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EUROPEAN LITERATURE—1600-1660.
who were most eminent in rank, in power, and in intellect; enlisting them in the common cause of decency, refinement, and dignity.[1]
- ↑ The authority of polite society in letters and taste was recognised later in a peculiarly formal and French manner by the institution of the Académie Française. This famous institution originated in some meetings of literary and learned men at the house of Conrart (1603-1675), the first secretary to the Academy, who, though well read in Spanish and Italian, was ignorant of Greek and Latin. The group included Jean Chapelain (1595-1674), the most authoritative critic though the most unfortunate poet of the first half of the century, who did more than any one else to make observation of the Unities a law for French tragedy, but was also one of the last to read and confess his enjoyment of the mediæval romances, and withal a précieux of the précieux in his poetic diction and pedantic gallantry. Others were Antoine Godeau (1605-1672), a prolific poet, amorous, and later religious; Jean de Gombauld (1599?-1666), also a minor poet; Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, dramatist, and one of Richelieu's most trusted coadjutors; and the Abbé de Boisrobert, also a dramatist and friend of Richelieu. It was at the suggestion of Boisrobert that the informal gathering was made by the great Minister the nucleus of the authorised Academy, March 1634. Among those whom they added to their number were Maynard, Saint-Amant, Racan, Balzac, Benserade, and Voiture.
The aim of the Academy was that which had guided Malherbe in his criticism and composition, to promote purity, dignity, and elegance—the aspects of strength and beauty which polite society approves—in French prose and verse. Usage in word and idiom was to be settled; and eloquence was to be heightened and refined, not, as Du Bellay and Ronsard had prescribed, by enriching the language with borrowings and coinages, but by distinguishing between expressions which are dignified and elegant and those which have contracted meanness "by passing through the mouths of the vulgar." A Dictionary, a Rhetoric, a Poetic were mooted, but of these only the first, and that on a smaller scale than had been planned, was published, and not until 1693. The first occasion on which the Academy asserted its authority was when, at the dictation of Richelieu, Chapelain arraigned the "correctness" of the first great French classical tragedy, the Cid (Sentiments de l'Académie sur le Cid).
