johnson publishes his edition of Shakespeare.

An examination of the rise of despotic power in French history in which Mably challenges the parlement’s view that they serve as upholders of liberty.

“To burn a rational book is to say ‘We do not have enough intelligence to reply to it.’ . . . In a republic worthy of its name, the liberty to publish one’s thoughts is the natural right of the citzen. . . . A criminal code is absolutely necessary for citizens and magistrates. . . . The magistrates are not the masters of the people; the laws are masters. . . . We have the right, when we are assembled, to reject or approve the magistrates and the laws that have been proposed to us. . . . Civil government is the will of all, carried out by a single person or by several, in accord with the laws that all have supported. . . . When a law is obscure, all must interpret it, for all have promulgated it. . . . It is to insult reason and law to pronounce these words: civil and ecclesiastical government. We must say, civil government and ecclesiastical regulations, and these regulations can only be made by the civil power. . . . It is perhaps useful to have two parties in a republic, because then one watches over the other.”

Written by the Editor of the Christian Magazine.

Volume IV of plates and remaining text.

Includes a discussion of David Hume's essay “Of Miracles”.

It is thought that publication was hastily arranged by Johnson in order to save Goldsmith from going to jail for debt. Remained a favourite with Goethe after it was recommended by Herder in Strassburg.

Greene was a minor poet who wrote in the style of Thomas Gray and William Shenstone,

Published in 2 volumes; one of the essays entitled “On Mr. Hume’s Idea of Liberty and Necessity” consists of a criticism of David Hume.

After having written five books of his Confessions at Wootton Hall, Rousseau in a letter of 2 August to his publisher M. Guy, which found its way into the London newspapers, defied Hume to publish an account of their dispute without’ enormous falsifications’. Hume considered delaying publication of his account until after his death; his friends in Scotland and Paris, and particularly Turgot, advised against it. However, Hume sent a copy to Paris, where it was translated into French by Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard (1734–1817) under the title Exposé succinct de la contestation qui s’est élevée M. Hume et M. Rousseau. It was then retranslated back into English and then published in LondonKing George III read the manuscripts before the work was published. Hume sent the manuscripts to the British Museum, requesting that they be housed there, but “the curators did not think proper to give them place”. Both French and English editions were published in October.

A satire on the pretensions of metaphysics. After studying the work of Swedenborg, Kant says “he found - as usually happens when one searches where one has no business looking - he found nothing, adding that this religious enthusiast, this “dreamer of emotion”, was like metaphysical enthusiasts, those “dreamers of reason”. If metaphysics is a science then it is a science of limits and Kant ends the essay with an appeal to “honest Candide”: “Let us provide for our happiness, let us go into the garden and work”.

An attack on Winckelmann’s aesthetics and a rejection of the Horatian doctrine ut pictura poesis based on a clarification of the distinction between poetry, which evokes passion and action, and painting, which aims at the classical ideals of static harmony.

“One must be a young man to recognize what effect Lessing’s Laocoön had upon us. It carried us from the region of poverty-stricken notions to the open country of thought.” (Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit.)

Subsequent volumes appeared in 1781 and 1784. Lloyd was a Welsch soldier of war who took part in many European campaigns.

Oswald was, like Thomas Reid and James Beattie, a Scottish philosopher of common sense and opponent of Hume. They were all read by Kant and mentioned in the Prolegomena. The Appeal was published in two volumes in 1766 and 1772 respectively and a German translation appeared in 1766.

A work which annoyed Sterne, prompting him to write A Sentimental Journey.

A contribution to the development of Quesnay’s basic economic model and displaying similarities to the writings of Adam Smith.

Many ask, Voltaire wrote, what shall replace Christianity? “What! A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my family; I tell you to get rid of that beast, and you ask me, What shall we put in its place!” “Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.”

Voltaire's commentary on Beccaria's Dei Delitti e delle Pene. Later editions of Beccaria's work often appeared with Voltaire's commentary.

“On the dunghill where Rousseau lies, grinding his teeth against the human race, it is permissible to throw him a hunk of bread if he needs it, but it is necessary to make his character known, and to warn those who feed him of his habit of biting their hands.”

An English translation appeared in 1766 entitled A letter from Mons. de Voltaire, to Mr. Hume, on his dispute with M. Rousseau.

An attack, based on the ideas of Spinoza and Malebranche, on the materialist beliefs of the philosophes.

