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in the beginning of the last century, is to be pre-ferred to all the others, on account of the careand fidelity with which it is executed. It wastranslated into Italian so early as the year 1549,and printed at Venice by Gabriel Giolito deFerrari.—In 1611, Frederick Morel, at Paris ,revised and corrected the French translation ofBlaise de Vigenere of 1609, and published it intwo volumes quarto, with a very ample com-mentary by Artus Thomas Sieur D’Embry.—A new translation has lately appeared in French ,m four volumes duodecimo, dedicated to Cle-ment XIV. to which is added a literal transla-tion of all the notes that are to be found in theEnglish version of the first two books by Mr.Charles Blount, in 1680, who, in his prefaceto the same, says, he had translated the whole,but was prevented from publishing, by reasonof the outcry raised against him of the dangerwhich was to follow its publication. The truthis, it was considered at the time (but in my opi-nion erroneously) as so dangerous an attempt toinjure the Christian religion, that it was soonsuppressed, so that few copies of it then gotabroad—Yet, notwithstanding the alarm excit-ed, it appears to me, that whatever danger wasto have followed, (of which there was none)must have arisen from the peculiar nature ofthe notes with which it is furnished, almost allof them being of so deistical a tendency as tomake it supposed they were written by the fa-
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