Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/447

Rh authoritative treatise on poetry, but for some reason his wish has not yet been realized.

Membership in the academy was made difficult from the first. A few men, Boisrobert, Conrart, Chapelaine, Rotrau and Corneille were enrolled as a matter of course, as charter members. But only the most eminent literary men were to wear its honors. Two years after its recognition by parliament the number of its members was fixed at forty, and this number has remained unchanged till now. The privilege of being one of the forty must be sought for, and the person desiring election must personally visit each one of the members and solicit his vote. In the case of Buffon, Thiers and Béranger the rule was set aside, but as Béranger declined the offered honor, the rule of personal solicitation has become more rigid than ever.

The reception of a new member is public and is a great occasion. The new member is expected to eulogize the man whose place he has been chosen to fill, and to give in writing an estimate of the value of his works. To his thanks for the honor he has received through his reception into the academy the president responds in a few fitting words. The public, sometimes dissatisfied with the action of the academy, has created a forty-first chair, into which it puts the man who has been overlooked or neglected. In this chair it has seated Descartes, Pascal, Molière, Rousseau, Diderot, Dumas père, Balzac, Alphonse Daudet, Emile Zola. In 1778 the bust of Molière was set up in the hall with the inscription:

Though by no means a bureau of lexicography, its chief work, outside of criticism, has been the making of a dictionary of which the first edition, after fifty-nine years of labor, appeared in 1694, the eighth in 1896. Colbert when prime minister is reported to have been very impatient over the progress the dictionary was making, and one day, quite unexpectedly, came upon the academicians when at their work. Listening for a time to the definitions proposed for a very simple word, to the discussions which followed, and perceiving the difficulties in securing a definition at once comprehensive and accurate, he concluded that the task in hand would require far more time than he had thought, and was indeed a far more difficult task than he had supposed. From this time on he ceased his criticisms. The academy is now planning and at work on a historical dictionary of the language, on a scale so large that a wag has said it will take at least a thousand years to complete it, but he adds, as it is made up of immortals, the element of time need not be considered.

The academy expends more than 100,000 francs a year ($20,000) in prizes. These are granted for the best work in poetry, history or