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A society was formed in Dublin, similar to the Royal Society in London, as early as 1683; but the distracted state of the country proved unpropitious to the cultivation of philosophy and literature. The Royal Irish Academy grew from a society established in Dublin about 1782 by a number of gentlemen, most of whom belonged to the university. They held weekly meetings, and read, in turn, essays on various subjects. They professed to unite the advancement of science with the history of mankind and polite literature. The first volume of transactions appeared in 1788.

Hungary. The Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) was founded in 1825 by Count Stephen Széchenyi for the encouragement of the study of the Hungarian language and the various sciences. It has about 300 members and a fine building in Budapest containing a picture gallery and housing various national collections.

Italy. The Academia Secretorum Naturae was founded at Naples in 1560 by Giambattista della Porta. It arose like the French Academy from a little club of friends who met at della Porta's house and called themselves the Otiosi. The condition of membership was to have made some discovery in natural science. Della Porta was suspected of practising the black arts and summoned to Rome to justify himself before the papal court. He was acquitted by Paul V., but commanded to close his academy.

The Accademia dei Lincei, to which della Porta was admitted when at Rome, and of which he became the chief ornament, had been founded in 1603 by Federigo Cesi, the marchese di Monticelli. Galileo and Colonna were among its earliest members. Its device was a lynx with upturned eyes, tearing a Cerberus with its claws. As a monument the Lincei have left the magnificent edition of Fernandez de Oviedo's Natural History of Mexico (Rome, 1651, fol.), printed at the expense of the founder and elaborately annotated by the members. This academy was resuscitated in 1870 under the title of Reale Accademia dei Lincei, with a literary as well as a scientific side, endowed in 1878 by King Humbert; and in 1883 it received official recognition from the Italian government, being lodged in the Corsini palace, whose owner made over to it his library and collections. The Accademia del Cimento was founded at Florence in 1657 by Leopold de' Medici, brother of the grand duke Ferdinand II., at the instigation of Vincenzo Viviani, the geometrician. It was an academy of experiment, a deliberate protest against the deductive science of the quadrivium. Its founder left it when he was made a cardinal, and it lasted only ten years, but the grand folio published in Italian (afterwards translated into Latin) in 1667 is a landmark in the history of science. It contains experiments on the pressure of the air (Torricelli and Borelli were among its members), on the incompressibility of water and on universal gravity.

Science in Italy is now represented by the Reale Accademia delle Scienze (Royal Academy of Sciences), founded in 1757 as a private society, and incorporated under its present name by royal warrant in 1783. It consists of 40 full members, who must be residents of Turin, 20 non-resident, and 20 foreign members. It publishes a yearly volume of proceedings and awards prizes to learned works. There are, besides, royal academies of science at Naples, Lucca and Palermo.

Portugal. The Academia Real das Sciencias (Royal Academy of Sciences) at Lisbon dates from 1779. It was reorganized in 1851 and since then has been chiefly occupied in the publication of Portugaliae Monumenta Historica.

Russia. The Académie Impériale des sciences de Saint-Petersbourg, Imperatorskaya Akademiya naik, was projected by Peter the Great. The advice of Wolff and Leibnitz was sought, and several learned foreigners were invited to become members. Peter himself drew the plan, and signed it on the 10th of February 1724; but his sudden death delayed its fulfilment. On the 21st of December 1725, however, Catherine I. established it according to his plan, and on the 27th the society met for the first time. On the 1st of August 1726, Catherine honoured the meeting with her presence, when Professor G. B. Bilfinger, a

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German scientist, delivered an oration upon the determination of magnetic variations and longitude. Shortly afterwards the empress settled a fund of £4982 per annum for the support of the academy; and 15 eminent members were admitted and pensioned, under the title of professors in the various branches of science and literature. The most distinguished of these were Nicholas and Daniel Bernouilli, the two Delisles, Bilfinger, and Wolff.

