omething of a heretic
himself, tolerated freethinking in others) had ceased. Moreover, except
in rare cases, chiefly limited to persons of rank who were elected for
reasons quite other than literary, it was not usual for an author to
gain admission to the Academy until he was well stricken in years, and
until, as a natural consequence, his tastes were for the most part
formed, and he was impatient of innovation.

At first the influence of the Academy was beyond question salutary in
the main, if not wholly. Balzac, whose importance in the history of
prose style has been pointed out, was one of its earliest members. It
was under its wing that Vaugelas undertook the much-needed enquiry into
French grammar and its principles as applied to literature. The majority
of the early members were connected with the refining and reforming
coteries of the Rambouillet and other salons. It was somewhat slow in
electing Boileau, though it is to be feared that this arose from no
higher motive than the fact that he had satirised most of its members.
But Boileau was the natural guiding spirit of an Academy, and it fell
more and more under his influence--not so much his personal influence as
that of his principles and critical estimates. In short, during the
seventeenth century it played the very useful part of model and measure
in the midst of a time when the chief danger was the neglect of measures
and of models, and it played it very fairly. But by the time that the
eighteenth century began, it was by no means of a restraining and
guiding influence that France had most need. The exuberance of creative
genius between 1630 and 1690 had supplied literature with actual models
far more valuable than any scheme of cut-and-dried rules, and it was in
need rather of a stimulant to spur it on to further development. Instead
of serving as this, the Academy served (owing, it must be confessed, in
great part to the literary conservatism of Voltaire and the
_philosophes_ generally) as a check and drag upon the spontaneous
instincts all through the century, and in all the departments of Belles
Lettres. It contributed more than anything else to the mischievous
crystallisation of literary ideas, which during this time offers so
strange a contrast to the singular state of solution in which were all
ideas relating to religion, politics, and morals. The consequence of the
propounding of a set of consecrated models, of the constant competition
in imitation o