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for bridge, and when, after The Academy can open the hours of solemn cogitation, they door, it cannot make those who grimly exclude a word, they enter welcome to others. Thus think that they cause a sensation the Academy, in making its in literary Paris. They cause no dictionary, is but wasting its sensation. They do not purify time. The dictionary remains the language. They have not but a curiosity. Nobody would been able in the many years regret it were it suddenly of their social triumph to claim snatched from us. With Littré the authority of scholars. They or Darmesteter at his elbow, are not entrusted with the no scholar would trouble to power to punish the malefactors, consult the last discoveries of who exult in the free and the Sacred Forty. The hiscasual use of barbarous words. torians and dramatists, the From the very first it was their politicians and marquises, who, business not to enrich but to with an infrequent poet or impoverish the language. They novelist, make up the forty, admitted no word within the have not necessarily the skill of sacred covers of their dictionary a lexicographer. And poor that had not won their ap- England, which is not blessed proval. Every line of their with an Academy, and which, book was, and is, a reproach as Matthew Arnold says, does to the gayer work of Cotgrave, its journey-work badly, may for instance, who eagerly wel- yet boast in the Oxford dictioncomed to his pages all the raga- ary such a lexicon as France, muffins and even criminals of with her Academy, is never speech that he could pick up likely to achieve. Why, then, at the street corner. And should we encourage a mere strange to say, the Academy, imitation of the French Acasolemnly and publicly invested demy, when we know that our with authority, can claim no imitation could not possess, general respect for its dic- for centuries to come, the tionary. Its members, or some dignity, the prestige, the tradiof them, meet and gravely tion, and the green-embroidered sit as a jury upon offending collar of its French exemplar? words, which would, if they For, despite its many faults could, gain admission to the and its few merits, the French exclusive dictionary. There Academy is an ancient and an they stand like aliens, asking exclusive club. It was founded to be naturalised, but naturali- in the seventeenth century, sation is not easy, and the poor and it consists of forty memwords may stand shivering bers-one in a million of the without the portal for many population of France. Need a year. And even if they are we ask anything of it but to invited to come in, they can- exist beautifully? And would not be sure of their reception. an English Academy ever be

able, before the next ice age, to rival its useless elegance?

As for the English tongue, it needs no censorship, no correction from self-chosen critics. When Swift sought to establish a committee he failed; when he proved by the force of his great example how the English language should be written and kept pure, he succeeded so greatly that his prose needs no interpreter, and that his style after two hundred years is still

an example which baffles the wise. And the best service that a man of letters can do to the language which he uses (let us hope) with all humility is to show in his own work with what care and restraint it may be handled. For example speaks with an eloquence denied to precept, and despite a hundred academies, the writer worth reading will still be master of his own words and his own syntax.

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