The Courtship of Pierre Coste and Other Letters
Pierre Coste would be quite forgotten to-day if, by a singular piece of good luck, he had not translated Locke's Essay into French. Born at Uzès, in Southern France, in 1668, Coste fled to Holland at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Though accepted as a minister by the Synod of Amsterdam, he appears never to have fulfilled pastoral duties. He knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; he had studied divinity; so to earn a living, he became a proof reader. In spite of his precarious condition, he seems to have had friends in high places, Charles Drelincourt, for instance, professor of medicine at Leyden University, and physician in ordinary to William of Orange and Mary, and Jean Le Clerc, the author of the Bibliothèque universelle.
On the latter's advice, Coste learned enough English to translate Locke's Thoughts concerning Education. The favourable reception of the work induced him to undertake a translation of the Essay on Human Understanding: Locke heard of this and, in order to supervise the work, he invited Coste to come over to England. Locke was then living with Sir Francis Masham, at Oates, in England. Coste quite naturally became the tutor to the young Mashams, none being more qualified to apply the principles of the Thoughts concerning Education than the translator.
Coste lived on at Oates till Locke's death in 1704. He subsequently became tutor to the son of the Earl of Shaftesbury, the author of the Characteristics. We can trace him to Paris, following the chequered career of a man of letters; thence he went to Montpellier and Rome, wandered about Germany and Holland, returned to England, and finally found his way back to Paris, where he died in 1747.
Like all the "Dutch journalists," with the exception of Bayle and Le Clerc, he was merely a compiler and translator. Besides Locke, he translated Newton, Shaftesbury, Lady Masham. He published editions of Montaigne and La Fontaine; he wrote a life of Condé. Original work he never sought to achieve. "I have no ambition," he writes, "if I had, I should be unable to satisfy it." He is no more than a good-tempered, careless Southerner. With nothing of the Camisard about him, he invincibly recalls one of those sunny, self-possessed sons of Provence. Surely it was an accident of birth that made him a native of the Cévennes, he should have come into the world a little lower down in the valley of the Rhone. Of course he is often insolvent, but when the duns clamour, a generous patron never fails to interfere. The great people he meets do not impress him; on the contrary he laughs at their foibles most indulgently. The background in which these eminent men live lends piquancy to Coste's letters; but the difficulty of understanding the allusions is somewhat irritating. The impression is that of a black void faintly illuminated by intermittent flashes of light. There is, however, some slight compensation in the recreating work of filling up the gaps with surmises.
Coste's correspondence we do not intend to publish in full. A selection must be made. All that concerns the relations between "Dutch journalists" and English writers interests the history of comparative literature. The information about Locke and the spread of his philosophy in France, must be carefully treasured up. But there are also familiar letters which throw the most vivid light on the life of some French refugees in Amsterdam. Thanks to them we shall know something about the man as well as about his works.
I
Coste and the English Writers
One of the letters printed below tells how Coste came to know Locke. "Speaking of that doctor (Drelincourt), I must say I have had the occasion to write to a famous English physician named Locke, of whom you have so often heard me speak. Yesterday I received a book with which he had been kind enough to present me. I shall thank him at the earliest opportunity." It appears that the success attending the operation performed by Locke on the first Earl of Shaftesbury in 1668 was not to be eclipsed by the publication of the Essay. Contemporaries spoke in the same breath of Locke and Sydenham as great physicians.
Into Coste's life at Oates we can get only a few glimpses, just some recollections jotted down long after Locke's death. Thus, on 8th January 1740, Coste wrote to La Motte, the "Dutch journalist," to complain about the "cape" with which the engraver had adorned Locke's portrait, heading an edition of the Traité de l'Education. Locke, he said, had never been a physician. "He could not bear being called a doctor. King William gave him the title and Mr. Locke begged an English lord to tell the King that the title was not his."