Anne-Robert-Jacques TURGOT (1727–1781). L.A., Limoges, Septe - Lot 157

Anne-Robert-Jacques TURGOT (1727–1781). L.A., Limoges, September 24, 1771, to his former secretary Antoine-Bernard Caillard in Parma; 2 pages in-4, envelope with red wax seal (broken). Regarding his *Dido*, a verse translation of Virgil, and regarding Voltaire. Turgot updates him on his health, his travels, and the progress of his *Dido*, which is making little headway: “I wrote to you several months ago that I had 141 lines left to translate; the very next day, I wrote five to finish bringing together the two major sections on the hunt and the speeches of Dido and Aeneas. Since then, not a single line has come to me.” Referring to Vadé’s *Le déjeuner de la Rapée* and an anecdote about an organist at Saint-Sulpice, he explains that it is not a lack of desire to make progress that is holding him back. He is quite pleased with his translation of the Tenth Eclogue, which he sends to Caillard: if Caillard were to pass through Ferney again on his return, perhaps he could speak of it as a gift from the Abbé de Laage [the pseudonym under which Turgot sent his verses to Voltaire]. “This piece ought to be written in prose, but by reading it yourself, you could test the effect of this prose, which might be more pleasing to the ear than to the eye. But […] perhaps this prose will be very displeasing once its scheme has been discerned”…