Page:Selected Orations Swedish Academy 1792.djvu/13

Rh reduced to the œconomy of settled laws, is such a cultivation possible. Without good writers, a language will never rise into estimation; and, without established rules, it cannot be written with propriety.

the accomplishment of these important purposes, I have this day founded an institution and I appoint you, gentlemen, to establish laws for the construction of the Swedish language, and to raise to perfection that structure, of which I have at this time only laid the basis.

effect this, it is requisite that science, genius, learning, and taste, should all concur: but these are seldom united in one person. It became necessary, therefore, to establish a society, composed of members who felt an ardent attachment to polite literature, and who had devoted their lives to its cultivation; of men who, by extensive learning, had formed their judgments on the knowledge of ages; men who, in the highest offices of state, or in the common intercourse of social life, had from their infancy refined their taste, by that accuracy which their high offices require, and by the variety of characters which they have had an opportunity of examining; men who, of necessity, must attend to precision of language, to an accurate choice of words, and who, of course, must acquire that delicacy of sentiment, which appropriates to each term its exact meaning, and fixes the limits to which in its application it ought to be confined.

such a society can accomplish the great object which I have in view, what may we not expect from the institution which I now establish,