ELECTED INTO THE ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS. 155 



ELECTION OF BAILLY INTO THE ACADEMY OF IN 

 SCRIPTIONS. 



Iii speaking of the pretended identity of the Atlantis, 

 or of the kingdom of Ophir under Solomon with America, 

 Bailly says, in his fourteenth letter to Voltaire : &quot; Those 

 ideas belonged to the age of learned men, but not to the 

 philosophic age.&quot; And elsewhere (in the twenty-first 

 letter) we read these words : &quot; Do not fear that I shall 

 fatigue you by heavy erudition.&quot; To have supposed that 

 erudition could be heavy and be deficient in philosophy, 

 was for certain people of a secondary order an unpar 

 donable crime. And thus we saw men, excited by a 

 sentiment of hate, arm themselves with a critical micro 

 scope, and painfully seek out imperfections in the innu 

 merable quotations with which Bailly had strengthened 

 himself. The harvest was not abundant ; yet, these 

 eager ferrets succeeded in discovering some weak points, 

 some interpretations that might be contested. Their joy 

 then knew no bounds. Bailly was treated with haughty 

 disdain : &quot; His literary erudition was very superficial ; 

 he had not the key of the sanctuary of antiquity ; he was 

 everywhere deficient in languages.&quot; 



That it might not be supposed that these reproaches 

 had any reference to Oriental literature, Bailly s adver 

 saries added : &quot; that he had not the least tincture of the 

 ancient languages ; that he did not know Latin.&quot; 



He did not know Latin ? And do you not see, you 

 stupid enemies of the great Astronomer, that if it had 

 been possible to compose such learned works as The His 

 tory of Astronomy, and The Letters on the Atlantis, with 

 out referring to the original texts, by using translations 

 only, you would no longer have preserved any impor- 



