let her know something of the occupation of the Academy at the time. "It was the intention of the Chancellor to have held the meeting in the chamber of M. de Priézac, as usual, but in consequence of the height of the stairs, and the entrance to it being dark and inconvenient, he thought it would be more suitable to assemble in his own apartment, as being more easy to her Majesty, and more honorable to the Academy. "When they commenced reading the copy of the Dictionary, the Chancellor said to the queen, on coming to the word play, that he hoped it would not be displeasing to her Majesty, and that doubtless the word Melancholy would be even less agreeable, to which she made no reply. 66 Ilaving heard, in the course of this lecture, the following observation, Ce sont des jeux de prince, qui ne plaisent qu'à ceux qui les font, the queen of Sweden reddened, and appeared much moved on hearing it, but seeing that all were observing her, she forced a smile which was evidently more of sorrow than of joy."* We must confess that the Chancellor was unfortunate in selecting the copy in which a proverb so mal apropos was to be found, and we can easily conceive Christina's embarrassment, who, the year previous, had caused Monaldeschi to be assassinated in one of the galleries of Fontainebleau. It was only in 1638 that the Academy commenced to occupy themselves seriously with the Dictionary. Vaugelas and Chapelain had each presented a design. They halted at that of the author of La Pucelle and arranged, in the following order, the list of authors from whose works they would take the examples. Thus, for prose, they selected Amyot, Montaigne, du Vair, Desportes, Charron, Bertaud, Marion, de la Guesle, Pibrac, d'Espeisses, Arnaud, le Catholicon d'Espagne, Les Mémoires de la Reine Marguerite, Coeffeteau, Du Perron, F.de Sales évêque de Genève, d'Urfé, de Molières, Malherbe, Duplessis-Mornay d'Ossat, de la Noue, de Dammartin, de Refuge, d'Aubignier, and two academicians, Bardin and du Chastlet, who died recently, becoming, according to M. Villemain, supreme authorities for language, as the Roman Emperors had become gods. Many names have been omitted Manuscripts of Conrart, vol. X. p. 129-See, the New Collection of Memoirs that form the History of France, by M. M. Michaud and Poujoulat. in this list, amongst others those of Bodin and of Etienne Pasquier. For poetry, they chose Marot, Saint Gelais, Ronsard, Du Belloy, du Bartas, Desportes, Bertrand, Cardinal Duperron, Garnier, Regnier, Malherbe, Des Lingendes, Motin, Trouvant, Montfuron, Théophile, Passerat, Rapin and Sainte-Marthe. Vaugelas having been appointed compiler of the Dictionary, Richelieu assigned to him a pension of 2000 livres; but the work not being performed very quickly, the dilatoriness of the Academy called forth innumerable epigrams, amongst others the following from Bois-Robert: Depuis six mois sur l'F on travaille, S'il m'avait dit tu vivras jusqu'an G. * This Dictionary, it must be admitted, was conceived on a bad plan; Furetière, an academician of much genius, undertook the compilation of one on his own responsibility. This enterprise excited the jealousy of the Acadeiny, who obtained. its suppression, and in 1685, expelled the author from their corps, though he had been admitted twenty-three years before; they did not fill up his place during his life time. Furetière did not withdraw from the contest. He pleaded against the Academy, drew up memorials, composed lampoons in prose and poetry, which having been collected in the year 1694, filled two vols. in duodecimo. He did not cease to labor at his Dictionary, a most precious work, which was published two years after his death, in 1690, and which the compilers of the Dictionnaire de Trévoux re-printed entire, without once citing the author. The first edition of the Dictionary of the Academy appeared in 1694. They at once commenced a second edition, which was published in 1718. The third appeared in 1740; the fourth, in 1762; the fifth, in 1813; and the sixth and last, in 1835. The Academy, in this work, conceived the unhappy design of submitting the words to a rigorous classification, by devoting Andrieux, member of the Committee on the Dictionary, in 1819, said "Je mourrai du Dictionnaire." †The Fureteriana contains The plan and design of an allegorical and tragico burlesque entitled, The beds of the Academy, in six cantos. Some have attributed, perhaps without reason, to Furetière or to Richelet, The Apotheosis of the Dictionary of the French Academy and its expulsion from the celestial regions," La Haye, 1696, in 12mo. The last edition is of Amsterdam, 1725, 4 vols. in fol. one to the sublime style, others to the burlesque style and the. familiar, strangely impoverishing the language by proscribing a host of words employed by old authors. Thus, Furetière relates that la Fontaine, who was very constant in attending the sittings, would never permit the adoption of a single word which he had known to be used by Marot or Rabelais. To give an idea of the ridiculous circumspection which presided over the choice of words, it suffices to say that, for what motive we cannot pretend to imagine, they suppressed the conjunction car. It was this strictness which gave rise to a very lively satire by Menage, entitled, Requête des Dictionnaires à Messieurs de l'Académie Française. We give the first verse : A nos seigneurs académiques, Disant que, depuis trente années, Comme étant de mauvais françois. The Academy, instead of employing so much rigor in arranging the admission of certain words, should have exhibited a little more research as to the meaning or