Copyright (2010) by Peter Phalen
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This story is found in Grimm´s Correspondence, dated April 1773, but that
version is incomplete. The history of Tanié and la Reymer is missing, as is
the end of the history of Mademoiselle de La Chaux.
M. A.-A. Barbier (Dictionary of the Anonymous) suggested that Diderot´s
memory must have failed him when he attributed translations of "Hume´s First
Essays on Metaphysics" [p. 321] and the Essays on Human Understanding [p.
328] to Mademoiselle de La Chaux. But this was certainly not the case.
Diderot was only giving the works of Hume as translated by Mademoiselle de La
Chaux a more general title. The Political Discourses make up the second part
of the Essays. Mademoiselle de La Chaux wrote the first translation of this
part (Of Commerce; Of Luxury; Of Money, Amsterdam, 1752, 1753, in-12; Paris
and Lyon, in-12). It includes only seven of Hume´s seventeen discourses along
with some commentary by the translator. Abbot Le Blanc and later Mauvillon
did not publish their versions of the same piece until 1754. Mademoiselle de
La Chaux´s translation of Hume´s Writings on Economics was included in the
XVth tome of the Collections from the Leading Economists. She died in 1755.