an Academy merely for the polite arts is more judicious, as it prevents confufion, and the joining, in fome measure, of heterogeneals, fuch as a differtation on the head-dreffes of the Roman ladies, with an hundred or more new curves.

As there is very little order and regula/rity in the Royal Society, and not the least encouragement; and that the Academy of Paris is on a quite different foot, 'tis no wonder that our tranfactions are drawn up in a more just and beautiful manner than thofe of the English. Soldiers who are under a regular difcipline, and befides well paid, muft neceffarily, at laft, perform more glorious atchievements than others who are mere voluntiers. It muft indeed be confefs'd that the Royal Society boast their Newton, but then he did not owe his knowledge and discoveries to that body; fo far from it, that the latter were intelligible to very few of his fellow-members. A genius like that of Sir Ifaac belong'd to all the academies in the world, because all had a thousand things to learn of him.

THE celebrated Dean Swift form'd a defign, in the latter end of the late Queen's reign, to found an Academy for the English tongue upon the model of that of the French. This project was promoted by the late earl of Oxford, lord high treasurer, and much more by the lord Bolingbroke, fe

cretary

cretary of state, who had the happy talent of fpeaking without premeditation in the parliament-houfe, with as much purity as Dean Swift writ in his clofet, and who would have been the ornament and protector of that Academy. Those only would have been chofen members of it, whose works will laft as long as the English tongue, fuch as Dean Swift, Mr. Prior, whom we faw here invefted with a publick character, and whofe fame in England is equal to that of La Fontaine in France; Mr. Pope the English Boileau Mr. Congreve who may be called their Moliere, and feveral other eminent perfons whofe names I have forgot; all these would have raised the glory of that body to a great height, even in its infancy. But Queen Anne being fnatched fuddenly from the world, the Whigs were refolved to ruin the protectors of the intended Academy, a circumstance that was of the most fatal confequence to polite literature. The members of this Academy would have had a very great advantage over those who first formed that of the French; for Swift, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Pope, Addison, &c. had fixed the English tongue by their writings; whereas Chapelain, Colletet, Caffaigne, Faret, Perrin, Cotin, our first Academicians, were a difgrace to their country; and fo much ridicule is now attached to their very

names,

names, that if an author of fome genius in this age had the misfortune to be called Chapelain or Cotin, he would be under a neceffity of changing it.

ONE circumstance, to which the English Academy should especially have attended, is, to have prefcribed to themselves occupations of a quite different kind from those with which our Academicians amufe themfelves. A wit of this country asked me for the memoirs of the French Academy. I anfwered, they have no memoirs, but have printed threefcore or fourfcore volumes in quarto of compliments. The gentleman perused one or two of them, but without being able to understand the ftyle in which they were written, tho' he understood all our good authors perfectly. All, fays he, I fee in these elegant difcourfes is, that the member elect having affured the audience that his predeceffor was a great man, that cardinal Richelieu was a very great man, that the chancellor Seguier was a pretty great man, that Lewis the fourteenth was a more than great man; the director anfwers in the very fame ftrain, and adds, that the member elect may also be a fort of great man, and that himself, in quality of director, muft alfo have fome fhare in this greatness.

THE caufe why all these academical difcourses have unhappily done so little honour

to

to this body is evident enough. Vitium eft temporis potiùs quam hominis. (The fault is owing to the age rather than to particular perfons. It grew up infenfibly into a cuftom, for every Academician to repeat these elogiums at his reception; 'twas laid down as a kind of law, that the publick should be indulged from time to time the fullen fatisfaction of yawning over these productions. If the reason fhould afterwards be fought, why the greatest genius's who have been incorporated into that body have fometimes made the worft fpeeches; I anfwer, that 'tis wholly owing to a strong propenfion the gentleman in queftion had to fhine, and to difplay a thread-bare, wornout fubject in a new and uncommon light. The neceffity of faying fomething, the perplexity of having nothing to fay, and a defire of being witty, are three circumftances which alone are capable of making even the greatest write ridiculous. Thefe gentlemen, not being ble to ftrike out any new thoughts, hunted after a new play of words, and delivered themselves without thinking at all; in like manner as people who fhould feem to chew with great eagerness, and make as though they were eating, at the fame time that they were just ftarved.

'Tis a law in the French Academy, to publish all those discourses by which only

they

they are known, but they fhould rather make a law never to print any of them.

BUT the Academy of the Belles Lettres have a more prudent and more useful object, which is, to prefent the publick with a collection of tranfactions that abound with curious researches and critiques. These transactions are already esteemed by foreigners; and it were only to be wished, that some subjects in them had been more thoroughly examined, and that others had not been treated at all. As for inftance, we should have been very well fatisfied, had they omitted I know not what differtation on the prerogative of the right hand over the left; and fome others, which, though not published under fo ridiculous a title, are yet written on fubjects that are almoft as frivolous and filly.

THE Academy of Sciences, in fuch of their researches as are of a more difficult kind and a more fenfible use, embrace the knowledge of nature and the improvements of the arts. We may prefume that fuch profound, fuch uninterrupted purfuits as thefe, fuch exact calculations, such refined discoveries, fuch extenfive and exalted views, will, at laft, produce fomething that may prove of advantage to the univerfe. Hitherto, as we have obferved together, the most useful difcoveries have been made in the most barbarous times.

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