The following translation of the Provincial Letters was undertaken several years ago, in compliance with the suggestion of a revered parent, chiefly as a literary recreation in a retired country charge, and, after being finished, was laid aside. It is now published at the request of friends, who considered such a work as peculiarly seasonable, and more likely to be acceptable at the present crisis, when general attention has been again directed to the popish controversy, and when such strenuous exertions are being made by the Jesuits to regain influence in our country.
None are strangers to the fame of the Provincials, and few literary persons would choose to confess themselves altogether ignorant of a work which has acquired a world-wide reputation. Yet there is reason to suspect that few books of the same acknowledged merit have had a more limited circle of bona fide English readers. This may be ascribed, in a great measure, to the want of a good English translation. Two translations of the Provincials have already appeared in our language. The first was contemporary with the Letters themselves, and was printed at London in 1657, under the title of "Les Provinciales; or, The Mysterie of Jesuitism, discovered in certain Letters, written upon occasion of the present differences at Sorbonne, between the Jansenists and the Molinists, from January 1656 to March 1657, S. N. Displaying the corrupt Maximes and Politicks of that Society. Faithfully rendered into English. Sicut Serpentes." Of the translation under this unpromising title, it may only be remarked, that it is probably one of the worst specimens of "rendering into English" to be met with, even during that age when little attention was paid to the art of translation. Under its uncouth phraseology, not only are the wit and spirit of the original completely shrouded, but the meaning is so disguised that the work is almost as unintelligible as it is uninteresting.