The motto affixed to many of the manuscript copies of these Letters proves that the worthy man to whom we owe them did not desire to be known as their author, and that it was neither the love of reputation, nor the thirst of glory, nor the ambition of being distinguished by bold opinions, which the priests, and the satellites subjected to them by ignorance, denominate impieties, which guided his pen. It was only the desire of doing good to his fellow-beings by enlightening them, which actuated him, and the wish to uproot, so to speak, religion itself, as being the source of all the woes which have afflicted mankind for so many ages. This is the motto of which we spoke:—
"Si j'ai raison, qu'importe à qui je suis?"
(If reason's mine, no matter who I am.)
* "Time effaces the comments of opinion, but it confirms the
judgments of nature."—Cicero.
It is a verse of Corneille, whose application is exceedingly appropriate, and which should be upon the frontispiece of all books of this nature.
We are unable to say any thing more certain concerning the person to whom our author has addressed his work. It appears, however, from many circumstances in these Letters, that she was not a supposititious marchioness, like her of the Worlds of M. de Fontenelle, and that they have really been written to a woman as distinguished by her rank as by her manners. Perhaps she was a lady of the school of the Temple, or of Seaux. But these details, in reality, as well as those which concern the name and the life of our author, the date of his birth, that of his death, &c., are of little importance, and could only serve to satisfy the vain curiosity of some idle readers, who avidiously collect these kind of anecdotes, who receive from them a kind of existence in the world, and who feel more satisfaction from being instructed in them than from the discovery of a truth. I know that they endeavor to justify their curiosity by saying that when a person reads a book which creates a public sensation, and with which he is himself much pleased, it is natural he should desire to know to whom a grateful homage should be addressed. In this case the desire is so much the more unreasonable because it cannot be satisfied; first, because when death and proscription is the penalty, there has never been and there never will be a man of letters so imprudent, and, to speak plainly, so strangely daring, as to publish, or during his life to allow a book to be printed, in which he tramples under foot temples, altars, and the statues of the gods, and where he attacks without any disguise the most consecrated religious opinions; secondly, because it is a matter of public notoriety that all the works of this character which have appeared for many years are the secret testaments of numbers of great men, obliged during their lives to conceal their light under a bushel, whose heads death has withdrawn from the fury of persecutors, and whose cold ashes, consequently, do not hear in the tomb either the importunate and denunciatory cries of the superstitious, or the just eulogiums of the friends of truth; thirdly and lastly, because this curiosity, so unfortunately entertained, may compromise in the most cruel manner the repose, the fortune, and the liberty of the relatives and friends of the authors of these bold books! This single consideration ought, then, to determine those hazarders of conjectures, if they have really good intentions, to wrap in the inmost folds of their hearts whatever suspicions they may entertain concerning the author, however true or false they may be, and to turn their inquiring spirits to a use more beneficial for both themselves and others.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
In 1819 an anonymous translation of the Letters to Eugenia was published in London by Richard Carlile. This translation in some of its parts was sufficiently complete and correct, but in others it was at absolute variance with the original work; in other parts, also, it was interlarded with matter not written by d'Holbach; and in others, large portions of the original Letters were entirely omitted, as were likewise a number of notes and the whole of the preliminary observations, with which the volume was introduced to the public by Naigeon, so long the intimate friend of both d'Holbach and Diderot. In again presenting the work in an English dress, the London translation has been made the foundation of this, but the whole has been thoroughly revised and collated with the original. The omitted portions have been translated and inserted in their proper places, and though some passages of the London work, not entirely faithful to the original, have been allowed to stand, yet the book, as it now appears, is essentially a new one, and is the most accurate and complete translation of the Letters to Eugenia which has ever been made into the English language.
The work at first came anonymously from the press, and the mystery of its authorship was sedulously maintained in the introductory observations of Naigeon, in consequence of the danger which then attended the issue of Infidel productions, not only in France but throughout Christendom. The book was printed in Amsterdam, at d'Holbach's own expense, by Marc-Michael Rey, a noble printer, to whom the world is greatly indebted for the inestimable aid he rendered the philosophers. But bold as he was, and then living in a country the most free of any in the world, he dared not openly send these Letters from his own press. They were issued in 1768, in two duodecimo volumes, without any publisher's name, and with the imprint of London on the title page, in order to set those persecutors at bay who were prowling for victims, and who sought to burn author, printer, and book at the same pile. The prudence of the author and printer saved them from this fate; but the book had hardly reached France before its sale was forbidden under penalty of fines and imprisonment, and it was condemned by an act of Parliament to be burnt by the public executioner in the streets of Paris, all of which particulars will be narrated in the Biographical Memoir of Baron d'Holbach, which I am now preparing for the press.
Of the excellence of the Letters to Eugenia, nothing need here be said. The work speaks for itself, and abounds in that eloquence peculiar to its author, and overflows with kindly sentiments of humanity, benevolence and virtue. Like d'Holbach's other works, it is distinguished by an ardent love of liberty, and an invincible hatred of despotism; by an unanswerable logic, by deep thought, and by profound ideas. The tyrant and the priest are both displayed in their true colors; but while the author shows himself inexorable as fate towards oppressive hierarchies and false ideas, he is tender as an infant to the unfortunate, to those overburdened with unreasonable impositions, to those who need consolation and guidance, and to those searching after truth. Addressed, as the Letters were, to a lady suffering from religious falsehoods and terrors, the object of the writer is set forth in the motto from Lucretius which he placed on the title page, and which may thus be expressed in English:—
"Reason's pure light I seek to give the mind,
And from Religion's fetters free mankind."
A. C. M.
The name of the lady was designedly kept in secrecy, and was unknown, except to a very few, till some years after d'Holbach's death. We now know from the Feuilles Posthumes of Lequinio, who had it from Naigeon, that the Letters were written several years before their publication, for the instruction of a lady formerly distinguished at the French Court for her graces and virtues. They were addressed to the charming Marguerite, Marchioness de Vermandois. Her husband held the lucrative post of farmer-general to the king, and besides inherited large estates. He possessed excellent natural abilities, and his mind was strengthened and adorned by culture and letters. Had his modesty permitted him, to appear as such, he would now be known as a poet of genius and merit, for he wrote some poems and plays that were much admired by all who were allowed to peruse them. He was married in 1763, on the day he completed his twenty-first year, to Marguerite Justine d'Estrades, then only nineteen years of age, and whom he saw for the first time in his life only six weeks before they became husband and wife. Like most of the matches then made among the higher classes in France, this was one of a purely mercenary character. The father of the