“One of the most brillant short criticisms of the Old Testament in Rationalist literature.” (Joseph McCabe)

Pamphlet published in September 1766 which aimed to prove the innocence of Calas and Sirven. It was also published in order to raise money for the Sirven family.

Voulgaris views on philosophy were influenced by Locke and Voltaire. He translated Voltaire's Memnon into Greek in 1766. Between 1772 and 1774 he worked as as librarian at court of Catherine the Great.

Walpole’s hoax letter from Frederick the Great to Rousseau, printed in The Saint James’s Chronicle, 1 April. Rousseau published a protest in the same paper on 8 April. His anger was further arosed at this time with the publication in English of the anonymous letter from Voltaire to ‘J.J. Pansophe’.

The first of many versions, the last appearing in 1794, with an English translation appearing in 1773.

Wieland’s great philosophical novel and the first German Bildungsroman: in the guise of a Greek fiction, Wieland describes his own spiritual growth; the extremes of Platonic, idealistic extravagance and Epicurean, materialistic fivolity are rejected in favour of a natural humanism in which pleasure is ruled by reason.

Translated by J.A.J. de Boulmiers.

First performed 29 January 1767 and only moderately successful.

“Perhaps no comedy was ever produced upon the stage with a more moral tendency, or less offensive to decency . . . We enter with concern into the fate of virtuous characters, and we can perceive that the author’s feelings always arise in the right place.” (Critical Review)

Volumes V-XI of plates, 1767-72.

“Barbaric people have more vigour than civilized people ...Everywhere vigour and poetry decline as the philosophic spirit has made progress...(The latter) wants more strict, exact and rigorous comparisons: its cautious progress is the enemy of the fluent and the figurative...With reason there is introduced an exactness, precision, method, and, if you will excuse the word, a kind of pedantry with kills everything”.Diderot writes Salon de 1767

“Adam Perguson, a non-expatriate Scot who was held in great affection by the Edinburgh men of letters, had been manoeuvred into the Professorship of Natural Philosophy in 1759, and four years later - where he more properly belonged - into the Professorship of Moral Philosophy. The first fruits of academic life, a proposed ‘Treatise on Refinement’, had met with Hume’s qualified approval, but when developed into an Essay on the History of Civil Society, with his dismay. Some chapters of the completed manuscript had been put into Hume’s hands soon after his return from France. ‘I sat down to read them’ he told Blair, ‘with great Prepossession, founded on my good Opinion of him, on a small Specimen I had seen of them some years ago, and on yours and Dr.Robertson’s Esteem of them: But I am sorry to say it, they have no-wise answer’d my Expectation. I do not think them fit to be given to the Public, neither on account of the Style nor the Reasoning: the Form nor the Matter. My Concern for his Reputation obliges me to tell you my Opinion...’ He concludes, ‘I shall be agreeable disappointed if the Success prove contrary to my Opinion’... Hume nowhere specifies his disapproval of Ferguson’s reasonings, which were no little indebted to his own. Yet what he found alien and untenable was surely the insistence upon the inevitability of progress, upon the principle of perfection. These doctrines Hume had repudiated in the philosophes; it is thus no coincidence that the philosophes, for their part, approved of Ferguson.” Mosser, The Life of David Hume.

“Mankind not only find in their condition the sources of variance and dissension; they embrace the occasions of mutual opposition, with alcarity and pleasure . . . To overawe, or intimidate, or, when we cannot persuade with reason, to resist with fortitude, are the occupations which give its most animating exercise, and its greatest triumphs, to a vigorous mind . . . It is vain to expect that we can give to the multitude of a people a sense of union among themselves, without admitting hostility to those who oppose them . . . Athens was necessary to Sparta, in the exercise of her virtue, as steel is to flint in the production of fire.”

The first French translation appeared in 1783 and a German translation, with some comments by Christian Garve, appeared in Leipzig in 1772. Garve also translated Smith and was Kant’s first critic.

Fouth edition. The first four editions did not bear the author’s name.

Heathcote defends Hume against Rousseau. In 1759 Heathcote published a Life of Burnet which appeared as a preface to the 7th edition of Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth.

The first German comedy on a grand scale and its first political play.

Linguet traced the origins of civil society to the criminal acts of hunters who robbed and enslaved peaceful farmers and pastors; later, the victors established civil laws and repressive government to legitimate these acts of violence.

