promised fulfilment of his long-cherished desire “to raise the French language from the ranks of barbarous tongues, and to cleanse it from the impurities which it had contracted in the mouth of the people and on the lips of courtiers.” The little band of writers yielded reluctantly to the pompous summons so flatteringly sent forth against their independence, and the Académie Française was founded. Louis XIII. gave it letters-patent, and became its chief patron, while Richelieu was named President. The number of academicians was limited to forty. Amongst the great and gifted men who figure at the birth of this modern Areopagus, destined to be glorified in its after-career by so many brilliant members, Pierre Corneille stands out conspicuous. The young poet found in Richelieu a kind and munificent patron, until he had the ill-luck to wound his vanity in one of its most vulnerable points. Not content with being a potentate, a warrior, a financier, and innumerable other things besides, the insatiable cardinal aspired to being a poet—a disastrous form of ambition which gave a cruel handle to his enemies, and furnished them with many a shaft of ridicule wherewith to pierce his thin-skinned susceptibilities. Richelieu, however, pursued his way in serene self-confidence, despising the ignorance and jealousy of the vulgar herd, and periodically bringing forth the offspring of his genius in the shape of plays and poems. One set of verses with which he was particularly satisfied he handed in MS. to Corneille, desiring to secure his approval before launching them on the sea of public criticism, and modestly requesting the young poet to overlook them and make any alteration that he thought advisable. Corneille had not graduated long enough in the school of courtiers to know what this flattering request was worth, so he set about complying with it conscientiously, pruning and altering with his fine critical pen as it ran along the course of the ministerial poem. Richelieu’s amazement on beholding his masterpiece thus audaciously overhauled was only equalled by his indignation. Corneille, instead of falling on his knees and crying _peccavi_ when he saw his mistake, proceeded with infantine _naïveté_ to argue the case with the wrathful poet, and prove to him that every correction had been called for by some glaring fault. This did not mend matters. Such insane honesty met with the fate it deserved—the fate that from time immemorial it has met with in similar circumstances. The scene between Gil Blas and the bishop was enacted in the library of the Palais Cardinal between Corneille and Richelieu, and certainly Gil Bias was not more astonished by the effect of his candid criticism on the bishop’s long-winded sermon than was the young academician by the thunderbolt which fell from his patron’s brow on perusing his MS. revised and corrected. He was dismissed peremptorily, and withdrew cursing his own stupidity, and vowing that never again