During the short reign of Peter II. the salaries of members were discontinued, and the academy neglected by the Court; but it was again patronized by the empress Anne, who added a seminary under the superintendence of the professors. Both institutions flourished for some time under the direction of Baron Johann Albrecht Korff (1697-1766). At the accession of Elizabeth the original plan was enlarged and improved; learned foreigners were drawn to St. Petersburg; and, what was considered a good omen 'for the literature of Russia, two natives, Lomonosov and Rumovsky, men of genius who had prosecuted their studies in foreign universities, were enrolled among its members. The annual income was increased to £10,659, and sundry other advantages were conferred upon the institution. Catherine II. utilized the academy for the advancement of national culture. She altered the court of directors greatly to the advantage of the whole body, corrected many of its abuses, added to its means, and infused a new vigour and spirit into its researches... By her recommendation the most intelligent professors visited all the provinces of her vast dominions, with most minute and ample instructions to investigate the natural resources, conditions and requirements, and report on the real state of the empire. The result was that no country at that time could boast, within so few years, such a number of excellent official publications on its internal state, its natural productions, its topography, geography and history, and on the manners, customs and languages of the different tribes that inhabited it, as came from the press of this academy. In its researches in Asiatic languages, oriental customs and religions, it proved itself the worthy rival of the Royal Asiatic Society in England. The first transactions, Commentarii. Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae ad annum 1726, with a dedication to Peter II., were published in 1728. This was continued until 1747, when the transactions were called Novi Commentarii Academiae, &c.; and in 1777, Acta Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitande, with some alteration in the arrangements and plan of the work. The papers, hitherto in Latin only, were now written indifferently in Latin or in French, and a preface added, Partie Historique, which contains an account of the society's meetings. Of the Commentaries, fourteen volumes were published: of the New Commentaries (1750-1776). twenty. Of the Acta Academiae two volumes are printed every year. In 1872 there was published at St Petersburg in 2 vols., Tableau général des matières contenues dans les publications de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St Petersbourg. academy is composed, as at first, of fifteen professors, besides the president and director. Each of the professors has a house and an annual stipend of from £200 to £600. Besides the professors, there are four pensioned adjuncts, who are present at the meetings of the society, and succeed to the first vacancies The buildings and apparatus of this academy are on a vast scale. There is a fine library, of 36,000 books and manuscripts; and an extensive museum, considerably augmented by the collections made by Pallas, Gmelin, Guldenstädt and other professors, during their expeditions through the Russian empire. The motto of the society is Paulatim.

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Spain. The Real Academia Española at Madrid (see below) had a predecessor in the Academia Naturae curiosorum (dating from 1657) modelled on that of Naples. It was reconstituted in 1847 after the model of the French academy.

Sweden.-The Kongliga Svenska Vetenskaps Akademien owes its institution to six persons of distinguished learning, among whom was Linnaeus. They met on the 2nd of June 1739, and formed a private society, the Collegium Curiosorum; and at the end of the year their first publication made its appearance.

As the meetings continued and the members increased the society attracted the notice of the king; and on the 31st of March 1741 it was incorporated as the Royal Swedish Academy. Though under royal patronage and largely endowed, it is, like the Royal Society in England, entirely self-governed. Each of the members resident at Stockholm becomes in turn president, and continues in office for three months. The dissertations read at each meeting are published in the Swedish language, quarterly, and make an annual volume. The first forty volumes, octavo, completed in 1779, are called the Old Transactions.

United States of America.-The oldest scientific association in the United States is the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. It owed its origin to Benjamin Franklin, who in 1743 published "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America," which was so favourably received that in the same year the society was organized, with Thomas Hopkinson (1709-1751) as president and Franklin as secretary. In 1769 it united with another scientific society founded by Franklin, called the American Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, and adopted its present name, adding the descriptive phrase from the title of the American Society, and elected Franklin president, an office which he held until his death (1790). The American Philo sophical Society is national in scope and is exclusively scientific; its Transactions date from 1771, and its Proceedings from 1838. It has a hall in Philadelphia, with meeting-rooms and a valuable library and collection of interesting portraits and relics. David Rittenhouse was its second and Thomas Jefferson was its third president. In 1786 John Hyacinth de Magellan, of London, presented a fund, the income of which was to supply a gold medal for the author of the most important discovery relating to navigation, astronomy or natural philosophy (mere natural history excepted)." An annual general meeting is held.

