His first literary attempts having been barely noticed, he imagined to send the news of his death in Paris where it was inserted in the Feuilles of abbot Desfontaines.
If the scheme, once discovered, triggered laugh at the author's expense, the succès de scandale also drew him out of his darkness.
If his translation work was widely appreciated (he also proposed a paraphrase of the first gothic novel by Clara Reeve, (The Champion of virtue), it also attracted him some enmity, especially that of Voltaire, who neither appreciated Shakespeare (as evidenced by his Lettres philosophiques (1734), nor the fact of losing his unique position of Shakespearean expert in France.
According to La Harpe, who wrote his biography, he was "a great braggart, but compelling, flexible, active, and over all a man of fun and good food."
He was the great-great-grand-son of Pierre de la Place, philosopher and first president of the Court of Aids of Paris, murdered during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.