myself. I had once
some liking to his philosophical works; but when I found he doubted
of every thing, I thought I knew as much as himself, and had no
need of a guide to learn ignorance."

"Ha!" cried Martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the 'Memoirs of
the Academy of Sciences;' perhaps there may be something curious
and valuable in this collection."--"Yes," answered Pococurante; "so
there might, if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only
invented the art of pin-making. But all these volumes are filled
with mere chimerical systems, without one single article conducive
to real utility."

"I see a prodigious number of plays," said Candide, "in Italian,
Spanish, and French."--"Yes," replied the Venetian; "there are, I
think, three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for any
thing. As to those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous
collections of sermons, they are not all together worth one single
page of Seneca; and I fancy you will readily believe that neither
myself nor any one else ever looks into them."

Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to
the senator, "I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted
with those books, which are most of them written with a noble
spirit of freedom."--"It is noble to write as we think," said
Pococurante; "it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we
write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the
country of the Caesars and Antoninuses dare not acquire a single
idea without the permission of a father Dominican. I should be
enamoured of the spirit of the English nation did it not utterly
frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the
spirit of party."

Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think
that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococurante sharply. "That
barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of
rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly
imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making the
Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to plan the
world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole
universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer
who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil;