The design of compiling a dictionary of the
French language—the one great labour of the
Academy—was taken into serious consideration
so early as the year 1638. Two plans for its
composition were submitted to their colleagues
by Vaugelas and Chapelaine. That of the
author of La Pucelle was preferred, and
Vaugelas was consoled by being appointed
Secretary of Definitions, with an annual
allowance of two thousand livres, in addition
to his pension as an Academician.

The first thing done was to draw up a list
of authors in prose and verse, whose writings
should be considered as authorities in the
choice and meaning of words. Amyot, the
translator of Plutarch, Montaigne, of whom
too little use was made, du Vair, Charron,
Bertaud, Marion, de la Guesle, Pibrac,
d'Espeisses, Arnaud, Coeffeteau, d'Urfé, de
Molieris, Noué, de Dammartin, de Refuge,
d'Aubignier, Duplessis- Mornay, and the
recently deceased Academicians Barden and
du Chastelet, were among the undefiled
fountains of prose literature. In verse the
authorities were Marot, St. Gelais, Ronsard,
du Belloy, the " divine " du Bartas (a sort of
compound of Sternhold and Blackmore),
Garnier, des Lingendes, a famous preacher as
well as poet, Motin, Touvaint, Montfuron,
Theophile, Passerat, better known for his
Latin than his French poetry, and St. Marthe,
a celebrated scholar, with more learning than
taste. Desportes, du Perron (the cardinal),
and Malherbe had the double honour of being
selected as classics in both kinds of
composition.

The work proceeded with exceeding slowness;
commonly the fate of joint-stock literary
productions, especially when all the
contributions are gratuitous. The letter F in
particular hung so long a time in hand, that
Bois-Robert, then a very old man, exclaimed—

"Doubly a Nestor shall I be
   If I survive the letter G."

The first edition of the Dictionary, after
a gestation of fifty-six years, was introduced
to the world in 1694. A second, very little
altered and not at all improved, made its
appearance in 1718. Since that time there
were four other editions up to 1836, and a
supplement has been recently published, as
bulky as the dictionary itself, containing many
thousand familiar and technical words and
phrases, to which the puritans of the Academy
had previously closed their pages.

The dictionary of the French academy, the
work of forty men, has often been
disadvantageously compared with Dr. Johnson's
English dictionary—the work of one man.
There is some force in the comparison, but
not so much as would at first appear. The
two labours were different. The French
language, when the Academy was founded, had
no settled form; between north, middle, and
south France the difference of speech was so
great that there existed no complete and
consistent body of words whereof the French
language might be said to have been
composed. Redundancies, inconsistencies, and
great varieties of spelling and pronunciation,
were weeds that called for extirpation. The
Academicians set themselves to work on this
untidy mass. The first Academicians and
makers of the dictionary affected a precision
of speech, and fought for a rigid system of
pronunciation with a zeal that exposed them,
to a thousand jokes. They, however, were
the right men for the work they undertook.
Language could not be dammed up; any
obstructions would be broken down; but fit
confinement of its course within one deep
and fairly defined channel could lead only
to good results. This purpose the
Academicians, when they formed their dictionary,
really did fulfil. The dictionary of the
Academy converted French into a polished
language, and was made only the more
efficient for its purpose by the pedantry of
its promoters. It is said to have been once
a subject of debate whether the innocent
adverb " car " should cease from that time
forth to form a part of the French language.
Fontenelle complains bitterly of this
puritanical pedantry, and Ménage, in some
clever Hudibrastic verses (which cost him
the honour of a chair), introduces Nicot,
of tobacco fame, Calepin, Ouden, and
Estrenne as humbly remonstrating with the
Academicians on the exclusion of their
favourite phrases. " If," says Diderot, " the
gentlemen of the Academy had been a little
more particular about their own definitions,
and a great deal less so about the French
language, it had been better in both ways for
the public."  Several of their definitions, and
those perpetuated in very recent editions, are
excessively absurd. We are told that the
Academicians were once on the point of
admitting the following definition of a lobster:
"a little red fish that walks backwards."
"Gentlemen," exclaimed Furetière, just as
the secretary was about to record this lucid
explication, " the definition is undoubtedly a
very ingenious one; but it is open to three
objections. In the first place, the little animal
in question is not a fish; in the second place,
it is only red when boiled; and in the third
place, it walks straightforward, though it
may not be at a very rapid rate." Without
going through the entire series, we will note
here and there the names of a few men who
liave been connected with the forty chairs of
the Academy.

No. one was originally filled by Barden, who
held it for only two years. The most celebrated
of his successors was Cardinal de Fleury, the
Minister of Peace, who was elected to it in
1717. Florian, the fabulist and biographer of
Tell, a bold and eloquent writer—not famous
"or personal courage—was chosen in 1788,
having been decorated a few days before,
through the powerful patronage of the Duke