At this moment, the idea of patronizing and controlling the literature of a country by academies, established under the authority of its government, and composed of the principal men of letters of the time, was generally favored;--the French Academy, founded by Cardinal Richelieu, and always the model of its class, being now at the height of its success and fame. To establish a Spanish Academy, which should have similar objects and reach similar results, was, therefore, naturally the great literary project of the reign of Philip the Fifth.[277] Probably the king himself had early entertained it. Certainly it was formally brought to his notice, in 1713, by the Marquis of Villena, a nobleman, who, amidst the cares of five successive viceroyalties, had found leisure to devote himself, not only to letters, but to some of the more severe branches of the physical and exact sciences. His first purpose seems to have been, to form an academy whose empire should extend, on all sides, to the limits of human knowledge, and whose subdivisions should be substantially made according to the system of Lord Bacon. This, however, was soon abandoned as too vast an undertaking; and it was determined to begin by confining the duties of the new association principally to “the cultivation and establishment of the purity of the Castilian language.” An Academy for this object went into operation, by virtue of a royal decree dated the 3d of November, 1714.[278] [277] The Royal Library, now the National Library, at Madrid, which was strictly the earliest literary project of the reign of Philip V., was founded in 1711; but for several years it was an institution of little importance. El Bibliotecario y el Trovador, Madrid, 1841, folio, p. 3. [278] “Historia de la Academia,” in the Preface to the “Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana, por la Real Academia Española,” Madrid, Tom. I. 1726, folio. Sempere y Guarinos, Biblioteca, 1785, Discurso Preliminar, and Tom. I. p. 55.