this pleasant "Histoire des Chats;" and that, after his election to the French Academy, he had the weakness to withdraw the book from circulation. Solid and serious scholars, who had inaugurated what M. Champfleury calls "the grievous system of professional literature," pretended to believe that cats were unworthy of an Academician's momentous regard. Wits made merry at the expense of the "historiogriffe;" and false friends, like Voltaire, flattered the poor poet out of his reason, and then laughed sourly at the simplicity which credited men with truth. Upon the awful and august occasion of Moncrif's maiden speech, some wag, thrilling with joy at his own brilliant jest, turned a cat loose in the room; and when the frightened creature began to mew, the Academicians laughed and mewed in chorus, to the painful confusion of the newly elected.—"Rira mieux qui rira dernière." To-day, when tomes of oppressive erudition lie swathed in shrouds of dust; when names once honoured are well-nigh forgotten; when Moncrif's other writings—plays, and poems, and pastorals—have slipped unobtrusively into oblivion; this "gravely frivolous" little book still gains a hearing for its author. No one who truly loves cats can afford to neglect so interesting a period in their history, nor so veracious and admirable an historian.
