Nicolas-Charles-Joseph Trublet

Nicolas Charles Joseph Trublet , born with Saint-Malo the December 4th 1697 and died in Saint-Malo the March 14th 1770, is a man of the church and French, known moralist especially for its memorable master key of weapons with Voltaire of which he had criticized Henriade .

A “ragman of the literature”

Canon of Saint-Malo and guide with Rome of the cardinal of Tencin, friend of Maupertuis and admiror of Fontenelle and La Motte, which it often meets in the living room of his friend intimates Mrs. de Tencin, it is made known by its Essais on various subjects of literature and morals , whose first volume appears in 1735 and meets a honourable success at once. “The abbot, who had knowledge and reading, was accommodated in the best living rooms. Its soft character, cherishing, had acquired many friends to him; and its books had their customers of amateurs. Maupertuis told that the Essais of the abbot had a so great reputation in Germany, that the postmasters refused horses with those which had not read them. ” The Essais of the Trublet abbot will be indeed translated into German and will be worth to him to be allowed with and the letter Academy of Science of Berlin.

In 1760, however, the things are spoiled when the Trublet abbot, who did not love the worms, makes appear in the fourth volume of his Essais a criticism of Henriade of Voltaire, with which it had had up to that point friendly relations. Referring to a remark of the Heather on the trouble which the opera inspires to him, it writes: “It is not the poête which ennuye and made yawn in the Henriade , it is poetry or rather the worms. ”

The counterpart of Voltaire is immediate and shingling:

the Trublet abbot had then the rage

to be in Paris a small character;

With little spirit which the catch had

the spirit of others per supplement was useful.

It piled up proverb on proverb;

It compiled, compiled, compiled…

However, when the Trublet abbot is elected member of the French Academy one year later, the two men reconcile themselves. Voltaire writes to him: “I am obliged, in conscience, to say to you that I was not born more malignant than you, and than, in the content, I am good man. ” But the reputation of the Trublet abbot from now on is established. The abbot of Voisenon will say of him: “It spent thirty years of its life to be listened and transcribe. It is, so to speak, the ragman of the literature. ”
The Trublet abbot tests himself thereafter with the theater, but no part of him will never be published. In 1767, it leaves Paris to be withdrawn in its birthplace, where it dies two years later.

Works

Reflections on Télémaque (1717)
Tests on various subjects of literature and morals (1735). Edition in 2 volumes: 1749. Edition in 4 volumes: 1754-60. Republication: Slatkine, Geneva, 1968.
Panegyrical of the saints, preceded by Reflections on the eloquence in general, and that of the pulpit in particular (1755)
Memories to be used with the history of the life and the works as Mr. de Fontenelle, drawn from the “Mercure de France”, 1756,1757 and 1758 (1759)
a newspaper of the literary life at the XVIIIe century: Correspondence of the Trublet Abbot, documents new on Voltaire, Beaumelle, Malesherbes, Fontenelle, Mrs. Geoffrin, Condamine, etc (1926)

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