Of the numerous continuations and imitations that appeared in the next few years, none except Common-Place Arguments, 1780 (no. viii, below), is by Tickell. Opposition Mornings: with Betty’s Remarks, J. Wilkie, 1779, is assigned to him in Halkett and Laing (Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature, new ed., Edinburgh, 1926-34, IV, 265), in Sabin (#95797), and in library catalogues generally. Not made by earlier bibliographers, this attribution is probably based on a conjecture in The Monthly Review that Opposition Mornings might be an inferior work by Tickell (LX, 1779, 473). The tract makes use of several of Tickell’s satirical devices of the kind easily borrowed. But there is no good evidence that he wrote it, and the lack of a spark of wit in the whole performance is strong evidence to the contrary.
v
La Cassette Verte de Monsieur de Sartine, Trouvée chez Mademoiselle Du Thé. Ipse dolos tecti ambagesque resolvit. Virgil. (Cinquième Edition revue & corrigée sur celles de Leipsic & d’Amsterdam.) A La Haye: Chez la Veuve Whiskerfeld, in de Platte Borze by de Vrydagmerkt. M,DCC,LXX,IX.
8vo. P. , half-title, verso blank; p. [iii], title, verso blank; pp. [1]-4, “Avis au Lecteur”; p. [5], “Avant Propos,” verso blank; pp. [7]-71, text; p. [72], blank.
Copies: HEH, NYP, YU. Sabin #95793.
Sixième Edition, with identical title (except for change in number of edition), identical imprint and date; the text is set largely from the same type but extended by new matter to p. 76, and there is no blank page at the end. The Cinquième Edition described above may be safely regarded as the editio princeps; there were, however, at least three variant issues, two of which are easily confused with the original edition. One of these corresponds exactly in imprint, pagination, and signatures with the regular Cinquième Edition but is set from different type, has a different title-page border, and uses less elaborate printer’s ornaments throughout; it may be at once distinguished from the original by the fact that the words “Monsieur de Sartine” in the title are printed, not in red as in the original, but in black; copies in BA, NYP. A second variant has the same imprint as the regular Cinquième Edition, but the title-page has a still different border, no rubrication, and the word “Cinquième” is erroneously printed with an acute instead of a grave accent; the pagination is the same as that of the regular Cinquième Edition, but the variant is a smaller octavo, the type is not the same, nor are the signatures (regular: []², B-K⁴; variant: []², B-E⁸, F⁴); copies in NYP, YU. There is, finally, in the Yale University Library an issue called the “Cinquieme [sic] édition,” with a title-page border different from any in the preceding issues, with the same pagination as the regular Cinquième Edition, but from different type, with signatures[]¹, B⁸, C-I⁴ (half-title doubtless wanting), and with the puzzling date “M. DCC. LXXXII.”
La Cassette verte is a political and bibliographical hoax. The text purports to be secret papers found in a dispatch-box belonging to M. de Sartine, French Minister of Marine. (On Mademoiselle Du Thé, i.e., Rosalie Duthé, a Parisian courtesan who had recently visited England, see Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire ... du XIXᵉ siècle, Paris, 1866-90, VI, 1447-1448.) The papers expose the motives of the French government in aiding the United States and satirize Franklin’s activities in Paris, English sympathizers with the American cause, and the like. A letter supposedly written by one of Sartine’s agents in London provides a gloss on certain passages in Anticipation. I quote from the English version (no. vi, below):
Alas! in these times, a spy’s office here is almost a sinecure: a dozen newspapers in the morning, and as many fresh ones every evening, rob us of all our business: a secret even in private affairs is a prodigy in London; but as to public matters, it is the patriot’s boast, that a free constitution abhors secrecy: and so indeed it seems; for, not only the minutest accounts of the army, the navy, and the taxes, but the minister’s letters, official instructions, and in short, every paper, the disclosure of which may serve opposition, and tend to prejudice the ministers by a premature discovery of their plans, are perpetually called for, and must lie on the tables of Parliament; where, as soon as they are once brought, their contents one way or other get into print; consequently, ... the French ministers are not only as much in possession of them as the English, but study them far more attentively, and to ten times more advantage than they do who called for their disclosure in England⸺All this is bad encouragement to a spy at London.
Bibliographically, the pamphlet raises questions that cannot be answered with complete certainty. How is the number of variant issues to be accounted for, and what are their relations to the editio princeps? The satire was originally written by Tickell in English and was then translated into bad French to circulate on the Continent as propaganda against the Franco-American alliance (see the extract from The Monthly Review under the next entry, and that from Bachaumont’s Mémoires further on in the present entry). However, the French version, purporting to be the “Cinquième Edition,” published “A La Haye,” and “revue & corrigée sur celles de Leipsic & d’Amsterdam,” appeared in England earlier than the English original (La Cassette verte was noticed in The Monthly Review for May 1779, p. 394; The Green Box in the following month, p. 473). It seems most likely that the regular Cinquième and the Sixième Editions were printed on the Continent and that the variant issues were English reprints. Typographical evidence tends to confirm this supposition. The type and ornaments of the regular Cinquième Edition and the Sixième seem clearly not to be English. The variants, on the other hand, all appear to be English in origin, and it may be noted that their less elaborate ornaments give the impression of feeble imitation.
There is evidence that the hoax was disliked in certain high quarters. In Louis Petit de Bachaumont’s Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la republique des lettres en France, 1780-89, appears an “Extrait d’une lettre d’Amsterdam du 22 Mai 1780,” which reads, in part: