Il a paru dans ce pays, il y a déja du tems, peut-être un an, une brochure très courte, intitulée la cassette verte.... On ne sait si M. de Sartine en a été piqué, ou si c’est un zele de ses partisans dans ce pays; mais on mande de la Haye que le jeudi 19 de ce mois, on y a arrêté une Dame Godin, comme ayant eu quelque part à cette cassette verte & qu’elle en est partie le jour même avec des gardes qui la conduisent jusqu’aux frontieres de France, d’où vraisemblement elle sera transférée à la Bastille (XV, 189).
vi
The Green Box of Monsieur de Sartine, Found at Mademoiselle du Thé’s Lodgings. From the French of the Hague Edition. Revised and corrected by those of Leipsic and Amsterdam. “I translate for the Country Gentlemen.” Anticipation. London: Sold by A. Becket, corner of the Adelphi, Strand; and R. Faulder, Bond-street. M DCC LXXIX.
8vo. P. , half-title, verso blank; p. [iii], title, verso blank; pp. [1]-4, “Advertisement”; p. [5], note by the “Editor,” verso blank; pp. [7]-71, text; p. [72], advertisement of Anticipation, Ninth Edition, La Cassette verte, and other works by Tickell.
Copies: BP, HC, HEH, NYP. Sabin #95796.
Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Editions, Becket and Faulder, 1779. Dublin: James Byrn and Son, 1779. Also an edition dated 1779 without place or publisher’s name and with different collation; evidently a piracy. Heartman’s Historical Series No. 19; “Sixty-five copies printed for Charles F. Heartman, New York City 1916”; this is an independent translation of La Cassette verte.
“It now appears that this pretended English translation is the original work, as it came from the ludicrous pen of Mr. Tickell ...; and that the French edition ... was only a circumstance in the joke” (The Monthly Review, LX, 1779, 473).
A number of imitations followed La Cassette verte and The Green Box. Among these are An English Green Box ..., G. Kearsly, 1779; Histoire d’un pou françois ..., “A Paris, de l’Imprimerie Royale,” 1779, and the English version of the latter, History of a French Louse ..., T. Becket, 1779—all of which have been erroneously ascribed to Tickell.