XXX. The writing from alphabetical compilations is also extremely easy. There is the Theatre of human life, the Polyantheas, and many other books, where erudition is arranged under the initial letters of the several branches of learning, and these books, by having copious indexes annexed to them, become a kind of public fountains, where all the animals of the world may drink, both men and beasts. Whatever subject a man undertakes to write upon, be it politics, morality, humanity, or history, he has only to turn to the index, which will point out to him, where he may be furnished with a copious assortment of texts, and citations, that are amassed together in these books for the use of all the world, and where he may collect whatever he has occasion for. By this management, the new author may gain himself the reputation of a man of great erudition and reading; for there are very few who can distinguish by the connection and regular series of a writing, that kind of copious erudition, which is well arranged and properly separated in the brain, and which flows opportunely from thence to the pen; from that, which a man when he is hard put to it, is obliged to collect from indexes and common-place books, with which he swells his work, and with which he heaps up in it, gross and bulky trifles, that consist of straw and chaff, collected from common-place Latin citations and numbers. MORAL AND POLITICAL PARADOXES. PARADOX I. _The Invention of Gun-powder has been of great Use, and also very beneficial to Mankind._ I. If in the account which Virgil gives of the descent of Æneas into hell, he points out, as one of the most tormented and afflicted he saw there, Salmoneus that king of Elide, who in order to acquire to himself divine honours, attempted to imitate, although it was but in a very poor way, the thunder and lightning of Jupiter; _Vidi, & crudeles dantem Salmonea pœnas,_ _Dum flammas Jovis, & sonitus imitatur Olympi._ I say, if this was the case of Salmoneus, I believe I may venture to pronounce, that the bulk of mankind, would judge the man deserving a much more severe punishment, who invented gun-powder, and contrived cannon, and would think, that he had imitated much better than the king of Elide, the noise, the flash, and the havoc made by those fiery flying meteors. In truth, the world contemplate the Author of that invention with such horror and indignation, that they detest his name. And Quevedo speaks the sentiment of them all, or they nearly all assent to the opinion he expressed of him, in the following lines: He was of iron race and heart, In concave metal vast machine, Who first combustible with art Did shut; And then to raise a horrid scene, By violence produc’d a flame, Destructive as his savage mind, And thus transferr’d his odious name As infamous to all mankind.