Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1887 — Official Encouragement of Talent. [ARTICLE]

Official Encouragement of Talent.

A fact noticed in the Belgian correBp mdence of one of the Parisian pa pers affords another illustration of the inefficacy of the official encouragement of talent by the state. The King of the Belgians has regularly offered every year, for the last ten years, a prize of £I,OOO for the best work on some subject of general interest, the greatest latitude of choice being allowed the candidates, provided ‘the work came within the sufficiently comprehensive category of “oeuvres d’intelligence. ” During the whole ten years the prize has only been awarded once. Year after year the jury appointed to decide on the merits of the different essays sent in have had to make the melancholy return that not one of them came up to a decent standard. Macaulay (himself a writer of prize poems) has somewhere said that prize sheep are only fit to make candles of, and prize poems to light them with. Young Ox* ford would probably object to the diotum; but in Belgium, if prize essM’s and prize poems may be placed' on tne same footing, it would seem to be in part true. —Pall Mall Gazette.