Je vous envoie, mon cher Thieriot, les livres que je vous ai promis ; vous les recevrez par la voie de M. Dunoquet, trésorier des troupes, à Calais, à qui je les adresse, et qui les mettra au coche de Calais pour Paris, adressés à vous, chez Mme de Bernières.
It was indeed a very hard task formed to find that damned book, which, under the title of Improvement of human reason, is an example of nonsense from one end to the other, and which besides, is a tedious nonsense, and consequently very distasteful to the french nation, that detests madness itself, when madness is languishing and flat. The book is scarce, hecause it is bad, it being the fate of all wretched books never to be printed again. So, I spent almost a fortnight in the search of it, till at last I had the misfortune to find it.
I hope you will not read throughout, that spiritless nonsense romance, though indeed you deserve to read it, to do penance fort the trouble you gave me to inquire after it, for the tiresome perusal I made of some parts of this whimsical, stupid performance, and for your credulity in believing those who gave you so great an idea of so mean a thing.
You will find in the same parcel the second volume of M. Gulliver, which (by the by, I don’t advise you to translate) strikes at the first ; the other is overstrained. The reader’s imagination is pleased and charmingly entertained by the new prospect of the lands which Gulliver discovers to him ; but that continued séries of new fangles, follies of fairytales, of wild inventions pall at last upon our taste. Nothing unnatural may please long ; it is for this reason that commonly the second parts of romances are so insipid.
Farewell ; my services tho those who remember me, but I hope I am quite forgot here[2].
- ↑ Éditeurs, de Cayrol et François.
- ↑ Traduction : J’ai eu vraiment une peine incroyable à trouver ce maudit livre, qui, sous le titre de Perfectionnement de la raison humaine*, est un modèle d’absurdités d’un bout à l’autre. Ajoutez que ces absurdités sont très-ennuyeuses, et dès lors insupportables aux Français, qui détestent la folie elle-même lorsqu’elle est fade et glacée. Ce livre est rare, parce qu’il est mauvais, le sort de tous les