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There are also other scientific organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (chartered in 1874, as a continuation of the American Association of Geologists, founded in 1840 and becoming in 1842 the American Association of Geologists and Naturalists), which publishes its Proceedings annually; the American Geographical Society (1852), with headquarters in New York; the National Geographic Society (1888), with headquarters in Washington, D.C.; the Geological Society of America (1888), the American Ornithologists' Union (1883), the American Society of Naturalists (1883), the Botanical Society of America (1893), the American Academy of Medicine (1876); and local academies of science, or of special sciences, in many of the larger cities. The Smithsonian Institution at Washington is treated in a separate article.

II. ACADEMIES OF BELLES LETTRES Belgium.-Belgium has always been famous for its literary societies. The little town of Diest boasts that it possessed a society of poets in 1302, and the Catherinists of Alost date from 1107. It is at least certain that numerous Chambers of Rhetoric (so academies were then called) existed in the first years of the rule of the house of Burgundy.

France. The French Academy (l'Académie française) was established by order of the king in the year 1635, but in its original form existed four or five years earlier. About the year 1629 certain literary friends in Paris agreed to meet informally each week at the house of Valentin Courart, the king's secretary. The conversation turned mostly on literary topics; and when one of the number had finished some literary work, he read it to the rest, and they gave their opinions upon it. The fame of these meetings, though the members were bound to secrecy, reached the ears of Cardinal Richelieu, who promised his protection and offered to incorporate the society by letters patent. Nearly all the members would have preferred the charms of privacy, but, considering the risk they would run in incurring the cardinal's The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston), the displeasure, and that by the letter of the law all meetings of any second oldest scientific organization in the United States, was sort were prohibited, they expressed their gratitude for the high chartered in Massachusetts in 1780 by some of the most promi-honour the cardinal thought fit to confer on them, proceeded at nent men of that time. James Bowdoin was its first president, John Adams its second. The Academy 'published Memoirs beginning in 1785, and Proceedings from 1846. The Rumford Premium awarded through it for the most "important discovery or useful improvement on Heat, or on Light" is the income of $5000 given to the Academy by Count Rumford.

The National Academy of Sciences (1863) was incorporated by Congress with the object that it" shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment and report upon any subject of science or art." Its membership was first limited to 50; after the amendment of the act of incorporation in 1870 the limit was placed at 100; and in 1907 it was prescribed that the resident membership should not exceed 150 in number, that not more than 10 members be elected in any one year, and that the number of foreign associates be restricted to 50. The Academy is divided into six committees: mathematics and astronomy; physics and engineering; chemistry; geology and palaeontology; biology; and anthropology. It gives several gold medals for meritorious researches and discoveries. It publishes scientific monographs (at the expense of the Federal Government). Its presidents have been Alexander D. Bache, Joseph Henry, Wm. B. Rogers, Othniel C. Marsh, Wolcott Gibbs, Alexander Agassiz and Ira Remsen.

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia was organized in 1812. It has a large library, very rich in natural history, and its museum, with nearly half a million specimens, is particularly strong in conchology and ornithology. The society has published Journals since 1817, and Proceedings since 1841; it also has published the American Journal of Conchology. The American Entomological Society (in 1859-1867 the Entomological Society of Philadelphia, and since 1876 part of this academy) has published Proceedings since 1861, and the Entomological News (a monthly).

once to organize their body, settle their laws and constitution, appoint officers and choose a name. Letters patent were granted by the king on the 29th of January 1635. The officers consisted of a director and a chancellor, chosen by lot, and a permanent secretary, chosen by vote. They elected also a publisher, not a member of the body. The director presided at the meetings, being considered as primus inter pares. The chancellor kept the seals and sealed all the official documents of the academy. The cardinal was ex officio protector. The meetings were held weekly as before.

The object for which the academy was founded, as set forth in its statutes, was the purification of the French language. "The principal function of the academy shall be to labour with all care and diligence to give certain rules to our language, and to render it pure, eloquent and capable of treating the arts and sciences" (Art. 24). They proposed "to cleanse the language from the impurities it has contracted in the mouths of the common people, from the jargon of the lawyers, from the misusages of ignorant courtiers, and the abuses of the pulpit" (Letter of Academy to Cardinal Richelieu).

