Debates relative to the Post of Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences
We have seen D’Alembert, ever since the year 1763, encouraging Bailly to exercise himself in a style of literary composition then much liked, the style of éloge, and holding out to him in prospect the situation of Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Six years after, the illustrious geometer gave the same advice, and perhaps held out the same hopes, to the young Marquis de Condorcet. This candidate, docile to the voice of his protector, rapidly composed and published the éloges of the early founders of the Academy, of Huyghens, of Mariotte, of Roëmer, &c.
At the beginning of 1773, the Perpetual Secretary, Grandjean de Fouchy, requested that Condorcet should be nominated his successor, provided he survived him. D’Alembert strongly supported this candidateship. Buffon supported Bailly with equal energy; the Academy presented for some weeks the aspect of two hostile camps. There was at last a strongly disputed electoral battle; the result was the nomination of Condorcet.
I should regret if we had to judge of the sentiments of Bailly, after this defeat, by those of his adherents. Their anger found vent in terms of unpardonable asperity. They said that D’Alembert had “basely betrayed friendship, honour, and the first principles of probity.”
They here alluded to a promise of protection, support, coöperation, dating ten years back. But was his promise absolute? Engaging himself personally to Bailly for a situation that might not become vacant for ten or fifteen years, had D’Alembert, contrary to his duty as an academician, declared beforehand, that any other candidate, whatever might be his talents, would be to him as not existing?
This is what ought to have been ascertained, before giving themselves up to such violent and odious imputations.
Was it not quite natural that the geometer D’Alembert, having to pronounce his opinion between two honourable learned men, gave the preference to the candidate who seemed to him most imbued with the higher mathematics? The éloges of Condorcet were, besides, by their style, much more in harmony with those that the Academy had approved during three quarters of a century. Before the declaration of the vacancy on the 27th of February, 1773, D’Alembert said to Voltaire, relative to the recueil by Condorcet, “Some one asked me the other day what I thought of that work. I answered by writing on the frontispiece, ‘Justice, propriety, learning, clearness, precision, taste, elegance, and nobleness.’” And Voltaire wrote, on the 1st of March, “I have read, while dying, the little book by M. de Condorcet; it is as good in its departments as the éloges by Fontenelle. There is a more noble and more modest philosophy in it, though bold.”
And excitement in words and action could not be legitimately reproached in a man who had felt himself supported by a conviction of such distinct and powerful influence.
Among the éloges by Bailly, there is one, that of the Abbé de Lacaille, which not having been written for a literary academy, shows no longer any trace of inflation or declamation, and might, it seems to me, compete with some of the best éloges by Condorcet. Yet, it is curious, that this excellent biography contributed, perhaps as much as D’Alembert’s opposition, to make Bailly’s claims fail. Vainly did the celebrated astronomer flatter himself in his exordium, “that M. de Fouchy, who, as Secretary of the Academy, had already paid his tribute to Lacaille, would not be displeased at his having followed him in the same career... that he would not be blamed for repeating the praises due to an illustrious man.”
Bailly, in fact, was not blamed aloud; but when the hour for retreat had sounded in M. de Fouchy’s ear, without any fuss, without showing himself offended in his self-love, remaining apparently modest, this learned man, in asking for an assistant, selected one who had not undertaken to repeat his éloges; who had not found his biographies insufficient. This preference ought not to be, and was not, uninfluential in the result of the competition.
Bailly, if Perpetual Secretary of the Academy, would have been obliged to reside constantly at Paris. But Bailly, as member of the Astronomical Section, might retire to the country, and thus escape those thieves of time, as Byron called them, who especially abound in the metropolis. Bailly settled at Chaillot. It was at Chaillot that our fellow-academician composed his best works, those that will sail down the stream of time.
Nature had endowed Bailly with the most happy memory. He did not write his discourses till he had completed them in his head. His first copy was always a clean copy. Every morning Bailly started early from his humble residence at Chaillot; he went to the Bois de Boulogne, and there, walking for many hours at a time, his powerful mind elaborated, coördinated, and robed in all the pomps of language, those high conceptions destined to charm successive generations. Biographers inform us that Crébillon composed in a similar way. And this was, according to several critics, the cause of the incorrectness, of the asperity of style, which disfigure several pieces by that tragic poet. The works of Bailly, and especially the discourses that complete the History of Astronomy, invalidate this explanation. I could also appeal to the elegant and pure productions of that poet whom France has just lost and weeps for. No one indeed can be ignorant of his works; Casimir Delavigne, like Bailly, never committed his verses to paper until he had worked them up in his mind to that harmonious perfection which procured for them the unanimous suffrages of all people of taste. Gentlemen, pardon this reminiscence. The heart loves to connect such names as those of Bailly and of Delavigne; those rare and glorious symbols, in whom we find united talent, virtue, and an invariable patriotism.