(Fortunately posterity does
not make these mistakes.) A genuine original artist is bound to make a sad
spectacle of himself in an academy. Knowing this, Anatole France, the
greatest man in the Academie Francaise, never goes near the sittings. He
has got from the institution all that advantage of advertisement which he
was legitimately entitled to get, and he has no further use for the
Academie Francaise. His contempt for it as an artist is not concealed.
What can academicians do except put on a uniform and make eulogistic
discourses to each other under the eyes of fashionably-attired American
female tourists? The Authors' Society does more practical good for the art
of literature in a year than an Academy of Letters could do in forty
years.
* * * * *
The existing British Academy of Learning may or may not be a dignified and
serious institution. I do not know. But I see no reason why it should not
be. It has not interested the public, and it never will. Advertisement
does not enter into it to any appreciable extent. Moreover, it is much
more difficult to be a dilettante of learning than a dilettante of
letters. You are sooner found out. Further, learning can be organized, and
organized with advantage.
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