A philosophical romance of sixteen short chapters which was condemned by the Sorbonne in 1768 because of its plea for religious toleration in chapter fifteen. In the work, Belisarius (Marmontel) offers advice to Justinian (Louis XV) on how to rebuild the confidence of the French nation following the recent defeats in the Seven Years War. Voltaire sought to vindicate the work of Marmontel by writing to Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great, the king of Poland, and the crown prince of Sweden. He also oversaw Turgot's defence of Bélisaire. The novel became a best-seller and Marmontel went on to become royal historiographer and in 1783 the sécrétaire-perpétuel of the French Academy, succeeding d'Alembert.

A highly popular work, where Mendelssohn updates Plato’s treatment of immortality. In the form of a dialogue Mendelssohn, contrary to the then dominant materialism, defended the immortality of the soul with the help of Leibniz.

Adapted from George Lillo’s London Merchant; Jenneval though published in 1767 was not performed until 1781.

A collection of François Quesnay's writings edited by Nemours

A collection of Quesnay’s writings, edited by du Pont who did much to popularize the work of the Physiocrats. The term ‘physiocracy’ derives from this collection. Its followers, however, preferred to be known as économistes. The term ‘physiocrats’ only became popular during the 19^th century.

Du Pont took part in negotiations with England to grant independence to the United States (1783), a member of the the Estates-General (1789), his defence of Louis XVI led to his imprisonment (1792). Emigrated to the United States (1799), and prepared at Jefferson’ s request a scheme for national education in U.S., which though not adopted was used in part in the French code of education. He returned to France (1802) became secretary to the provisional government (1814), again emigrated (1815) to U.S., where he died.

“In the fourth of these dissertations Price criticized David Hume's ‘Of Miracles.’ Hume was grateful for the civility with which Price argued, and he wrote to Price that the light in which he put this controversy was ‘new and plausible and ingenious, and perhaps solid. But I must have some more time to weigh it, before I can pronounce this judgment with satisfaction to myself.’ ” Elmer Sprague in Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

A clarification of Quesnay’s views which drew international attention to physiocracy. Rivière became involved in a much publicized dispute with the abbé Galiani, known as ‘la bagarre’. Galiani, a critic of physiocracy who witnessed the Neapolitan famine of 1764, argued that no responsible person could advocate anything but the most cautious approach to the lifting of controls on grain prices.

In a letter about Rivière’s book, Rousseau wrote that the main problem in politics, which could be compared with the quadrature of the circle in geometry, was to find a form of government which would place the law above man.

“Just as Corsicans and Poles applied to Rousseau, Catherine of Russia, in consequence of her admiration for La Rivière’s book, summoned him to Russia to assist her in making laws. ‘Sir,’ said the czarina, ‘could you point out to me the best means for the good government of a state?’ ‘Madame, there is only one way, and that is being just; in other words, in keeping order and exacting obedience to the laws.’ ‘But on what base is it best to make the laws of an empire repose?’ ‘There is only one base, madame: the nature of things and of men.’ ‘Just so; but when you wish to give laws to a people, what are the rules which indicate most surely such laws as are most suitable?’ ‘To give or make laws, madame, is a task that God has left to none. Ah, who is the man that should think himself capable of dictating laws for beings that he does not know, or knows so ill? And by what right can he impose laws on beings whom God has never placed in his hands?’ ‘To what, then, do you reduce the science of government?’ ‘To studying carefully, recognising, and setting forth, the laws which God has graven so manifestly in the very organization of men, when he called them into existence. To wish to go any further would be a great misfortune and a most destructive undertaking.’ ‘Sir, I am very pleased to have heard what you have to say; I wish you good day.’ “ (Quoted in John Morley, Rousseau, vol II, 153)

Published in 2 volumes and regarded as the first published treatise on economics. Steuart spent nearly half of his life in Continental Europe, after completing a "grand tour" 1735-1740, he live in exile from 1745 to 1763 after have backed the Jacobite rebellion in 1745. Marx viewed Steuart's economics in a favourable light.

A sly attack on Rousseau’s theories of education.

“For the average reader, history is only so much food for curiosity or it is simply a momentary escape from boredom; for the philosopher it is a collection of intellectual experiments (experiences morales) on the human race”.

The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was published btween 1771 and 1815; four editions of the encyclopaedia were published with the last consisting of twenty large volumes.

