gave the
Academy or King's College (college royal) of his town of Richelieu a
regulation-code of studies which bears the imprint of his lofty and
strong mind. He prescribed a deep study of the French tongue. "It often
happens, unfortunately, that the difficulties which must be surmounted
and the long time which is employed in learning the dead languages,
before any knowledge of the sciences can be arrived at, have the effect,
at the outset, of making young gentlemen disgusted and hasten to betake
themselves to the exercise of arms without having been sufficiently
instructed in good literature, though it is the fairest ornament of their
profession. . . . It has, therefore, been thought necessary to
establish a royal academy at which discipline suitable to their condition
may be taught them in the French tongue, in order that they may exercise
themselves therein, and that even foreigners, who are curious about it,
may learn to know its riches and the graces it hath in unfolding the
secrets of the highest discipline." Herein is revealed the founder of
the French Academy, skilful as he was in divining the wants of his day,
and always ready to profit by new means of action, and to make them his
own whilst doing them service.

Associations of the literary were not unknown in France; Ronsard and his
friends, at first under the name of the brigade and then under that of
the Pleiad, often met to read together their joint productions, and to
discuss literary questions; and the same thing was done, subsequently, in
Malherbe's rooms.

"Now let us speak at our ease," Balzac would say, when the sitting was
over, "and without fear of committing solecisms."

When Malherbe was dead and Balzac had retired to his country house on the
borders of the Charente, some friends, "men of letters and of merits very
much above the average," says Pellisson in his _Histoire de l'Academie
Francaise,_ "finding that nothing was more inconvenient in this great
city than to go often and often to call upon one another without finding
anybody at home, resolved to meet one day in the week at the house of one
of them. They used to assemble at M. Conrart's, who happened to be most
conveniently quartered for receiving them, and in the very heart of the
city (Rue St. Martin). There they conversed familiarly as they would
have on an ordinary visit, and upon all sorts of things, business, news,
and literature. If any one of the company had a work done,