A history of the English Language

192.
The Example of Italy and France.
It was perhaps inevitable that those who gave thought to the threefold problem which 
seemed to confront English—of standardizing, refining, and fixing it—should consider 
what had been done in this direction by other countries. Italy and France were the 
countries to which the English had long turned for inspiration and example, and in both 
of these lands the destiny of the language had been confided to an academy. In Italy, 
prolific in academies, the most famous was the Accademia della Crusca, founded as early 
as 1582. Its avowed object was the purification of the Italian language, and to this end, it 
published in 1612 a dictionary, the famous 
Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca
. 
The dictionary provoked controversy, one of the most effective kinds of publicity, and, 
though subsequently modified in important ways, it went through several editions. In the 
third (1691) it had reached the proportions of three folio volumes, and the fourth edition 
(1729–1738) filled six. Here then was an impressive example
13 
Epistolae Ho-Elianae, 
Bk. II, Sec. VII, Letter LX. 
14 
Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris
(1699), p. 406. 
15 
Proposal.
A history of the english language 248

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of the results attained in at least one country from an effort to improve its language. 
Perhaps an even more effective precedent was furnished by France. In 1635 Cardinal 
Richelieu offered a royal charter to a small group of men who for several years had been 
meeting once a week to talk about books and to exchange views on literature. The 
original group was composed of only six or eight; the maximum membership was set at 
forty. The society was to be known as the French Academy (1’Académie française), and 
in the statutes that were drawn up defining its purpose it was declared: “The principal 
function of the Academy shall be to labor with all possible care and diligence to give 
definite rules to our language, and to render it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the 
arts and sciences.” It was to cleanse the language of impurities, whether in the mouths of 
the people or among people of affairs, whether introduced by ignorant courtiers or 
preachers or writers. It would be well “to establish a certain usage of words” and 
accordingly it should undertake to compile a dictionary, a grammar, a rhetoric, and a 
treatise on the art of poetry. The most important of these projects was the dictionary. 
Work on it proceeded slowly, but in 1694 it appeared. Thus while England continued to 
lament the lack of an adequate dictionary, Italy and France had both apparently achieved 
this object through the agency of academies.