The number of members was fixed at forty. The original members formed a nucleus of eight, and it was not till 1639 that the full number was completed. Their first undertaking consisted of essays written by the members in rotation. To judge by the titles and specimens which have come down to us, these possessed no special originality or merit, but resembled the

ideiges of the Greek rhetoricians. Next, at the instance of Cardinal Richelieu, they undertook a criticism of Corneille's Cid, the most popular work of the day. It was a rule of the academy that no work could be criticized except at the author's request, and fear of incurring the cardinal's displeasure wrung from Corneille an unwilling consent. The critique of the academy was re-written several times before it met with the cardinal's approbation. After six months of elaboration, it was published

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under the title, Sentiments de l'académie française sur le Cid. | J. B. Suard was elected to the post, and ever since the history This judgment did not satisfy Corneille, as a saying attributed of the academy has been determined by the reigns of its succesto him on the occasion shows. "Horatius," he said, referring to sive perpetual secretaries. The secretary, to borrow an epigram his last play, was condemned by the Duumviri, but he was of Sainte-Beuve, both reigns and governs. There have been in absolved by the people." But the crowning labour of the order: Suard (13 years), François Juste Raynouard (9 years), academy, begun in 1639, was a dictionary of the French language. Louis Simon Auger, François Andrieux, Arnault, Villemain (34 By the twenty-sixth article of their statutes, they were pledged years), Henri Joseph Patin, Charles Camille Doucet (19 years), to compose a dictionary, a grammar, a treatise on rhetoric and Gaston Boissier. Under Raynouard the academy ran a tilt one on poetry. Jean Chapelain, one of the original members against the abbé Delille and his followers. Under Auger it did and leading spirits of the academy, pointed out that the diction-battle with romanticism, a new literary schism." Auger did ary 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 prerevolutionary 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.

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 chronicles of the Institute down to the end of 1895 have the French author who has published the book of most service been given in full by the count de Franqueville in Le premier to morality. The conditions are liberally interpreted; the first siècle de l'Institut de France, and from it we extract a few lead-prize is divided among a number of the deserving poor, and the ing 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 belleslettres; (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

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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.

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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. 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, Fénelon, and Massillon, but not Bourdaloue. La Bruyère 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

1 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."

impoverished and rigidified it. It sees in taste, not a sense of the beautiful, but a certain type of correctness, an elegant form of mediocrity. It has substituted pomp for grandeur, school routine for individual inspiration, elaborateness for simplicity, fadeur and the monotony of literary orthodoxy for variety, the source and spring of intellectual life; and in the works produced under its auspices we discover the rhetorician and the writer, never the man. By all its traditions the academy was made to be the natural ornament of a monarchical society. Richelieu conceived and created it as a sort of superior centralization applied to intellect, as a high literary court to maintain intellectual unity and protest against innovation. Bonaparte, aware of all this, had thought of re-establishing its ancient privileges; but it had in his eyes one fatal defect-esprit. Kings of France could condone a witticism even against themselves, a parvenu could not."

were Vauvenargues, who died too early for the honour, and | masculine qualities, its originality, its spontaneity, its vigour, two men of genius but of dubious social position, Le Sage and its natural grace. It has disciplined it, but it has emasculated, the abbé Prévost d'Exiles. The approach of the Revolution affected gravely the personnel of the Academy. Montesquieu and Voltaire belonged to it, but not Rousseau or Beaumarchais. Of the Encyclopaedists, the French Academy opened its doors to D'Alembert, Condorcet, Volney, Marmontel and La Harpe, but not to Diderot, Rollin, Condillac, Helvétius or the Baron d'Holbach. Apparently the claims of Turgot and of Quesnay did not appear to the Academy sufficient, since neither was elected. In the transitional period, when the social life of Paris was distracted and the French Academy provisionally closed, neither André Chénier nor Benjamin Constant nor Joseph de Maistre became a member. In the early years of the 19th century considerations of various kinds excluded from the ranks of the forty the dissimilar names of Lamennais, Prudhon, Comte and Béranger. Critics of the French Academy are fond of pointing out that neither Stendhal, nor Balzac, nor Théophile Gautier, nor Flaubert, nor Zola penetrated into the Mazarine Palace. It is not so often remembered that writers so academic as Thierry and Michelet and Quinet suffered the same exclusion. In later times neither Alphonse Daudet nor Edmond de Goncourt, neither Guy de Maupassant nor Ferdinand Fabre, has been among the forty immortals. The non-election, after a long life of distinction, of the scholar Fustel de Coulanges is less easy to account for. Verlaine, although a poet of genius, was of the kind that no academy can ever be expected to recognize.

