[John Roget [Jean Roget], Geneva-born pastor in London, father of Peter Mark Roget (of the ‘Thesaurus’) and brother-in-law of Sir Samuel Romilly.] Autograph Notebook in French, with apparently-original compositions and extracts from other authors.

See the entries in the Oxford DNB for his brother-in-law Sir Samuel Romilly and his son Peter Mark Roget, as well as Joshua Kendall’s 2008 biography of the latter, ‘The Man Who Made Lists’. From the Roget family papers, and certainly of later date than the two schoolboy commonplace books by Jean Roget offered separately. Roget is not named as the author, but the handwriting is his, and the spine bears the remains of a blue paper label with the words ‘MSS of the Rev. J. Ro[get]’ on it the same nineteenth-century hand (P. M. Roget's?) as the two commonplace books. From the dates of some of the items in the present volume it is clear that it was begun after 1773, and probably written, at least in part, after Roget’s settlement in England in 1775. The volume is 78pp, small 4to, and written in a close, neat hand. Internally in good condition, lightly aged, in worn and grubby half-vellum covers with grey paper boards. At one end of the volume are 27pp of possibly original compositions; and starting at the other end (once the volume has been turned upside-down) are a further 47pp of extracts from identified sources. The 27-page section is followed by two inserted items, also in (Jean) Roget’s autograph, totalling 4pp, the second being a three-page bifolium, carrying (Jean) Roget’s transcription of the ‘Épitre d’Anne de Boleyn en prison à Henry VIII son époux’ of Rapin-Thoyras (exhibiting some differences from the version printed by Raoul de Cazenove in 1866). It is hard to tell which, if any, of the pieces in this volume are original compositions, since none are attributed, but it would appear that the 27pp at one end are by Roget himself. They bear the titles: ‘Ya-t-il des préjugés respectables?’, ‘Pourquoi les François ont-ils si peu ou de si mauvaises traductions en vers des anciens Poëtes Grecs et Latins, tandis que les Anglois et les Italiens en ont plusieurs qui sont estimés?’, ‘Quelle est la méthode d’étudier la plus convenable aux diférens [sic] Caracteres d’esprit?’, ‘Sur la litterature des Grecs et des Romains’, ‘Extrait d’un plus long discours sur cette Question / Que doit-on penser de cette Sensibilité dont on se pique de nos jours?’, ‘de l’Esprit’, ‘Plan d’un discours sur cette Question / Convient-il de parler de Religion aux enfans, et s’il y a des distinctions à faire, quelles sont-elles?’ The 47pp of extracts from other writers begin with a seven-page transcription from Holbach’s 1773 ‘Systême social’. Montesquieu’s ‘Persian Letters’, the ‘Mœurs’ of ‘Panage’, Jean Pey’s ‘Le Philosophe Catéchisme’, Saurin’s ‘Sermons’. The only English text in the volume is a five-page transcription ‘From Lord Bolingbroke’s Reflexions on Exile’. There are only two poems in the main body of text: a jeu d’esprit titled ‘L’Observateur’ (‘Lorsque je suis au Luxembourg’) and a five-page piece titled ‘Les Perdrix, Conte’ (‘Un vieux Oncle, bavard, mais qui me mentoit guere’).