have been written on the French Academy, and various anecdotes as ridiculous as they are false. This also is apparently out of zeal for religion.

I ought not to lose an opportunity of refuting an absurd story which has been much circulated, and which is repeated exceedingly mal-à-propos under the article of the ABBE GEDOUIN, upon whom the writer falls foul with great satisfaction, because in his youth he had been a jesuit; a transient weakness, of which I know he repented all his life.

The devout and scandalous compiler of the Dictionary asserts, that the Abbé Gédouin slept with the celebrated Ninon l'Enclos on the very night of her completing her eightieth year. It certainly was not exactly befitting in a priest to relate this anecdote in a pretended Dictionary of illustrious men. Such a foolery, however, is in fact highly improbable; and I can take upon me to assert that nothing can be more false. The same anecdote was formerly put down to the credit of the Abbé de Chateauneuf, who was not very difficult in his amours, and who, it was said, had received Ninon's favours when she was of the age of sixty, or rather, had conferred upon her his own. In early life I saw a great deal of the Abbé Gedouin, the Abbé Chateauneuf, and Mademoiselle l'Enclos; and I can truly declare, that at the age of eighty years her countenance bore the most hideous marks of old age, that her person was afflicted with all the infirmities belonging to that stage of life, and that her mind was under the influence of the maxims of an austere philosophy.

Under the article DESHOULIERES the compiler pretends that that lady was the same who was designated under the term prude (precieuse) in Boileau's satire upon women. Never was any woman more free from such weakness than Madame Deshoulières: she always passed for a woman of the best society, possessed great simplicity, and was highly agreeable in conversation.

The article LA MOTTE abounds with atrocious abuse of that academician, who was a man of very amiable manners, and a philosophic poet, who produced excel

lent works of every description. Finally, the author, in order to secure the sale of his book of six volumes, has made of it a slanderous libel.

His hero is Carrè de Montgeron, who presented to the king a collection of the miracles performed by the convulsionaries in the cemetery of St. Medard; who became mad and died insane.

The interest of the republic of literature and reason, demands that those libellers should be delivered up to public indignation, lest their example operating upon the sordid love of gain, should stimulate others to imitation; and the more so, as nothing is so easy as to сору books in alphabetical order, and add to them insipidities, calumnies, and abuse.

Extract from the Reflections of an Academician on the Dictionary of the French Academy.

It would be desirable to state the natural and incontestable etymology of every word, to compare the ap. plication, the various significations, the extent of the word, with the use of it; the different acceptations, the strength or weakness of correspondent terms in foreign languages; and finally, to quote the best authors who have used the word, to show the greater or less extent of meaning which they have given to it, and to remark whether it is more fit for poetry than prose.

For example, I have observed that the inclemency of the weather is ridiculous in history, because that term has its origin in the anger of heaven, which is supposed to be manifested by the intemperateness, irregu larities, and rigours of the seasons, by the violence of the cold, the disorder of the atmosphere, by tempests, storms, and pestilential exhalations, &c. Thus then inclemency, being a metaphor, is consecrated to poetry,

I have given to the word impotence all the acceptations which it receives. I showed the incorrectness of the historian, who speaks of the impotence of king Alphonso, without explaining whether he referred to that of resisting his brother, or that with which he was charged by his wife.

I have endeavoured to show that the epithets irre,

VOL. II.

2 M

sistible and incurable require very delicate management. The first who used the expression the irresistible impulse of genius, made a very fortunate hit, because, in fact, the question was in relation to a great genius throwing itself upon its own resources in spite of all difficulties. Those imitators who have employed the expression in reference to very inferior men, are plagiarists who know not how to dispose of what they steal.

As soon as ca man of genius has made a new -application of any word in the language, copyists are not wanting to apply it, very mal-a-propos, in twenty places, without giving the inventor any credit.

I do not know that a single one of these words, termed by Boileau foundling (des mots trouvés), a single new expression of genius, is to be found in any tragic author since Racine, until within the last few years. These words are generally lax, ineffective, stale, and so ill placed, as to produce a barbarous style. To the disgrace of the nation, these Visigothic and Vandal productions were for a certain time extolled, panegyrised, and admired in the journals, especially as they came out under the protection of a certain lady of distinction,* who knew nothing at all about the subject. We have recovered from all this now; and, with one or two exceptions, the whole race of such productions is extinct for ever.

