Great men have all been formed either before academies or independent of them. Homer and Phidias, Sophocles and Apelles, Virgil and Vitruvius, Ariosto and Michelangelo, were none of them academicians. Tasso encountered only unjust criticism from the Academy della Crusca, and Newton was not indebted to the Royal Society of London for his discoveries in optics, upon gravitation, upon the integral calculus, and upon chronology. Of what use then are academies? To cherish the fire which great genius has kindled.

The Royal Society of London was formed in 1660, six years before the French Academy of Science. It has no rewards like ours, but neither has it any of the disagreeable distinctions invented by the abbé Bignon, who divided the Academy of Sciences between those who paid, and honorary members who were not learned. The society of London being independent, and only self-encouraged, has been composed of members who have discovered the laws of light, of gravitation, of the aberration of the stars, the reflecting telescope, the fire engine, solar microscope, and many other inventions, as useful as admirable. Could they have had greater men, had they admitted pensionaries or honorary members?

The famous Doctor Swift, in the last years of the reign of Queen Anne, formed the idea of establishing an academy for the English language, after the model of the Académie Fran?aise. This project was countenanced by the earl of Oxford, first lord of the treasury, and still more by Lord Bolingbroke, secretary of state, who possessed the gift of speaking extempore in parliament with as much purity as Doctor Swift composed in his closet, and who would have been the patron and ornament of this academy. The members likely to compose it were men whose works will last as long as the English language. Doctor Swift would have been one, and Mr. Prior, whom we had among us as public minister, and who enjoyed a similar reputation in England to that of La Fontaine among ourselves. There were also Mr. Pope, the English Boileau, and Mr. Congreve, whom they call their Molière, and many more whose names escape my recollection. The queen, however, dying suddenly, the Whigs took it into their heads to occupy themselves in hanging the protectors of academies, a process which is very injurious to the belles-lettres. The members of this body would have enjoyed much greater advantages than were possessed by the first who composed the French Academy. Swift, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Addison, and others, had fixed the English language by their writings, whereas Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, and Cotin, our first academicians, were a scandal to the nation; and their names have become so ridiculous that if any author had the misfortune to be called Chapelain or Cotin at present, he would be obliged to change his name.

Above all, the labors of an English academy would have materially differed from our own. One day, a wit of that country asked me for the memoirs of the French Academy. It composes no memoirs, I replied; but it has caused sixty or eighty volumes of compliments to be printed. He ran through one or two, but was not able to comprehend the style, although perfectly able to understand our best authors. “All that I can learn by these fine compositions,” said he to me, “is, that the new member, having assured the body that his predecessor was a great ma............