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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2021
In the Journal Étranger, December, 1761, appeared an anonymous review of Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson which, since the middle of the last century, has been the subject of recurrent conjectures. Discussion has confined itself for the most part to the question whether or not this review was written by Diderot, to whom, in turn, it has been categorically assigned, tentatively imputed, categorically denied, and re-imputed. However, although the question has attracted, more or less incidentally, the attention of various prominent critics, no one, as far as I have been able to determine, has undertaken to investigate the available evidence. Following is a brief bibliographical survey of the discussion.
1 Lachmann's Edition of Leasing, 1838-40.
2 Hettner's assertion in the 1924 edition of Das Moderne Drama (DLD.151) reads: “Leasing's Miss Sara Sampson empfiehlt er (Diderot) den Franzosen auf's Wärmste.”
3 Lessing merely paraphrases two or three sentences.
4 Cf. the beginning of the fifth paragraph of the fourteenth article in the Dramaturgie
5 Assézat, Œuvres computes de Diderot, XIX, 75, 104.
6 Assézat et Tourneux, Œuvres complètes de Diderot, XIX, p. 58.
7 Author whose manuscript translation of Miss Sara was used for the review in the Journal and for the private productions of the play at the Duc D'Ayen's.
8 A later reference indicates that these youngsters were old enough to have done literary work of their own.
9 Assézat, XIX, p. 67.
10 Aasézat, XIX, p. 73.
11 Just before he speaks of Miss Sara Diderot writes: “Grimm a le morceau que j'ai traduit” Schmidt erroneously assumes that Diderot is here referring to Lessing's play. The reference is clearly to a translation of one of the “Scotch lyrics” mentioned in the preceding sentence, also in the letter of October 12.
12 The first reference also has an important historical significance. It definitely indicates that although Miss Sara Sampson appeared in 1755, Diderot was unfamiliar with Lessing's play when he wrote the Fils Naturel (1757), the Père de Famille (1758) and the theoretical treatises which accompanied these dramas.
13 Assézat, XIX, 47.
14 Ibid., XIX, 49.
15 Ibid., XIX, 55.
16 Ibid., XIX, 61.
17 Ibid., XIX, 70.
18 It is very possible that these fragments were the privately translated portions of Clarissa, whose absence Diderot regretted in his “Eloge de Richardson,” January, 1762. Later the same year Prevost published the missing passages. (Cf. Assézat,V, 218.)
19 Ibid., XIX, 104.
20 Bruté, de Loirelle.
21 Assézt, VIII, 139.
22 There has been, it may be noted, a rather prevalent confusion of Lillo's London Merchant and E. Moore's Gamester in French criticism. Assézat, who, however, makes no reference to Diderot's misapprehension of the chronological relation of The London Merchant to Sylvie, offers an explanation which helps account for this tendency. “Diderot fut le premier qui la (pièce: Gamester) compara avec Le Marchand de Londres de Lillo, ce qui a fait longtemps croire que les deux La France litteraire de Quérard, qui donne Beverley comme une imitation du Marchand de Londres et place la traduction du Joueur, par l'abbé Bruté de Loirelle, à la fois au nom de Moore et au nom de Lillo” (VII, p. 413). The Grand Larousse (cf. Revue de littérature comparée, oct-dec., 1926, p. 687, note; for French translations and adaptations of Lillo's play, see pp. 682 ff.) and the Biographie Universelle properly associate the translation of de Loirelle with Moore's play but, like Quérard, consider Saurin's Béverley an imitation of the Merchant. It seems that the two English plays were not clearly differentiated in Marmontel's mind when he wrote his Poétique (1763). In the chapter “Tragédie,” just a few lines before an elaborate praise of The Gamester, the following exclamation occurs “Quelle comparaison de Barnwell avec Athalie du côté de la pompe et de la majesté du theatre I mais aussi quelle comparaison du côté du pathétique et de la moralité!” The author includes the same sentence in his article “Tragédie” contributed to the Supplement (1777) of the Encyclopaedia, also in his Éléments de Littérature (1787), but in the latter two cases Beverley is substituted for Barnwell. A recent critic, Ch. Rabany, writes in his Kotzebue, Paris, 1893, p. 180 (note): “U est d'ailleurs i remarquer que le drame bourgeois vient en réalite d'Angleterre. On peut en rapporter l'origine au Marchand de Londres de Lillo (1693-1739), qui fut transporté sur la scene française dans le Beverley de Saurin (1768), et au Joueur d'Edouard Moore (1712-1757).”
23 Assézat, VIII, p. 440.
24 Further on Diderot naively asserts: “J'en parle sans partialité.” The same phrase is used with even less reason and justice by Dorval in the “Premier Entretien” VII, p. 98)
25 September, 1761.
26 May, 1760
27 Poétiaue Française, 1761, II, 147.
28 Assézat, V, 217.
29 Ibid, VIII, 110, 113, 125.
30 Assézat, VII, 400 (Réponse à la Lettre de Mme. Riccoboni); cf. also VIII, 354 (Grimm's note).
31 Ibid., VII, 104.
32 Article in the September number of the Journal.
33 Garat, D. J., Mémoires Historiques sur la Vie de M. Suard, Paris, 1820, II, 21.
34 Garat, II, 19; cf. also Marmontel, “Mémoires.” in Œuvres Complètes, Paris, 1819, I, 283.