Voltaire is writing to Paradis de Moncrif about the music of his opera libretto, Pandore, for which Jean-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer was supposed to be composing the music. To the proposed title for the work, Voltaire adds in his own hand ‘dans l’absense de l’autheur’. The date line and signature (‘v’) are autograph. The second leaf is blank on both sides.

Incomplete copy of an article almost certainly written for the Encyclopédie, but which was never included in the published work.

The MS was copied out by multiple people (possibly a group of students) before being bound as a single volume. Included in the commonplace book are excerpts from:

• C.A. Demoustier’s Cours de Morale (1804)
• Esprit Fleicher’s Oraison funèbre de Monsieur de Turenne (1676)
• Chateaubriand’s Martyrs (1809)
• The Gazette de France (9 April 1808)
• Voltaire
• Jean-Baptiste Massillon
• Fréderic César de La Harpe
• Marie Jeanne Riccoboni
• Jacques Necker
• François de Neufchâteau
• Jean-François Marmontel
• Marquis de Bonnay
• The letters of Catherine the Great
• Hayley’s Recette de faire une Tragédie moderne (undated).