(23.) A man starts up on a sudden, and without any previous thoughts, takes pen, ink, and paper, and resolves within himself to write a book, but without any other talent for writing but the need he has of fifty _pistoles_.[848] In vain I say to him: “Dioscorus, take a saw, or else go to the lathe, make a spoke of a wheel, and you will be sure to earn your living.”[849] “But I never served an apprenticeship to these trades.” “Why then, copy, transcribe, become a reader for the press, but do not write.” Yet Dioscorus will write and get it printed too. And because he must not send paper to the press with nothing written on it, he sets himself to scribble whatever he pleases, and likes to write such stuff as this: “That the Seine runs through the city of Paris; that a week has seven days; or that it threatens to rain,”[850] and as there is nothing in such phrases against religion or the government, and as they will only harm the public by vitiating their taste, and accustoming them to dull and insipid things, he obtains permission to get his book printed;[851] and to the shame of the age, and as a mortification to good authors, a second edition of it appears. Just so, another wiseacre resolves within himself that he will preach, and he preaches; he is without any talent, or has not the least vocation for it, but he wants a good living. [Illustration: BOSSUET] (24.) A worldly and profane clergyman does but declaim when he preaches. On the contrary, there are some holy men whose character carries persuasion with it; they make their appearance in the pulpit, and every one who comes to listen to them is already moved, and, as it were, carried away by their mere presence; the sermon afterwards completes their conversion. (25.) The bishop of Meaux (Bossuet) and Father Bourdaloue recall to my mind Demosthenes and Cicero. As both of them are absolute masters of pulpit eloquence, they have had the fate of other great models; one of them has made many wretched cavillers, and the other many wretched imitators.