In order to give dignity and discipline to their assemblies, the
Academicians now created three offices, those of Director, Chancellor,
and Perpetual Secretary; these were held by Sérisay, Desmarets, and
Conrart respectively. They appointed the famous printer, Jean Camusat,
their librarian and typographer, meeting sometimes at his house for
easier correction of the press. On the 20th of March, 1634, they settled
on their all-important name, and thenceforth were to the world
"l'Académie françoise." Two days later, in a very long letter, they
detailed to the Cardinal the objects and functions of their body, not
failing to begin with the request that he would permit them to publish
his own tragedies and pastorals. This document is very interesting
to-day. In it the new Academy proposes to cleanse the French language
from all the ordure which it has contracted from vulgar and ignorant
usage; to establish the exact sense of words; seriously to examine the
subject and treatment of prose, the style of the whole, the harmony of
periods, the propriety in the use of words. Moreover, the Academicians
undertook to examine the books of one another with a meticulous
attention to faults of style and grammar. This "Projet," which was
drafted by Faret, was submitted to Richelieu, and printed in an edition
of thirty copies, in May, 1634.
In this first manifesto, which was kept extremely secret, nothing was
said about the plan of a Dictionary. But Chapelain's heart had been set
upon that from the first, and he did not forget to bring it forward. He
insisted, in season and out of season, on the necessity of labouring in
unison "for the purity of our language and for its capacity to develop
the loftiest eloquence." On the 27th of March he brought forward his
idea of a Dictionary. Balzac supported him by letter, Vaugelas offered
his invaluable grammatical services, and at last the Academy so far
accepted the idea as to instruct Chapelain and Vaugelas to report on the
subject. But this was not until 1637, so that we must realize that the
French Academy had existed three years before it finally settled down to
the work with which its early existence is most popularly identified.
But for the persistency of Chapelain this might never have been
commenced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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