M. Francois Coppée, the poet and member of the Académie Francaise, is very cross with the Budget Commission for poke ing its nose into the Academy's affairs. For many years, that body has been receiving an annual allowance of £412 for work on the historic dictionary of the French lan guage. No one has ever seen a copy of this monument of erudition, and somebody fon the Commission suggested that the Academicians were not earning their money. M. Coppée says the historic dietionary—one of Voltaire's ideas—never got beyond the letter A and was dropped twen-years ago. The task of tracing, the hi tory of every word in the French language was found to be xo superhuman tint the immortals gave it up and spent the money and their time on the "dictionnaire d'usage." which is only etymological, This work has been coming out at intervals for nearly two centuries. The first edition was published by the Academy about forty years before Dr. Johnson, unaided, rendered a similar service to the English language. The civhth and latest edition came out in 1878, and the next may be looked for, says sanguine M Coppée, about the year 1910. The work is carried on by a committee of six Academicians, who each pocket the munificent remuneration of £40 a year in addition to their salary of £60. The committee is about to ickle the letter E, and M. Coppée thinks it is getting along very nicely, seeing that
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.