I did not in the first instance intend to make all these reflections, but to put the reader in a situation to make them.

I have shown at the letter E that our e mute, which we are reproached with by an Italian, is precisely what occasions the delicious harmony of our language: · empire, couronne, diademe, épouvantable, sensible. This e mute, which we make perceptible without articulating it, leaves in the ear a melodious sound like that of a

*This seems to refer to the Catiline of Crebillon, and to Madame Pompadour, whom the enemies of Voltaire had instigated to favour the success of that ill-written tragedy.-French Editor.

What would Voltaire have said of the Catiline of Croly?—T.

bell, which still resounds although it is no longer struck This we have already stated in respect to an Italian, a man of letters, who came to Paris to teach his own language, and who while there ought not to decry ours. He does not perceive the beauty or necessity of our feminine rhymes: they are only e's mute. This interweaving of masculine and feminine rhymes constitutes the charm of our verse.

Similar observations upon the alphabet, and upon words generally, would not have been without utility, but they would have made the work too long."

DIOCLESIAN.

AFTER several weak or tyrannic reigns, the Roman empire had a good emperor in Probus, whom the legions massacred, and elected Carus, who was struck dead bylightning, while making war against the Persians. His son Numerian was proclaimed by the soldiers. The historians tell us seriously that he lost his sight by weeping for the death of his father, and that he was obliged to be carried along with the army shut up in a close litter. His father-in-law Aper killed him in his bed, to place himself on the throne; but a druid had predicted in Gaul to Dioclesian, one of the generals of the army, that he would become emperor after having killed a boar. A boar, in Latin, is aper. Dioclesian assembled the army, killed Aper with his own hands in the presence of the soldiers, and thus accomplished the prediction of the druid. The historians who relate this oracle deserve to be fed on the fruit of the tree which the druids revered. is certain that Dioclesian killed the father-in-law of the emperor, which was his first right to the throne. Numerian had a brother named Carinus, who was also emperor, but being opposed to the elevation of Dioclesian, he was killed by one of the tribunes of

It

The interest of much of this article is almost exclusively French; but the vein of general observation mixed up with it was not to be sacrificed.-T.

his army, which formed his second pretension to the purple. These were Dioclesian's rights to the throne," and for a long time he had no other.

t

He was originally of Dalmatia, of the little town of Dioclea, of which he took the name. If it be true that his father was a labourer, and that he himself in his youth had been a slave to a senator named Anulinus, the fact forms his finest eulogium. He could only have owed his elevation to himself; and it is very clear that he had conciliated the esteem of his army, since they forgot his birth to give him the diadem. Lactantius, a christian authority, but rather partial, pretends that Dioclesian was the greatest poltroon of the empire. It is not very likely that the Roman soldiers would have chosen a poltroon to govern them, or that this poltroon would have passed through all the degrees of the army. The zeal of Lactantius against a pagan emperor is very laudable, but not judicious.

Dioclesian continued for twenty years the master of those fierce legions, who dethroned their emperors with as much facility as they created them; which is another proof, notwithstanding Lactantius, that he was as great a prince as he was a brave soldier. The empire, under him, soon regained its pristine splendour. The Gauls, the Africans, Egyptians, and British, who had revolted several times, were all brought under obedience to the empire: even the Persians were vanquished. So much success without; a still more happy administration within; laws as humane as wise, which still exist in the Justinian code; Rome, Milan, Autun, Nicomedia, Carthage, embellished by his munificence; all tended to gain him the love and respect both of the east and west; so that, two hundred and forty years after his death they continued to reckon and date from the first year of his reign, as they had formerly dated from the foundation of Rome. This is what is called the era of Dioclesian: it has also been called the era of martyrs; but this is a mistake of eighteen years, for it is certain that he did not persecute any christian for eighteen years. So far from it, the first thing he did, when emperor, was to give a