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HUME, David (1711-1776).
Autograph letter signed ('David Hume') to Madame [Octavie] Belot, Hotel de Grimberg, [Paris], 24 November 1763.
In English. One page, 213 x 169mm, integral address leaf, remnant of seal in red wax, seal tear. Provenance: Swann, 23 May 2013, lot 228; RR Auction, 10 December 2014, lot 443.
To the French translator of his 'History of England under the House of Tudor'. Hume responds warmly to a proposal of friendship from Octavie Belot, and proposes bringing to her his corrected proof sheets for her translation on the coming Friday: the corrections may be too late for the first volume, but those for the second volume 'will be food for [the printers] during some time'.
'You have prevented [i.e. anticipated] me in the Request I intended to propose, after our literary Connexions shall be over: Which, however, will not, I hope, be soon: I shoud be sorry to have had so much Acquaintaince with a Person of your Merit; and not to continue, and rather to encrease than diminish our Friendship. As Friday is the first day you can be at Leezure [i.e. leisure] to see me, I shall wait upon you in the After noon, and bring with me all the Sheets corrected that you committed to me. The Corrections are few & not very material. If the Press come upon us too hastily in the first Volume we can give the Printers these corrected Sheets of the second Volume, which will be food for them during some time'.
The recipient, Octavie Belot (1719-1804, née Guichard), had taken up English translation after the death of her first husband left her almost penniless: as well as Hume's History, she translated Johnson's Rasselas and Sarah Fielding's Ophelia, and she corresponded with Benjamin Franklin Voltaire, Helvétius and Buffon. Her translations of Hume's History comprised the Tudor (published at the time of this letter) and Plantagenet sections (published in 1765). The quality of her translations has been criticised, but Hume evidently thought highly of her, praising her in a letter to William Robertson only a week after the present letter: 'she has a very easy natural style: sometimes she mistakes the sense; but I now correct her manuscript; and should be happy to render you the same service" (Letters, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, 2011, I, 415-16). Hume's letter is addressed to Belot at the house of her future second husband, François Durey de Meinières, an influential member of the Parlement of Paris.