194 CONDORCET: A BIOGRAPHY. 



academicians deceased since 1666. * * * Thej' have had with us a 

 complete success." "Your work," said Voltaire on the 1st of March, 1774, 

 "is a monument to you. You always appear the master of those of 

 whom you speak, but a master kind and modest; a king describing his 

 subjects." Such commendation gave to these first essays of Condorcet 

 a rank from which malevolence has in vain endeavored to reduce them. 

 Condorcet had hardly entered into his relation with M. do Fouchy, 

 when he was commissioned to write several eulogies, among others that 

 of the geometer Fontaine, deceased August 1:1, 1771. Difficulties un- 

 foreseen immediately assailed him. When he wrote the biographies of 

 the earlier members of the Academy of Sciences a century had placed 

 all thiugs in their proper light — persons, labors, and discoveries, — and 

 there was nothing for the writer to do but to express, in terms more or 

 less happy, the irrevocable and already' known decrees of posterity. 

 Xow he found himself in contact with the requirements, almost always 

 blind, of families : with contemporary susceptibility sometimes of friends, 

 always of rivals; finally with opinions based upon prejudice or personal 

 animosity, than which nothing in the intellectual world is more diffi- 

 cult to eradicate. I suspect that Condorcet exaggerated somewhat 

 these difficulties, although they were undoubtedly real, for he certainly 

 spent an enormous amount of labor on his first eulogy of a contem- 

 poraneous academician. In his correspondence with Turgot we find 

 him about the middle of 1772 already very busy with Fontaine. In 

 the beginning of September he sent to the illustrious intendaut a 

 first copy of his work. The same eulogy, retouched and altered, in 

 September, 1773, was on its way to Limoges. This, it must be ad- 

 mitted, was a loug time to devote to an article of only twenty-five 

 octavo pages. However, the maxim of Boileau was not in this instance 

 without fruit. D'Alembert, writing to Lagrange, calls the eulogy of 

 Fontaine a chef-cVoeuvre. Voltaire says, in a letter of the 24th of De- 

 cember, 1773, "You have made me pass a half hour very agreeably. * 



* * You have relieved the dryness of the subject by a moral treat- 

 ment noble and profound * * * which will delight all honest men. 



* * * If yQij need your copy I will return it to you, asking permis- 

 sion to make one for myself." Voltaire asking permission to copy for 

 his own use a eulogy of Fontaine! Could there be a greater compliment 

 than this ? 



To the eulogy of Fontaine succeeded that, not less piquant, not less 

 ingenious, not less philosophic, of Condamine. The Academy and the 

 public at large received it with unanimous applause. With the exception 

 of the years 1775 and 1770, during which the Academy experienced no 

 loss, the secretary had to provide annually until 1788, three, four, and 

 even eight similar compositions. The style of these latter eulogies of 

 Condorcet is grave and noble. There is ia them no trace of affectation 

 of manner or of effort ; no desire to produce effect by expression, to 

 cover, by striking or eccentric language, feebleness of thought. 



