instance. Some men amass books for
self-instruction and others from vanity. Some decorate their rooms with
the furniture that was intended to be an ornament of the soul, as if it
were like the bronzes and statues of which we were speaking. Some are
working for their own vile ends behind their rows of books, and these are
the worst of all, because they esteem literature merely as merchandise,
and not at its real value; and this new fashionable infliction becomes
another engine for the arts of avarice.

_Pet._ I have a very considerable quantity of books.

_Crit._ Well! it is a charming, embarrassing kind of luggage, affording
an agreeable diversion for the mind.

_Pet._ I have a great abundance of books.

_Crit._ Yes, and a great abundance of hard work and a great lack of
repose. You have to keep your mind marching in all directions, and to
overload your memory. Books have led some to learning, and others to
madness, when they swallow more than they can digest. In the mind, as in
the body, indigestion does more harm than hunger; food and books alike
must be used according to the constitution, and what is little enough for
one is too much for another.

_Pet._ But I have an immense quantity of books.

_Crit._ Immense is that which has no measure, and without measure there
is nothing convenient or decent in the affairs of men.

_Pet._ I have an incalculable number of books.

_Crit._ Have you more than Ptolemy, King of Egypt, accumulated in the
library at Alexandria, which were all burned at one time? Perhaps there
was an excuse for him in his royal wealth and his desire to benefit
posterity. But what are we to say of the private citizens who have
surpassed the luxury of kings? Have we not read of Serenus Sammonicus,
the master of many languages, who bequeathed 62,000 volumes to the
younger Gordian? Truly that was a fine inheritance, enough to sustain
many souls or to oppress one to death, as all will agree. If Serenus had
done nothing else in his life, and had not read a word in all those
volumes, would he not have had enough to do in learning their titles and
sizes and numbers and their authors' names? Here you have a science that
turns a philosopher into a librarian. This is not feeding the soul with
wisdom: it is the crushing it under a weight of riches or torturing it in
the waters of Tantalus.

_Pet._ I have innumerable books.

_Crit._ Yes, and innumerable errors of ignorant authors and of the
copyists who