Italian and French translations of David Hume's Political Discourses

In this paper I focus on the Italian and French published translations of David Hume's "Political discourses" (1752). The first French translations were published by Abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc (1754-1755) and by Eléazar Mauvillon (1754) and contain all the twelve essays of Hume's first edition. Le Blanc's translation enjoyed enormous success, as we can notice from the reviews that appeared in many European magazines. Then we have examined the Italian editions translated by Matteo Dandolo (1767, 1774, 1798) especially on the first. This is a bilingual edition, including only eight discourses, out of the sixteen written by Hume. The new title chosen by Dandolo, "Political essays on commerce", rendered in Italian with "Saggi politici sopra il commercio", corresponded to his choice to exclude from his edition those discourses which were not strictly on economic matters. At the end of the eighteenth century, an interest in the political works written by Hume begins to decrease, the following century being characterised by few editions and translations.