1727-03-11, de Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] à Nicolas Claude Thieriot.

Je vous envoye Mon cher Tiriot les livres que je vous ay promis.
Vous les recevrez par la voye de mr du Noquet, trésorier des troupes à Calais, à qui je les addresse et qui les mettra au coche de Calais pour Paris adressez à vous chez madame de Berniere.

It was indeed a very hard task for me to find that Damn'd book which under the title of Improvement of humane reason is an example of nonsense from one end to the other, and which besides, is a tedious non sense and consequently very distateful to the french nation who dislikes madness itself when madness is languishing and flat. The book is scarce, because it is bad, it being the fate of all the wretch'd books never to be printed again. So j spent almost fortnight in the search of it, till at last j had the misfortune to find it. J hope you will not read thoroughly that spiritual nauseous romance, tho indeed you deserve to read it to do penance for the trouble you gave me to enquire after it, for the tiresom perusal j made of some part 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 pacquet the second volume of mr Gulliver which by the by j don't advise you to translate. Stick to the first, the other is overstrain'd. The reader's imagination is pleased and charmingly entertaind by the new prospects of the lands which Gulliver discovers to him, but that continued series of new fangled follies, of fairy tales, of wild inventions, palls at last upon our taste. Nothing unnatural may please long. T'is for this reason that commonly the second parts of romances are so insipid.

Farewell, my services to those who remember me; but j hope j am quite forgotten.