LETTER CXXVIII. Rica to Usbek, at * * *.

THE other day, as I was passing over the Pontneuf, with a friend of mine, he met a man of his acquaintance, who, he told me, was a geometrician, and indeed every thing in him showed him such: for

he was in a deep meditation; my friend was obliged to pull him a long time by the sleeve, and to jog him, to make him descend from his sublime speculations; he was so busied with a curve, which he had been perhaps eight days about. Great civilities passed between them, and they mutually informed each other of the literary news. This conversation led them to the door of a coffee-house, into which I went with them. I observed that our geometrician was received there with the utmost officiousness, and that the coffee-house boys paid him much more respect than to two musqueteers, who were in a corner of the room. As for him, he seemed as if he thought himself in an agreeable place: for he unwrinkled his brow a little, and laughed, as if he had not the least tincture of the geometrician in him. In the mean time he measured every thing that was said in conversation. He resembled a person in a garden, who with a sword cuts off all the heads of the flowers that rise up above the rest. A martyr to regularity, he was offended at every start of wit, as a tender eye is by too strong a light. Nothing was indifferent to him, if so be it were true; accordingly his conversation was singular. He was come that day out of the country, with a person who had been to view a noble seat and magnificent gardens; but he saw nothing but a building of sixty foot in front, by five and thirty in depth, and a wood of ten acres: he wished that the rules of perspective had been so observed, that the walks of the avenues might have appeared throughout of one and the same breadth; and he would have laid down for that end, an infallible method. He seemed very well satisfied with a dial he found there, of a very singular make, and was mighty angry at a learned man, who sat next me, who unhappily asked if the dial showed the Babylonian hours. A newsmonger talked of the bombardment of the castle of Fontarabbia: and he presently informed us what kind of lines the bombs described in the air; and delighted with the knowledge of this, he was contented to remain entirely ignorant of the success of the bombardment. A gentleman complaining, that the winter before he had been ruined by an inundation: what you say pleases me much, said the geometrician, I find I am not mistaken in the observation I made, and that at least, there fell upon the earth two inches of water more than the year before. A moment after, he went out, and we followed him. As he walked very fast, and never looked before him, he run full against another man: it was a rough encounter, and, from the percussion, each rebounded back, in proportion to his velocity and bulk. When they were a little recovered from their dizziness, the man, with his hand on his forehead, said to the geometrician, I am very glad you run against me, for I have great news to tell you: I have just now published my Horace. How! replied the geometrician, Horace hath been published these two thousand years. You do not understand me, says the other, it is a translation of that ancient author, which I have just now published: I have been twenty years engaged in translations. How, Sir! answered the geometrician, have you been twenty years without thinking? You speak for others, and they think for you? Sir, says the learned man, do not you believe that I have rendered a great service to the public, by making the reading of good authors familiar to them? I do not say absolutely so: I esteem as much as another the sublime genius whom you have travestied: but you do not at all resemble him; for, if you should translate for ever, you will never be translated yourself. Translations are like copper money, which bear in proportion, an equal value with a piece of gold, and are even sometimes of far greater use to the people, but they are always light, and of a bad alloy. You are desirous, you say, to revive among us these illustrious dead; and I own that you give them indeed a body: but you do not restore life to them, there is still wanting a spirit to animate them. Why do not you rather apply yourself to the search of a thousand glorious truths, which an easy calculation discovers to us every day? After this advice, they parted, I suppose, not much pleased with each other.

Paris, the last of the moon Rebiab,
1719.