under the title, Sentiments de l’académie française sur le Cid. This judgment did not satisfy Corneille, as a saying attributed to him on the occasion shows. “Horatius,” he said, referring to his last play, “was condemned by the Duumviri, but he was absolved by the people.” But the crowning labour of the academy, begun in 1639, was a dictionary of the French language. By the twenty-sixth article of their statutes, they were pledged to compose a dictionary, a grammar, a treatise on rhetoric and one on poetry. Jean Chapelain, one of the original members and leading spirits of the academy, pointed out that the dictionary would naturally be the first of these works to be undertaken, and drew up a plan of the work, which was to a great extent carried out. A catalogue was to be made of all the most approved authors, prose and verse: these were to be distributed among the members, and all approved words and phrases were to be marked for incorporation in the dictionary. For this they resolved themselves into two committees, which sat on other than the regular days. C. F. de Vaugelas was appointed editor in chief. To remunerate him for his labours, he received from the cardinal a pension of 2000 francs. The first edition of this dictionary appeared in 1694, the sixth and last in 1835, since when compléments have been added.
This old Académie française perished with the other pre-revolutionary academies in 1793, and it has little but the name in common with the present academy, a section of the Institute. That Jean Baptiste Suard, the first perpetual secretary of the new, had been a member of the old academy, is the one connecting link.
The chronicles of the Institute down to the end of 1895 have been given in full by the count de Franqueville in Le premier siècle de l’Institut de France, and from it we extract a few leading facts and dates. Before the Revolution there were in existence the following institutions:—(1) the Académie de poésie et de musique, founded by Charles IX. in 1570 at the instigation of Baïf, which counted among its members Ronsard and most of the Pléiade; (2) the Académie des inscriptions et medailles, founded in 1701; (3) the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres; (4) the old Académie des sciences; (5) the Académie de peinture et de sculpture, a school as well as an academy; (6) the Académie d’architecture.
The object of the Convention in 1795 was to rebuild all the institutions that the Revolution had shattered and to combine them in an organic whole; in the words of the preamble:—“Il y a pour toute la République un Institut national chargé de recueiller les découvertes, de perfectionner les arts et les sciences.” As Renan has remarked, the Institute embodied two ideas, one disputable, the other of undisputed truth:—That science and art are a state concern, and that there is a solidarity between all branches of knowledge and human activities. The Institute was at first composed of 184 members resident in Paris and an equal number living in other parts of France, with 24 foreign members, divided into three classes, (1) physical and mathematical science, (2) moral and political science, (3) literature and the fine arts. It held its first sitting on the 4th of April 1796. Napoleon as first consul suppressed the second class, as subversive of government, and reconstituted the other classes as follows: (1) as before, (2) French language and literature, (3) ancient history and literature, (4) fine arts. The class of moral and political science was restored on the proposal of M. Guizot in 1832, and the present Institute consists of the five classes named above. Each class or academy has its own special jurisdiction and work, with special funds; but there is a general fund and a common library, which, with other common affairs, are managed by a committee of the Institute—two chosen from each academy, with the secretaries. Each member of the Institute receives an annual allowance of 1200 francs, and the secretaries of the different academies have a salary of 6000 francs.
The class of the Institute which deals with the language and literature takes precedence, and is known as the Académie française. There was at first no perpetual secretary, each secretary of sections presiding in turn. Shortly afterwards J. B. Suard was elected to the post, and ever since the history of the academy has been determined by the reigns of its successive perpetual secretaries. The secretary, to borrow an epigram of Sainte-Beuve, both reigns and governs. There have been in order: Suard (13 years), François Juste Raynouard (9 years), Louis Simon Auger, François Andrieux, Arnault, Villemain (34 years), Henri Joseph Patin, Charles Camille Doucet (19 years), Gaston Boissier. Under Raynouard the academy ran a tilt against the abbé Delille and his followers. Under Auger it did battle with romanticism, “a new literary schism.” Auger did not live to see the election of Lamartine in 1829, and it needed ten more years for Victor Hugo after many vain assaults to enter by the breach. The academy is professedly non-political. It accepted and even welcomed in succession the empire, the restoration and the reign of Louis Philippe, and it tolerated the republic of 1848; but to the second empire it offered a passive resistance, and no politician of the second empire, whatever his gifts as an orator or a writer, obtained an armchair. The one seeming exception, Emile Ollivier, confirms the rule. He was elected on the eve of the Franco-German war, but his discours de réception, a eulogy of the emperor, was deferred and never delivered. The Institute appears in the annual budget for a grant of about 700,000 fr. It has also large vested funds in property, including the magnificent estate and library of Chantilly bequeathed to it by the duc d’Aumale. It awards various prizes, of which the most considerable are the Montyon prizes, each of 20,000 fr., one for the poor Frenchman who has performed the most virtuous action during the year, and one for the French author who has published the book of most service to morality. The conditions are liberally interpreted; the first prize is divided among a number of the deserving poor, and the second has been assigned for lexicons to Molière, Corneille and Madame de Sévigné.
One alteration in the methods of the French Academy has to be chronicled: in 1869 it became the custom to discuss the claims of the candidates at a preliminary meeting of the members. In 1880, on the instance of the philosopher Caro, supported by A. Dumas fils, and by the aged Désiré Nisard, it was decided to abandon this method.
A point of considerable interest is the degree in which, since its foundation, the French Academy has or has not represented the best literary life of France. It appears from an examination of the lists of members that a surprising number of authors of the highest excellence have, from one cause or another, escaped the honour of academic “immortality.” When the academy was founded in 1634, the moment was not a very brilliant one in French letters. Among the forty original members we find only ten who are remembered in literary history; of these four may reasonably be considered famous still—Balzac, Chapelain, Racan and Voiture. In that generation Scarron was never one of the forty, nor do the names of Descartes, Malebranche or Pascal occur; Descartes lived in Holland, Scarron was paralytic, Pascal was best known as a mathematician—(his Lettres provinciales was published anonymously)—and when his fame was rising he retired to Port Royal, where he lived the life of a recluse. The duc de la Rochefoucauld declined the honour from a proud modesty, and Rotrou died too soon to be elected. The one astounding omission of the 17th century, however, is the name of Molière, who was excluded by his profession as an actor.[1] On the other hand, the French Academy was never more thoroughly representative of letters than when Boileau, Corneille, La Fontaine, Racine, and Quinault were all members. Of the great theologians of that and the subsequent age, the Academy contained Bossuet, Fléchier, Fenelon, and Massillon, but not Bourdaloue. La Bruyere and Fontenelle were among the forty, but not Saint-Simon, whose claims as a man of letters were unknown to his contemporaries. Early in the 18th century almost every literary personage of eminence found his place naturally in the Academy. The only exceptions of importance
- ↑ The Academy has made the amende honorable by placing in the Salle des séances a bust of Molière, with the inscription “Rienne manque à sa gloire, il manquait à la notre.”
