The French Academy now contains pretty nearly
everything except first-class literary artists. Anatole France is a
first-class literary artist and an Academician; but he makes a point of
never going near the Academy. Perhaps the best writer among "devout"
Academicians is Maurice Barres. Unhappily his comic-opera politics prove
that in attempting Parnassus he mistook his mountain. Primrose Hill would
have been more in his line. Still, he wrote "Le Jardin de Berenice": a
novel which I am afraid to read again lest I should fail to recapture the
first fine careless rapture it gave me.
* * * * *
Personally, I think our British Academy is a far more brilliant affair
than the French. There is no nonsense about it. At least very little,
except Mr. Balfour. I believe, from inductive processes of thought, that
when Mr. Balfour gets into his room of a night he locks the door--and
smiles. Not the urbane smile that fascinates and undoes even Radical
journalists--quite another smile. Never could this private smile have been
more subtle than on the night of the day when he permitted himself to be
elected a member of the British Academy. Further, let it not be said that
our Academy excludes novelists and journalists.
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