colporteur to five years, and the woman
to the hospital for life.... Do you see the meaning of this judgment? A
colporteur brings me a prohibited book. If I buy more than one copy, I
am declared to be encouraging unlawful trading, and exposed to a
frightful prosecution. You have read the _Man with Forty Crowns_,[217]
and will hardly be able to guess why it is placed under the ban in the
judgment I am telling you of. It is in consequence of the profound
resentment that our lords and masters feel about a certain article,
_Tyrant_, in the _Philosophical Dictionary_. They will never forgive
Voltaire for saying that it was better to have to do with a single wild
beast, which one could avoid, than with a band of little subaltern
tigers who are incessantly getting between your legs.... To return to
those two unfortunate wretches whom they have condemned to the galleys.
When they come out, what will become of them? There will be nothing left
for them to do, save to turn highway robbers. The ignominious
penalties, which take away all resource from a man, are worse than the
capital punishment that takes away his life."[218]

_Method and Genius: an Apologue._--"There was a question between Grimm
and M. Le Roy of creative genius and co-ordinating method. Grimm detests
method; according to him, it is the pedantry of letters. Those who can
only arrange, would do as well to remain idle; those who can only get
instruction from what has been arranged, would do as well to remain
ignorant. What necessity is there for so many people knowing anything
else besides their trade? They said a great many things that I don't
report to you, and they would be saying things still, if the Abbe
Galiani had not interrupted them:

'My friends, I remember a fable: pray listen to it. One day, in the
depths of a forest, a dispute arose between a Nightingale and a Cuckoo.
Each prizes its own gift. What bird, said the Cuckoo, has a song so
easy, so simple, so natural, so measured, as mine?

What bird, said the Nightingale, has a song sweeter, more varied, more
brilliant, more touching, than mine?

_The Cuckoo:_ I say few things, but they are things of weight, of order,
and people retain them.

_The Nightingale:_ I love to use my voice, but I am always fresh, and I
never weary. I enchant the woods; the Cuckoo makes them dismal. He is so
attached to the lessons of his mother, that he would not dare to venture
a single note that he had not taken from her.