the Garrick, the Savile, the Arts, and the Athenæum, in which authors are found; but the raison d'être of these clubs is not the réunion of men who made a profession of literature.
It would seem, in fact, impossible for men of letters to unite for the advancement of their own profession or of themselves; they cannot, by forming societies, further the many-sided art to which they are devoted, or the interests of her disciples. Literature is not, like science, to be wooed and won by research. All the endowment in the world would not improve the literary harvest of a year. Authors do not toil after facts in a laboratory. Their business is to instruct, to delight, to express, to convey new ideas, to interpret into the language of the world the doings, projects, and intentions of politicians, statesmen, physicists, and toilers of all kinds. In this business each man works by himself. His rivals, in a sense not known in other callings, are every man of his own profession. It is his business to talk, to talk continuously, to talk felicitously, persuasively, lucidly, and it is his aim to catch the ear of the people. Every man has his own methods; every man has his own school. We cannot imagine Homer discussing forms of verse with Pindar; nor Tennyson with Swinburne; nor Wordsworth with Byron; nor can we imagine Dickens taking sweet counsel with Thackeray in the hope of striking out some new method of art which might be adopted by both.
Yet the history of literature, especially of French literature, is full of the doings of clubs and societies, comprised of those who follow the sacred calling of letters. We propose, in the present paper, to follow briefly the story of literary clubs in the country where they most readily took root and most abundantly flourished. We need not go back as far as that academy founded by Charlemagne, where every member took the name of some great poet; the king himself being no other than David; Alcuin, Flaccus; Angibert, Homer; Théodule, Pindar; and Eginhart, more modest than the rest, Calliopeus. Nor need we take into account the confrèries of later times, such as the Nostre Dame de Toute Joye, the Clercs de la Basoche, the Empire de Galilée, the Enfants sans Souci, the Confrèrie de la Passion, the Court de la bonne Compaignie (an English Society) or the brotherhoods presided over by la Mère Sotte and Roger Bontemps. Modern literary clubs began in that time of enthusiasm and great hope, when scholars, working chiefly in solitude, apart from each other, and without means of frequent communication, rejoiced when they could meet at long intervals, congratulate each other on the great future