The MS was compiled by Christian Masius (1711-1787), professor in Erlangen from 1768 onwards. The compilation includes works by:

• Du Jurien
• Franz Hollmann
• d’Argens
• Alexander Pope
• Harris
• Voltaire
• David Hume
• Plato
• Bumet

The collection is divided into two parts. Part one contains excerpts from François Fénélon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque, partial translations from French and English editions of this text, and notes (especially vocabulary lists).

Part 2 includes excerpts from works by eighteenth-century French writers. The authors include: Jean-François Marmontel, Arnaud Berquin, Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Antoine Condorcet, Jacques Antoine Guibert, Charles Pinot-Duclos, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The collection was likely compiled around 1800 by Michael Fischer, a student at the time.

The notes were produced by an unknown transcriber and are undated.

The extracts concern seven of the letters:

• Letter 20 (f.1r-1v)
• Letter 13 (f.1v-6r)
• Letter 21 (f.6r-8v)
• Letter 22 (f.8v-11r)
• Letter 23 (f.11r-13r)
• Letter 24 (f.13v-16v)
• Letter 25 (f.17r-44r.

F.44v-47v are blank. There are two copyists, the second of which takes over from f.17v onward.

The first entry is dated 12 June 1734, whilst later entries are dated April 1736. Jamet, possibly Pierre-Charles Jamet, appears to have been using the Amsterdam edition of the text published by Lucas in 1734.

The copies were made in 1927 and are accompanied by a series of notes.

The extracts are taken from Acts 1-5.

Shiffner’s notes refer to:

• Voltaire’s Siècle de Louis XIV and Précis du siècle de Louis XV
• Copies of French verse
• Dr Goldsmith’s Life of … Bolingbroke
• Russian history in the eighteenth century
• The ice-house at Coombe
• The landing of émigres at Quiberon Bay
• The Franco-Spanish peace, 1795
• Various anecdotes

The notes run to three volumes.

On p.99, Lord Clanwilliam notes ‘p.99 Constantine once told my uncle, that Paul had come to look for him in his room, and had thrashed the valet because he could not tell Paul where Constantine just then was, and, added the Grand Duke, it was a lucky chance that Paul did not examine the room. He would have found a quarto volume of Voltaire open at the passage, where Brutus justifies to Cassius the murder of Caesar: “Eh, ne crois-tu pas à ton charactère donner démenti, Si tu mets en balance une vie a la patrie”. (It is but fair to say, that the Grand Duke C. was always ready to boast of his French literature; did so to me at Karlsbad.) Kutaisoff was Paul’s valet, and had been ennobled, and made Master of the Horse. He kept a Mlle Chevalier, and adjourned to his mistress, changing his dress as soon as Paul was in bed.’ This is the same anecdote told in D3044/F/4.