On the whole the influence of the French Academy has been conservative rather than creative. It has done much by its example for style, but its attempts to impose its laws on language have, from the nature of the case, failed. For, however perfectly a dictionary or a grammar may represent the existing language of a nation, an original genius is certain to arise-a Victor Hugo or an Alfred de Musset-who will set at defiance all dictionaries and academic rules.

Germany. Of the German literary academies the most celebrated was Die Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (the Fruitful Society), established at Weimar in 1617. Five princes were among the original members. The object was to purify the mother tongue. The German academies copied those of Italy in their quaint titles and petty ceremonials, and exercised little permanent

Concerning the influence of the French Academy on the language and literature, the most opposite opinions have been advanced. On the one hand, it has been asserted that it has corrected the judgment, purified the taste and formed the language of French writers, and that to it we owe the most striking characteristics of French literature, its purity, delicacy and flexi-influence on the language or literature of the country. bility. Thus Matthew Arnold, in his Essay on the Literary Influence of Academies, has pronounced a glowing panegyric on the French Academy as a high court of letters, and a rallying-point for educated opinion, as asserting the authority of a master in matters of tone and taste. To it he attributes in a great measure that thoroughness, that openness of mind, that absence of vulgarity which he finds everywhere in French literature; and to the want of a similar institution in England he traces that eccentricity, that provincial spirit, that coarseness which, as he thinks, are barely compensated by English genius. Thus, too, Renan, one of its most distinguished members, says that it is owing to the academy "qu'on peut tout dire sans appareil scholastique avec la langue des gens du monde.” “Ah ne dites," he exclaims," qu'ils n'ont rien fait, ces obscures beaux esprits dont la vie se passe à instruire le procès des mots, à peser les syllables. Ils ont fait un chef-d'œuvre-la langue française." On the other hand, its inherent defects have been well summed up by P. Lanfrey in his Histoire de Napoléon: "This institution had never shown itself the enemy of despotism. Founded by the monarchy and for the monarchy, eminently favourable to the spirit of intrigue and favouritism, incapable of any sustained or combined labour, a stranger to those great works pursued in common which legitimize and glorify the existence of scientific bodies, occupied exclusively with learned trifles, fatal to emulation, which it pretends to stimulate, by the compromises and calculations to which it subjects it, directed in everything by petty considerations, and wasting all its energy in childish tournaments, in which the flatteries that it showers on others are only a foretaste of the compliments it expects in return for itself, the French Academy seems to have received from its founders the special mission to transform genius into bel esprit, and it would be hard to produce a man of talent whom it has not demoralized. Drawn in spite of itself towards politics, it alternately pursues and avoids them; but it is specially attracted by the gossip of politics, and whenever it has so far emancipated itself as to go into opposition, it does so as the champion of ancient prejudices. If we examine its influence on the national genius, we shall see that it has given it a flexibility, a brilliance, a polish, which it never possessed before; but it has done so at the expense of its

