It was from the very heart of their own body that the great attack upon their privileges unexpectedly fell upon the Academicians.  In 1662 they had elected (in the place of De Boissat, a very obscure original member) the Abbe of Chalivoy, Antoine Furetiere.  This man, born in Paris of poor parents in 1619, had raised himself to eminence as an Orientalist and grammarian, and was welcomed among the Forty as likely to be particularly helpful to them in their Dictionary work.  He was probably one of those men whose true character does not come out until they attain success.  But no sooner was Furetiere an Immortal than he began to distinguish himself in unanticipated ways.  He proved himself an adept in parody and satire, and so long as he contented himself with laughing at people like Charles Sorel, the author of Francion, who had no friends, the Academicians were calm and amused, But Furetiere was not merely the author of that extremely amusing medley, Le Roman Bourgeois (1666), which still holds its place in French literature as a minor classic, but he was also a real student of philology, and one of those who most ardently desired to see the settlement of the canon of French language.  It incensed him beyond words that his colleagues dawdled so endlessly over their committees and their definitions.  He began to make collections of his own, no doubt at first with the perfectly loyal intention of adding them to the common store.  Meanwhile he lashed the rest of the Academy with his tongue.  Other Academicians did this also, such men as Patru and Boisrobert, but they had not Furetiere’s nasty way of putting things.  One perceives that about the year 1680 the sarcasms of Furetiere had really become something more than the rest of the Immortals could put up with.

He delivered himself into their hands, and here my little volume takes up the tale.  On the 3rd of January, 1685, the French Academy met to mourn the death of its most illustrious member, the great Pierre Corneille, and to elect his younger brother to take his place.  While the members were chatting together their Librarian handed about among them copies of a “privilege” which had just been obtained by the Abbe Furetiere to publish “a universal Dictionary containing generally all French words, old as well as modern, and the terms employed in all arts and sciences.”  So declares my little book; but it would seem that the officers of the Academy at least a week earlier had their attention drawn to what Furetiere was doing.  Perhaps it was not until the election of Thomas Corneille that an opportunity occurred of making the members generally aware of it.  One wonders whether Furetiere himself was present on the 3rd of January; if so, what puttings of periwigs together there must have been in corners, and what taps of gold-headed canes on lace-frilled cuffs!  It was felt, as my little volume puts it, that “Monsieur the Abbe Furetiere, being one of the Forty Academicians, ought not to have been privately busying himself on a work which he knew to be the principal occupation of the whole Academy.”  It is surprising, in the face of the monopoly which that body had secured, that Furetiere was able to obtain a Privilege for his own Dictionary, but in all probability, as he was one of the Forty, the censors supposed that he was acting in concert with his colleagues.