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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Never was a republic greater, better peopled, more free, or more glorious: it is spread on the face of the earth, and is composed of persons of every nation, of every rank, of every age, and of both sexes. They are intimately acquainted with every language, the dead as well as the living. To the cultivation of letters they join that of the arts; and the mechanics are also permitted to occupy a place. But their religion cannot boast of uniformity; and their manners, like those of every other republic, form a mixture of good and evil: they are sometimes enthusiastically pious, and sometimes insanely impious.
Isaac D'Israeli, ‘The Republic of Letters’SPARKS OF TRUTH
In a review of Jean d'Alembert's History of the French Academy, in October 1789, the Analytical Review acknowledged the intellectual preeminence of the author, but rejected his arguments in favour of such academies. D'Alembert was, the review allowed,
a man distinguished in the most learned society in Europe by the universality and depth of his knowledge; by his proficiency in grammar, particular and universal, philology, metaphysics, history, the fine arts, and, above all, geometry. (5 (1789): 161)
D'Alembert's History of the French Academy, though, was written ‘rather in the character of an apologist than that of a philosopher’, biased by his personal position as the historian to the institution.
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