Includes criticism of David Hume's "Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy” and “Of the Idea of Necessary Connection”.

"Drawing upon the work of the philosophes and English Deists, Baron vowed to ""emancipate the minds of men, and to free them from those chains in which they have been long held to the great disgrace both of reason and Christianity."" Quoted in Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Making of the Modern World, 2000, p.111."

Published in Feburary, and translated into French, German, Italian and Dutch, the Account brought Boswell instant fame. In Paris Madame du Deffand spoke of the work approvingly to Horace Walpole. At the time France had announced its intention of annexing Corsica and people were eager for information about the island and Paoli. Boswell’s book embarrassed both the French and British ministers, the French because they thought it might force British intervention, the British because they had already written off Corsica.

In May 1765 Rousseau had urged Boswell to visit Corsica and gave him a letter to Paoli.

Catcott was a clergyman based in Bristol. He was a vocal anti-Newtonian.

A truncated version of the Difficultés sur la religion published by d’Holbach and Naigeon.

Published in 3 volumes between 1768 and 1772.

Euler's main philosophical work which became extremely popular. He covered a whole range of scientific issues including mechanics, optics, acoustics and astronomy.

Gauchat edited the journal Les littres critiques (Critical Letters).

Published in 2 volumes between 1768 and 1769.

A pastoral play.

Goldsmith’s first play which was unsuccessful.

Haller used his own rather than Linnaeus's classification scheme in this work dealing with about twenty-five hundred kinds of plants.

"In his preface Holbach attributed the alleged English original of this work to John Trenchard but that was only a ruse to avoid persecution. The book is by Holbach. It has gone through many editions and been translated into English and Spanish. The first edition had an introduction by Naigeon. According to him manuscripts of this book became quite rare at one time and were supposed to have been lost. Later they became more common and this edition was corrected by collation with six others. The letters were written in 1764, according to Lequinio (Feuilles posthumes), who had his information from Naigeon, to Marguerite, Marchioness de Vermandois in answer to a very touching and pitiful letter from that lady who was in great trouble over religion. Her young husband was a great friend of the Holbachs, but having had a strict Catholic bringing up she was shocked at their infidelity and warned by her confessor to keep away from them. "Yet in their home she saw all the domestic virtues exemplified and beheld that sweet and unchangeable affection for which the d'Holbachs were eminently distinguished among their acquaintances and which was remarkable for its striking contrast with the courtly and Christian habits of the day. Her natural good sense and love for her friends struggled with her monastic education and reverence for the priests. The conflict rendered her miserable and she returned to her country seat to brood over it. In this state of mind she at length wrote to the Baron and laid open her situation requesting him to comfort, console, and enlighten her." [47:7] His letters accomplished the desired effect and he later published them in the hope that they would do as much for others. They were carefully revised before they were sent to the press. All the purely personal passages were omitted and others added to hide the identity of the persons concerned. Letters of the sort to religious ladies were common at this time. Fréret's were preventive, Holbach's curative, but appear to be rather strong dose for a dévote. Other examples are Voltaire's Epître à Uranie and Diderot's Entretien d'un Philosophe avec la Maréchale de.... Max Person, "Baron D'Holbach: A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France", (1914)

Published in Amsterdam and consisting of a translation of Anthony Collins' A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion which orginally appeared in London in 1724. The book also contained Collins' The Scheme of literal Prophecy considered which was first published in 1727. which dealt with the works of Clarke, Sherlock, Chandler, Sykes, and especially Whiston's Essay towards restoring the text of the Old Testament, one of the thirty-five works directed against Collins' original "Discourse".

A French translation published in Amsterdam of a work that first appeared in England in 1761. The work has been attributed to Peter Annet and to John Noorthook. Some English eulogists of George II, including Chandler and Palmer, had likened their late King to David, "the man after God's own heart." The deists, struck by the absurdity of the comparison, attempted to uncover as many scandalous facts as they could find recorded of David, and by clever distortions painted him as the most execrable of Kings, in a work entitled David or the Man after God's Own Heart, which formed the basis of Holbach's translation.

A translation of Toland's Letters to Serena, a work which generated controversary on its publication in 1704. It included five essays on prejudices, the immortality of the sould, idolatry, superstition, Spinoza and matter. The translation included a preface by Holbach and Naigeon and was published in Amsterdam.

The Letters on Archaeology were published between 1768 and 1769.