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Italy.-Italy in the 16th century was remarkable for the number of its literary academies. Tiraboschi, in his History of Italian Literature, has given a list of 171; and Jarkius, in his Specimen Historiae Academiarum Conditarum, enumerates nearly 700. Many of these, with a sort of Socratic irony, gave themselves ludicrous names, or names expressive of ignorance. Such were the Lunatici of Naples, the Estravaganti, the Fulminales, the Trapessati, the Drowsy, the Sleepers, the Anxious, the Confused, the Unstable, the Fantastic, the Transformed, the Ethereal. “The first academies of Italy chiefly directed their attention to classical literature; they compared manuscripts; they suggested new readings or new interpretations; they deciphered inscriptions or coins, they sat in judgment on a Latin ode or debated the propriety of a phrase. Their own poetry had, perhaps, never been neglected; but it was not till the writings of Bembo furnished a new code of criticism in the Italian language that they began to study it with the same minuteness as modern Latin." They were encouragers of a numismatic and lapidary erudition, elegant in itself, and throwing for ever little specks of light on the still ocean of the past, but not very favourable to comprehensive observation, and tending to bestow on an unprofitable pedantry the honours of real learning." The Italian nobility, excluded as they mostly were from politics, and living in cities, found in literature a consolation and a career. Such academies were oligarchical in their constitution; they encouraged culture, but tended to hamper genius and extinguish originality. Far the most celebrated was the Accademia della Crusca or Furfuratorum; that is, of bran, or of the sifted, founded in 1582. The title was borrowed from a previous society at Perugia, the Accademia degli Scossi, of the well-shaken. Its device was a sieve; its motto, "Il più bel fior ne coglie" (it collects the finest flower); its principal object the purification of the language.. Its great work was the Vocabulario della Crusca, printed at Venice in 1612. It was composed avowedly on Tuscan principles, and regarded the 14th century as the Augustan period of the language. Paul Beni assailed it in his Anti-Crusca, and this exclusive Tuscan purism has disappeared in subsequent editions, The Accademia della Crusca is now incorporated with 1 Hallam's Int. to Lit. of Europe, vol. i. p. 654, and vol. ii. p. 502.

two older societies-the Accademia degli Apatici (the Impartials) | 1671); François Charpentier (1620-1702), án antiquary of high

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Among the numerous other literary academies of Italy we may mention the academy of Naples, founded about 1440 by Alphonso, the king; the Academy of Florence, founded 1540, to illustrate and perfect the Tuscan tongue, especially by the close study of Petrarch; the Intronati of Siena, 1525; the Infiammati of Padua, 1534; the Rozzi of Siena, suppressed by Cosimo, 1568.

The Academy of Humorists arose from a casual meeting of witty noblemen at the marriage of Lorenzo Marcini, a Roman gentleman. It was carnival time, and to give the ladies some diversion they recited verses, sonnets and speeches, first impromptus and afterwards set compositions. This gave them the name, Belli Humori, which, after they resolved to form an academy of belles lettres, they changed to Humoristi.

In 1690 the Accademia degli Arcadi was founded at Rome, for the purpose of reviving the study of poetry, by Crescimbeni, the author of a history of Italian poetry. Among its members were princes, cardinals and other ecclesiastics; and, to avoid disputes about pre-eminence, all came to its meetings masked and dressed like Arcadian shepherds. Within ten years from its establishment the number of academicians was 600.

The Royal Academy of Savoy dates from 1719, and was made a royal academy by Charles Albert in 1848. Its emblem is a gold orange tree full of flowers and fruit; its motto "Flores fructusque perennes," the same as that of the famous Florimentane Academy, founded at Annecy by St Francis de Sales. It has published valuable memoirs on the history and antiquities of Savoy.

Spain. The Real Academia Española at Madrid held its first meeting in July 1713, in the palace of its founder, the duke d'Escalona. It consisted at first of 8 academicians, including the duke; to which number 14 others were afterwards added, the founder being chosen president or director. In 1714 the king granted them the royal confirmation and protection. Their device is a crucible in the middle of the fire, with this motto, Limpia, fixa, y da esplendor-“ It purifies, fixes, and gives brightness." The number of its members was limited to 24; the duke d'Escalona was chosen director for life, but his successors were elected yearly, and the secretary for life. Their object, as marked out by the royal declaration, was to cultivate and improve the national language. They were to begin with choosing carefully such words and phrases as have been used by the best Spanish writers; noting the low, barbarous or obsolete ones; and composing a dictionary wherein these might be distinguished from the former.

Sweden. The Svenska Akademien was founded in 1786, for the purpose of purifying and perfecting the Swedish language. A medal is struck by its direction every year in honour of some illustrious Swede. This academy does not publish its transactions.

