252 BAILLY. 



Crebillon obtained permission from the French Acad- 

 emy to make his reception discourse in verse. At the 

 moment when that poet, then almost sixty years of age, 

 said, speaking of himself, 



" No gall has ever poisoned my pen," 



the hall reechoed with approbation. 



I was going to apply this line by the author of Rhada- 

 mistus to our colleague, when accident offered to my sight 

 a passage in which Lalande reproaches Bailly for having 

 swerved from his usual character, in 1773, in a discussion 

 that they had together on a point in the theory of Jupi- 

 ter's Satellites. I set about the search for this discussion ; 

 I found the article by Bailly in a journal of that epoch, 

 and I affirm that this dispute does not contain a word but 

 what is in harmony with all our colleague's published 

 writings. I return therefore to my former idea, and say 

 of Bailly, with perfect confidence, 



u No gall had ever poisoned his pen." 



Diffidence is usually the trait that the biographers of 

 studious men endeavour most to put in high relief. I 

 dare assert, that in the common acceptation, this is pure 

 flattery. To merit the epithet of diffident, must we think 

 ourselves beneath the competitors of whom we are at 

 least the equals ? Must we, in examining ourselves, fail 

 in the tact, in the intelligence, in the judgment, that na- 

 ture has awarded us, and of which we make so good a 

 use in appreciating the works of others ? Oh ! then, few 

 learned men can be said to be diffident. Look at Newton : 

 his diffidence is almost as celebrated as his genius. Well, 

 I will extract from two of his letters, scarcely known, two 

 paragraphs which, put side by side, will excite some sur- 

 prise ; the first confirms the general opinion ; the second 



