432 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academij. 



shade by the defunct Eoyal University, Ireland, which had neither a College 

 for its Fellows nor Professors for its University. These remarks may be 

 thought irrelevant by those who forget that the maintaining of the purity 

 of spoken idioms has been from the outset one of the express objects of the 

 learned Academies of Europe. Any little contribution which I can make 

 does, therefore, find' a just place in this Presidential address. 



I think it well to illustrate these general considerations by some notices 

 of the early history of some famous Academies. I am obliged to give 

 prominence to those to which I have the honour to belong, for from them I 

 have received the necessary documents, which are not easily to be foimd in 

 any of our public libraries. Many others — such, for example, as the 

 Academy proposed by Leonardo da Vinci, at Milan — are not treated in 

 accessible books, nor are our Encyclopsedias, so far as I have searched 

 them, of any use ^whatever. We hear of even an earlier attempt— the 

 Academia Pontaniana in Naples in 1453, and an Academica Platonica 

 in Florence, founded by Lorenzo dei Medici in 1474. But why name any 

 more of them, when we are told by the learned historian of the French 

 Academy (Pellisson) that in Italy alone were found 116 scattered about 

 through every famous city of the peninsula ? He tells us that most of them 

 either had a short life, or their best members, such as della Porta, were 

 incorporated among the Lynxes, whose famous society may now occupy us 

 for a few minutes. 



There is no Academy in Europe which can compare with that of the 

 Lynxes in its combined antiquity and dignity.' By the liberality of the 

 late King of Italy, the active co-operation of Sella, when Prime Minister, and 

 the generous conditions of sale made by Prince Corsini (Duke of Casigliano), 

 whose fine palace, with all its family treasures in pictures, books, and prints, 

 they now possess, this Academy has little likeness to that founded by the 

 Prince Frederick Cesi.'' He was then a boy of eighteen, full of enthusiasm for 

 the new sciences— astronomy, physical geography, botany, and the like ; and 

 he associated with him three young men of twenty-seven, of whom the most 

 important was John Heck, a Dutchman from Deventer, but a Catholic, who 

 had left Holland owing to persecutions by the violent Protestants, and had 

 studied in the University of Perugia, where he obtained the degree of Doctor 

 of Medicine in 1601. This training accounts for much of his work in botany 

 and toxicology. Cesi was a rich nobleman ; the rest were of no distinction 

 m their origin or circumstances. But I note two things : -one the presence 

 of a medical man, verse d in the study of the human frame and the nature 



^' Cf. 5rm Storia della Accademia dei Lincei. D. Carutti. Rome, 1888. 

 • - Elder son of tlie Duke of Acquasparta, whom he succeeded in the title. 