III. ACADEMIES OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY France. The old Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (or "Petite Académie," founded in 1663) was an offshoot of the French Academy, which then at least contained the elite of French learning. Louis XIV. was of all French kings the one most occupied with his own aggrandisement. Literature, and even science, he only encouraged so far as they redounded to his own glory. Nor were literary men inclined to assert their independence. Boileau well represented the spirit of the age when, in dedicating his tragedy Berenice to Colbert, he wrote: "The least things become important if in any degree they can serve the glory and pleasure of the king." Thus it was that the Academy of Inscriptions arose. At the suggestion of Colbert a company (a committee we should now call it) had been appointed by the king, chosen from the French Academy, charged with the office of furnishing inscriptions, devices and legends for medals. It consisted of four academicians: Chapelain, then considered the poet laureate of France, one of the authors of the critique on the Cid; the abbé Amable de Bourzeis (1606

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repute among his contemporaries; and the abbé Jacques de Cassagnes (1636-1679); who owed his appointment more to the fulsome flattery of his odes than to his really learned translations of Cicero and Sallust. This company used to meet in Colbert's library in the winter, at his country-house at Sceaux in the summer, generally on Wednesdays, to serve the convenience of the minister, who was always present. Their meetings were principally occupied with discussing the inscriptions, statues and pictures intended for the decoration of Versailles; but Colbert, a really learned man and an enthusiastic collector of manuscripts, was often pleased to converse with them on matters of art, history and antiquities. Their first published work was a collection of engravings, accompanied by descriptions, designed for some of the tapestries at Versailles. Louvois, who succeeded Colbert as a superintendent of buildings, revived the company, which had begun to relax its labours. Félibien, the learned architect, and the two great poets Racine and Boileau, were added to their number. A series of medals was commenced, entitled Médailles de la Grande Histoire, or, in other words, the history of the Grand Monarque. >>>But it was to M. de Pontchartrain, comptroller-general of finance and secretary of state, that the academy owed its institution. He added to the company Renaudot and Jacques Tourreil, both men of vast learning, the latter tutor to his son, and put at its head his nephew, the abbé Jean Paul Bignon, librarian to the king. By a new regulation, dated the 16th of July 1701, the Académie royale des inscriptions et médailles was instituted, being composed of ten honorary members, ten pensioners, ten associates, and ten pupils. Its constitution was an almost exact copy of that of the Academy of Sciences. Among the regulations we find the following, which indicates clearly the transition from a staff of learned officials to a learned body: "The academy shall concern itself with all that can contribute to the perfection of inscriptions and legends, of designs for such monuments and decorations as may be submitted to its judgment; also with the description of all artistic works, present and future, and the historical explanation of the subject of such works; and as the knowledge of Greek and Latin antiquities, and of these two languages, is the best guarantee for success in labours of this class, the academicians shall apply themselves to all that this division of learning includes, as one of the most worthy objects of their pursuit."

Among the first honorary members we find the indefatigable Mabillon (excluded from the pensioners by reason of his orders), Père La Chaise, the king's confessor, and Cardinal Rohan; among the associates Fontenelle and Rollin, whose Ancient History was submitted to the academy for revision. In 1711 they completed L'Histoire métallique du roi, of which SaintSimon was asked to write the preface. In 1716 the regent changed its title to that of the Académie des inscriptions et belleslettres, a title which better suited its new character.

In the great battle between the Ancients and the Moderns which divided the learned world in the first half of the 18th century, the Academy of Inscriptions naturally espoused the cause of the Ancients, as the Academy of Sciences did that of the Moderns. During the earlier years of the French Revolution the academy continued its labours uninterruptedly; and on the 22nd of January 1793, the day after the death of Louis XVI., we find in the Proceedings that M. Bréquigny read a paper on the projects of marriage between Queen Elizabeth and the dukes of Anjou and Alençon. In the same year were published the 45th and 46th vols. of the Mémoires de l'académie. On the 2nd of August of the same year the last séance of the old academy was held. More fortunate than its sister Academy of Sciences, it lost only three of its members by the guillotine. One of these was the astronomer Sylvain Bailly. Three others sat as members of the Convention; but for the honour of the academy, it should be added that all three were distinguished by their moderation. In the first draft of the new Institute, October 25, 1795, no class corresponded exactly to the old Academy of Inscriptions; but most of the members who survived found themselves

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