The books issued from Du Gard's press are of less interest than the weekly paper which he undertook to publish in French, from 1650 to 1657. A few numbers are preserved in the British Museum, but the nearly complete set of the Nouvelles ordinaires de Londres may be consulted at the Bibliothèque Nationale. It is in that old long-forgotten paper that are to be read the earliest mentions of Milton's name in a French publication.[272]
Du Gard advertised the Defensio pro populo Anglicano in the following terms: "The reply to the scandalous and defamatory book of M. de Saumaise against this State, which has long been wished for by many worthy people and generally expected by all, is at last near ready, being now under press and pushed forward" (Feb. 1650-51). Coming from Saumaise's printer, such humble professions were well calculated to mollify the Council of State.
A few weeks later, in No. 34, we meet again with Milton's name: "The reply to the insulting book of M. de Saumaise by Mr. John Milton, one of the Secretaries to the Council of State, appeared last Monday, to the utmost content and approval of all" (March 2-9, 1650-51).
The following year, Du Gard published the French translation of Eikonoklastes, Milton's reply to Eikon Basiliké. It is thus advertised in the Nouvelles ordinaires: "This week has been issued, in this town, the French translation of Mr. Milton's book confuting the late King of England's book" (No. 125, Dec. 1652). The translator was John Dury, a Scottish minister.[273]
The last mention of Milton's name appears in a letter from Paris: "We have notice from France that M. Morus, a minister opposed to Mr. Milton (who has just published another book against him, entitled Defensio pro se), having passed through the chief Reformed Churches in France and preached everywhere to the applause of the people, has gone from Paris, where some wished to retain him as minister, and come to Rouen, leaving his friends in doubt as to his return, but that the favour shown him has as promptly subsided as it was stirred up, many marking the lack of constancy in his mind, and the ambition and avarice of his pretensions" (No. 298, Feb. 1656-57). The paragraph refers to Alexander More, minister of Charenton, whom Milton had most vehemently assailed upon mistaking him for the author of the Clamor sanguinis regii ad cœlum, which had been published at the Hague in 1652. The book was by Peter Du Moulin. More replied by a defence entitled Fides publica contra calumnias J. Miltoni, and Milton then retorted by the pamphlet referred to above: J. Miltoni pro se defensio contra A. Morum.
The fact that Milton's name appears at so early a date in a French publication would alone excite curiosity about the Nouvelles ordinaires. The collection preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale comprises four hundred numbers, extending from 21/11 July 1650 to 31/21 January 1657-58; out of which only six are missing (Nos. 161-63, 202, 237, 238). The paper came out every Thursday, in one quarto sheet. "Extraordinary" numbers (entitled Nouvelles extraordinaires de Londres), such as No. 185, printing in full The Instrument of Government; No. 202, the treaty with the Dutch; No. 288, that with France; are on two quarto sheets. At the close of No. 2 may be read the following curious notice: "and are to be sold by Nicholas Bourne, at the South Gate of the Old Exchange, Tyton at the sign of the Three Daggers by Temple Gate, and Mary Constable at the sign of the Key in Westminster Hall." That Du Gard's paper circulated abroad may be inferred from the quaint notice appended to No. 44: "The reader is warned that the author (who up to now has with the utmost care gathered every week these happenings for the information of the public, though what he has gained thereby up to now has not given him much encouragement to go on, on the contrary hardly defraying the cost of the printing) has received intelligence that an English printer ... issues every week in The Hague a pirated edition, reprinting the paper in same size and type, with the name of the author's own printer, which is an intolerable falsification ... the author will henceforth take care to provide M. Jean Veely, bookseller, in The Hague, at the sign of the Dutch Chronicles, with true copies from London." Since no one has ever dreamed of issuing a pirated edition of an unsaleable book, we must believe the author to have somewhat exaggerated his complaints.[274]
After all, the author may have been Du Gard himself. However that may be, the editor of the paper knew English well; that he had long resided in England is implied by the many English words and idioms in his style.[275] Names of places often puzzle him, and he deals with the several difficulties in a rather awkward manner.[276] None but a Frenchman that had left his country for some time past or, as was actually the case with Du Gard, an Englishman of French descent, would venture to think of a village constable as a connétable, p. 816; of the Speaker of the House of Commons as l'orateur, p. 253; and calmly translate Solicitor-General by the absolutely meaningless expression solliciteur general, p. 305; and writ of error by the no less unintelligible billet d'erreur, p. 679.[277] Nevertheless, he spells in the most accurate way proper names, whether French or English.
NOUVELLES ORDINAIRES DE LONDRES, NUMBER 1