Mahaffy — The Origins of Lem-ned Academies in A/odc7'n Europe. 435 



If the Lynxes were founded mainly to prosecute scientific studies, 

 the case of the French Academy, founded by Cardinal Eichelieu in 1635, is 

 wholly different. The suggestion for this foundation was derived from a 

 private society of cultivated, rather than learned men, who had social 

 evenings together, wherein they discussed literary questions, and especially 

 the purification of the French language. These meetings became famed for 

 their pleasant conversation (just as the breakfast at the Zoological Gardens 

 on the occasion of the weekly meeting of their Council has that reputation 

 in Dublin), and this was reported to the Cardinal, then all-powerful in 

 the State, and moreover a purist in language. We are told by their 

 excellent historian Pellisson' that they were unwilling to surrender their 

 privacy and liberty, when the Cardinal signified that he would be their 

 protector, but to thwart his wishes was thought too dangerous ; people spent 

 years in the Bastille for far less offences than that. Moreover, Eichelieu 

 desired that everything in France should depend upon himself— in that quality 

 the forerunner of Louis XIV and of Napoleon ; he was jealous of anything 

 remarkable that had not emanated from his favour. So the Academy, in spite 

 of the delay of three and a half years before it was sanctioned by the 

 Parliament, where Eichelieu had many secret enemies, received its patent, 

 and went to work in 1637, with the formal duty of "ornamenting, embellishing, 

 and augmenting " the French language, which was then rapidly attaining a 

 primacy in Europe. The members were not to meddle with theology, politics, or 

 science, but confine their work to producing essays on matters of literary style 

 and to criticizing the works submitted to them. They were attacked by many 

 satires, and ridiculed for the attempt to limit freedom in the use of language. 

 There were those who regarded it as a further inroad on liberty by the 

 autocratic Cardinal, and indeed not without reason ; for when Corneille's Cicl 

 appeared and took the public by storm, Eichelieu compelled the Academicians, 

 sore against their will, and in spite of all their protests, to submit this work to 

 the criticism of a committee chosen by lot, with broad hints that they should 

 censure its style, because it displeased his creature, M. de Scudery. They 

 were ordered to correct the text before it was printed for the public. I need 

 not follow this well-known affair further. It augured badly for the future of 

 the Academy, which could hardly flourish under such protection. 



Its next project was the publishing of a great dictionary of standard 

 French, as well as a grammar determining what was correct usage. This 

 task was evidently suggested by the earlier effort of the Accademia della 

 Crusca, which had laboured forty years at their Vocabulario of the Italian 

 language, and gained thereby not only great glory but great profit. 

 ' Cf. Pellisson's Histoire de I'Academie fian9aise. 



