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to conceal their light under a bushel, whose heads death has withdrawn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!_ Th