"
"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 conductive 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 anything. As to those huge
volumes of divinity, and those enormous collections of sermons, they
are not all together worth one single page in Seneca; and I fancy
you will readily believe that neither myself, nor anyone 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
Antonines dare not acquire a single idea without the permission of a
Dominican father.
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