One of the classic works of materialism, translated and published under the guidance of d’Holbach.

After publishing this work Meister was suspended as a minister in Zurich and deprived of his civic rights. He was rehabilitated in 1772.

Holbach wrote the last chapter of this work, a critique of all official religions. Grimm recognized that the last chapter was by another hand and considered it the weakest part of the book.

Porter was ambassador to the Porte from 1746 to 1762, an edition of the Observations was also published in 1771.

A work which proved influential for Jeremy Bentham and his followers because of its argument that “the happiness of the majority” should be the criterion by which government must be judged.

Published in 3 volumes between 1768 and 1771.

Vicesimus Knox was not pleased with the morals of the Sentimental Journey: “Many a connexion, begun with fine sentimentality which Sterne has recommended and increased, has terminated in disease, infancy, madness, suicide and a gibbet.” (The Works of Vicesimus Knox, i. p. 131.)

Published and translated by d’Holbach.

A work in which Tucker popularized the philosophy of Locke.

A presentation of European philosophies in the fairyland of The Thousand and One Nights, with an interesting excursion into sexual politics.

An English translation in two volumes appeared in 1774.

A work on political economy. In a letter to Sophie Volland, dated 8 October 1768, Diderot reported that a book peddler, a colporteur named Lescuyer, who had sold copies of L’Homme aux quarante écus and Holbach’s Christianisme dévoilé, had been arrested with his wife and apprentice, and that all three were pilloried, whipped and branded, the men sent to the galleys, and the wife to prison.

Immediately placed on the Roman Index of Prohibited Books.

Dramatic tragedy published 15 March.

A German translation appeared in Frankfurt in 1773 and is referred to in The Sorrows of Young Werther.

One of three agricultural Tours Young published between 1768 and 1771, the other two being A Six Months’ Tour through the North of England (1770) and Farmer’s Tour through the East of England (1771).

An investigation of the past and future of living things and an endorsement of the idea of the immortality of all forms of life. Translated and printed in English by John Lewis Boissie in 1787 under the title Philosophical and Critical Inquiries concerning Christianity ....

Popular work on public health.

A verse translation of Virgil's Georgics by Jacques Delille (1738-1813) which made him famous. Delille was elected to the Academy in 1774.

A short essay in which a gift of a new dressing-gown leads Diderot to wonder if he is succumbing to the corrupting hand of luxury, a doubt which he eventually dispells.

Discovered only in 1937 and given its title by Franceo Venturi, in this short work Diderot took Frederick II to task for his authoritarian views. He writes “to whom should a philosopher address himself forcefully, if not a sovereign?” He characterizes Frederick as a mediocre thinker, poor poet and bad sovereign; “May God preserve us,” Diderot concludes, “from a sovereign who resembles that kind of philosopher.”

The Pages was a rejoinder to Frederick’s reply to an anonymous treatise, Essai sur les préjugés, which appeared early in 1779 and probably came from Holbach’s circle. In addition to attacking Christianity, the Essai “denounced absolute princes as “despots”, and characterized despots as the scourges of their country, the victims of poisonous flatterers, war-loving criminals, and oppressive impostors who mislead the world with their dubious academies that are in reality nothing better that slave societies.” (Gay, The Enlightenment, Vol. II, 486.) In disgust Frederick replied to the treatise and offered a rebuttal of the premise of the work, namely, that man is made for the truth, by asserting that “Man is made for error” and that lies are essential in sound goverance.

Galiani was a friend of Diderot. He was a Neopolitan and worked as secretary to the Ambassador of Naples in Paris. He was an economist, literary critic, a mimic and a raconteur. The Dialogue consists of an attack on the physiocrats who claimed if all controls on the grain trade were lifted then distribution would improve and prosperity would follow. Galiani had once been sympathetic to physiocracy but had changed his views as a result of near-famine and unrest in France in 1768. Diderot defended Galiani in 1770. Diderot wrote that the the economists advance “general principles with the most marvelous intrepidity. But not a single one of these is not subject to an infinite number of exceptions in practice.” Galiani was admired by J.G.Hamann.

The work was printed and published under the guidance of Diderot, Grimm and d’Épinay and appeared in January, 1770; it made a considerable impression.

A comedy.

