When she saw the poetic Muses attending at my bedside, and dictating the words for my lament, she was shocked for a moment, her eyes flashing fiercely. “Who,” she asked, “has allowed these theater-whores to approach this sick man? They cannot treat his pains with any medicines, but, far worse, they feed them with sweet poisons! These are the very ones who murder the crop of reason, rich in fruit, with the thorns of barren sentimentality. They do not free the minds of men, but only numb them to their disease.
