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Education
As a new foundation, removed from direct influence of church and state, it played an important part in fostering the Enlightenment project, and counted several eminent scholars among its early members, including the pioneering chemist Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, historian and philosopher Charles de Brosses and naturalists Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon and Bernard Germain, Comte de Lacépède. The Academy’s most enduring contribution to the Enlightenment, however, was in awarding a young Jean-Jacques Rousseau one of its annual prizes in 1750 for his essay Discours sur les sciences et les arts, in which he famously argued that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality. It was this essay which first found him fame as a philosopher and provided the germ for much of his later philosophy on the corruptive power of civilization. The present Mémoire has a good deal to say about the prizes awarded by the Academy. It is a report, presumably drawn up on behalf of the governors or directors, which sought to clarify the terms of Pouffier’s will as he left it in 1725 and 1726. The founder went to great lengths to ensure that Academy prospered but his detailed provisions in practice led to unforeseen consequences. As the Mémoire outlines, Pouffier stipulated that 1310 livres annually be spent as follows: 930 livres to endow a series of six prizes in three subjects (Physique, Morale and Médecine); 200 livres ‘pour la bougie des Directeurs’; 120 livres for the Secretary’s salary and 60 livres for books and necessary scientific instruments. The text is concerned with situations in which one or other of these amounts is not needed in its entirety and asks what is to be done with the residue and whether it can be spent elsewhere. What if the Secretary can be paid less? What if the necessary books are all bought for less than the sum set aside? Most persistently, it asks what happens if there are not sufficient candidates, or sufficiently good candidates for the prizes? The problem seems to have stemmed from the delay in formally constituting the Académie: royal letters patent were not, apparently, granted until 1740, whereas Pouffier made provision for immediate payment of each of these expenses soon after his death. It seems that there were just too few members or students in the early years to justify all of them. One wonders whether it was this situation that encouraged the Academy to advertise nationally for prize essays, as a way of attracting the best minds to Dijon. Certainly their advertisement placed in the Mercure de France in 1749 did just that in catching the attention of young Rousseau. The mémoire ends aptly, with the quotation from Juvenal, ‘quis enim virtutem amplectitur ipsam / Praemia se tollas (for who would embrace virtue itself if you take away its rewards?, Satire X, 140) see full details...
It enjoyed many editions, ‘even becoming a textbook in colonial American colleges’ (Oxford DNB). Johnson’s contributions are the long Preface to volume I and ‘The Vision of Theodore the Hermit of Teneriffe, found in his Cell’ (II, 516–26), a piece which, by Johnson’s own admission, was ‘the best thing he ever wrote’ (Boswell, Life, I, 192). In this copy, the plate featuring six nudes (‘Drawing No. 9’) has been removed and the numbering of the subsequent four Drawings discreetly altered to avoid suspicion. This was evidently done at an early date. One wonders whether the Archbishop had it removed for reasons of propriety. see full details...
This immensely popular juvenile novel emphasises thrift and hard work through the character of Simon, a travelling salesman. It was published by La Société pour l’instruction élémentaire following a competition, with a prize of 1000 francs donated by an anonymous benefactor, for a work of no more than 250 pages in which were ‘tracés avec simplicité, précision et sagesse, le principes de religion chrétienne, de morale, de prudence sociale’, for the improvement of everyday town and country people. There were numerous subsequent editions in France, as well as translations into Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Greek and even Breton. A nephew of the Jussieu brothers of botanical fame, Laurent Jussieu became director of police to the French minister for the interior in 1837. see full details...
![[PALMER, Sir Thomas.]](/photos/447/main/447.jpg "[PALMER, Sir Thomas.]")
Palmer’s intention was to explore the motivation for travel and explain the ways in which travel could be beneficial to the individual and to his country. Following the example of Zwinger’s Methodus Apodemica (1577) Palmer’s work contains four large and elaborate tables showing the diversity of types of foreign travellers (from tourists, to spies and exiles) and the priorities they should adopt while abroad. Palmer was not himself a seasoned traveller and the book is not a practical guide, but is culturally important as a complete exposition of an English Renaissance theory of travel. ‘Sir Thomas Palmer (1540–1626), “the Travailer,” born in 1540, was the third son of Sir Henry Palmer of Wingham, Kent... He was high sheriff of Kent in 1595, and in the following year went on the expedition to Cadiz, when he was knighted. In 1606 he published ‘An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Travailes into forraine Countries the more profitable and honourable,’ London, 4to. Here Palmer discussed the advantages of foreign travel, and some of the political and commercial principles which the traveller should understand. The book is dated from Wingham, where the author is said to have kept, with great hospitality, sixty Christmases without intermission. The book is dedicated to the young Henry, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the throne, who would then have been 12 years old’ (DNB). see full details...
![[JOHNSON, Samuel, contributor].](/photos/438/main/438.jpg "[JOHNSON, Samuel, contributor].")
![JUSSIEU, L[aurent]. P. de.](/photos/299/main/299.jpg "JUSSIEU, L[aurent]. P. de.")
![TAILLEFER, L[ouis]-G[abriel].](/photos/389/main/389.jpg "TAILLEFER, L[ouis]-G[abriel].")
