“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.