definition of words; the following is an example which we have taken from the last edition : ECLIPSE. The visible disappearance of a star, caused by the interposition of another celestial body between this star and the beholder. During three thousand years," says M. Arago," eclipses of the moon have been apparent without any celestial body interposing between the moon and the observer." Tirer de but en Blanc. To draw a straight line without the projectile travelling over a curved line, or making a rebound. "After this definition," says M. Arago, once more, "the Academy has found the means of preventing a bullet ever falling to the ground. Vaisselle Plate. That, where there has been no soldering. This definition is absurd, notwithstanding the corrective which is joined to it: that, does not inform us whether the plate is gold or silver. The Academy would have us to suppose that the word plate in this instance was derived from the Spanish plata, silver.* A dictionary filled with such errors, and we cannot say how many volumes of compliments and discourses which have never been read by any one-in this summary we have all that the French Academy has produced during the two centuries it has been established. This state of things has at all times been evident to the men of genius. Fenelon, in a Memoir on the Occupations of the French Academy,† had fruitlessly issued the wisest opinions on the works to which the Academy should have devoted themselves, and the manner in which they should have arranged the Dictionary, searching accurately through all the good authors. Being aware of the necessity of a preliminary reform, he writes, "I told them that above all things they should seek to establish in the Committee strict discipline which they would find particularly necessary, and which had never perhaps been introduced into the establishment; without this fundamental principle, all their fine projects and their most powerful resolutions were but as fume and smoke, and would have no other effect than to draw on them public raillery. "It was necessary, therefore, to remedy this evil which would cause the inevitable ruin of the Academy; but to ensure success, and to be enabled, in making our laws, to preserve that independence and liberty which had gained for us the glorious patronage by which we were honored, I advised that the Academy should begin by sending a delegate to the king, requesting permission from his majesty to effect a reformation in their body, by abrogating the ancient * If the Academy permitted such blunders to be published, we can easily imagine what numbers could be found in the subjects which had been proposed, but which it had not been considered expedient to bring forward. The following anecdote may be relied on as very probable, nevertheless it may not be true. They say that an academician had suggested the following definition of the word crab: a little red fish who walks backward; he had already carried away the greater portion of the assembly, when one of his confreres rose and said, "Sir, your definition is very good, only I request permission to offer a few trifling observations on the matter: first-the animal in question is not a fish; secondit is not red till it is boiled; and thirdly-it does not walk backwards." The Academy had then the good sense, which it did not at all times possess, to re-place the proposed definition by that which figures at present in the dictionary. Works of Fenelon, 1787, in quarto, vol. III, p. 449. statutes, and forming new ones according to the mode they would deem advisable; that they should also demand permission to name for this work a certain number of delegates, as many as they would think necessary to propose, and that they should request his majesty to honor then by pointing out one or two of those whom he might consider most worthy to fill the office." "What service," said Voltaire, "would not the French Academy have rendered to literature, to language, and to the nation, if, instead of publishing annual compliments, they had printed the good works of the age of Louis XIV., refined from all the mistakes of language which had crept into them? Those which they could not correct being at least specified. Europe, who read those authors, would have thus learned our language securely. Its purity would have been solidly estab lished. Thus good French books, printed with care at the king's expense, would have been glorious monuments of the nation. I have been told that M. Desprèaux had heretofore made this proposition, and that it had been renewed by a man in whose mind wisdom and sound criticism were combined; but this idea met the same fate as other useful projects, it was approved of only to be neglected."* In consequence of these abuses in the organization, and the little value of its works, the Academy had become, as we have already remarked, an object of raillery to the public.† Twenty years after its foundation, in 1654, there appeared a brochure in duodecimo, by Sorel: De l'Académie Françoise établie pour la correction, et l'embellissement du langage, et si elle est de quelque utilité au public, 1654. The author there pronounces for the negative. We also have the Comédie des Académistes pour la reforma Voltaire XXXe Lettre Philosophique. The public did not permit any opportunity to pass by. Thus, in 1773, the Count d'Angiviller, director general of the king's buildings, having sown some grass in the court of the Louvre, the mansion where Louis XIV had established the Academy, there appeared immediately the following epigram: Des favoris de la muse française Devant leur porte il a fait mettre un pré |