MACMILLAN AND CO LTD ST MARTIN'S ST LONDON THE CENTURY CO-UNION SQUARE NEWYORK FRANK H. SCOTT, PRES. CHAS. F. CHICHESTER, TREAS. WILLIAM W. ELLSWORTH, SECY. UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK Copyright, 1908, by The Century Co.1 (Trade-Mark Registered Oct. 18th. 1881.) [Entered at N.Y. Post Office as Second Class Mail Matter THE CENTURY MAGAZINE VOL. LXXVI MAY, 1908 No. 1 IN LITERARY ROLLS OF HONOR THE ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE THE ACADÉMIE DES BY TH. BENTZON1 N a period when so many time-honored traditions of France sink beneath the waves of what we are pleased to style progress, without perhaps caring to learn. whether we gain or lose as the stormy tide flows on, there is one national institution still standing firm, which, despite all that is said against it, is unique: I mean the French Academy. In vain have men tried to raise up rivals: it remains the sole arbiter of taste, the guardian of our language, the last surviving vestige of sovereignty. Το prove this would be an interesting study, in view of the increasing importance attached to the "Académie des Goncourt," and to the committee which has been humorously called the "Academy of Women." When the Goncourt brothers gathered round them that literary set to which they themselves never gave the name of Academy, though it did not displease them that it should be so styled, they were in a certain way renewing the attempt of Baïf, who, in the sixteenth century assembled at his house in the Faubourg St. Marceau, Paris, the wits of his day. The Goncourts, Edmond and Jules, received in an upper room of their house at Auteuil, in what they called the garret. Here Théophile Gautier, Louis Veuillot, Gustave Flaubert, Paul de Saint-Victor, Fromentin, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Théodore de Banville, and Jules Vallès took the place of Ronsard and the poets of the Pléiade. The aim of these latter had been to enrich their mothertongue by judicious borrowings from the ancients, and to make it bear comparison with Latin and Greek. The new neologists, bolder than their forerunners, refused on any pretext whatsoever to be patronized by the great, even should they be poets, as was King Charles IX. In 1 Madame Thérèse Blanc, author of this article, died in February, 1907. She was one of the few Copyright, 1908, by THE CENTURY CO. All rights reserved. LXXVI-1 3 |