Granger collected 14,000 engraved portraits for his History and used them for illustrations. The work, “consisting of characters dispersed in different classes, and adapted to a methodical catalogue of engraved British heads”, was supplemented in later editions by Granger, and further editions were published by the Rev. Mark Noble, with additions from Granger’s materials. Blank leaves were left for the filling in of engraved portraits for extra illustration of the text, and it became a favourite pursuit to discover such illustrations and insert them in a Granger, so that “grangerizing” became a term for such an extra illustration of any work, especially with cuts taken from other books.

A record of Herder's life in Riga and his travels through Denmark, France and the Netherleands.

“There is not a man, a country, a people, a natural history, a state, which resemble each other; hence truth, goodness and beauty differ from one another.”

Two short works on eternal punishment. Holbach claimed they were translations of two works in English but the originals have never come to light. The second work was translated into English under the title Hell Destroyed! and was published with Whitefoot's Tormets of Hell in 1823.

Holbach's translation of Whitefoot's The Torments of Hell, the foundation and pillars thereof discover'd, search'd, shaken and remov'd which was originally published in London in 1658.

The Sixteen Notes was a critique of Horace Walpole's Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third which was published in 1769. It appeared in the periodical Mémoires littéraires de la Grande Bretagne which was edited by Edward Gibbon and George Deyverdun. (Deyverdun was a clerk in the Secretary of State’s office, Northern Department, during the time Hume was employed at the office). Hume included his Sixteen Notes into a Note to Chapter 26 of his History of England.

A translation appeared in 1786.

A work which contrasts the ugly skeleton figure of the middle ages with the youthful spirit with the lowered torch, who the Greeks viewed as the brother of sleep.

In 1766 Hamburg founded a “German National Theatre” and in 1767 Lessing became its Dramaturg, a mixture of literary adviser to playwrights, observer of actors, reviewer and public educator. The venture failed in 1768. Lessing collected his papers from this period and published them in two volumes. The papers took the form of notices of over 50 performances appearing 104 parts.

Lessing attacked French tragedy of the sort written by Corneille and Voltaire, though he praised the “common reality” of Diderot. He also analyzed Aristotle’s concept of the nature of tragic passion, holding that pity and fear should be translated into virtuous action, and pleading for the principle of dramatic unity.

Montagu's work help to established the reputation of Shakespeare.

Published in 3 volumes Robertson's history of the Charles V was praised by Voltaire and Gibbon and established Robertson’s reputation on the Continent.

Sheridan describes his aim as being “to establish a uniformity of pronunciation . . . in all quarters of the globe, where English shall be taught by this method, and to remain immutably so, whilst that language shall be spoken in any part of the earth”.

A Rabelaisian satire upon English public affairs.

A work which became widely influential and led to an invitation in 1769 to Spallanzani to take up the chair of natural history at the prestigious University of Pavia.

Drama containing the much quoted line, Le monde avec lenteur

A work in support of René-Nicolas de Maupeou, who had become chancellor in 1768, and of his plans for reducing the power of the parlements. Voltaire’s history, in acknowledging some of the parlements achievements, painted a grim picture of its failings: its opposition to the founding of the Académie française and the distribution of the Encyclopédia, its responsibility for civil and religious conflict throughout the centuries, its illegal trial of the dauphin Charles in 1420, its condemnation of the first printers and support for the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

In June 1769 Diderot correctly identified Voltaire as the author of the pseudonymous history. “Voltaire clearly proves” that the parlements are “merely simple salaried courts of law whose supposed privileges are only a sort of usurpation founded on fortuitous, sometimes quite frivolous circumstances.” However, Diderot goes on to argue that had Voltaire been more thorough he would have been even more critical of the magistrates; had he gone back to the origins of the parlement of Paris, he would have shown the parlement displaying esprit de corps at its worst. “We would have seen that body having itself exiled, refusing to deal out justice to the people, and bringing about anarchy when its chimerical rights were involved but never when it was a question of defending the people. We woould have seen its intolerant, bigoted, stupid, preserving its gothic and vandal privileges and proscribing good sense. We would have seen it burning to meddle in everything: religion, government, war, finance, the arts and sciences, and mixing up everything with its ignorance, its self-interest, and its prejudices. We would have seen it too bold under feeble kings, too feeble under firm kings. We would have seen it further behind the times, less in touch with intellectual progress than the monks locked in the cells of Chartreux.” (Letter to Grimm, June 1769, Correspondance, IX, 64-5.)