Charles de Pougens

Marie-Charles-Joseph de Pougens , known as Charles de Pougens or Charles Pougens , born with Paris the August 15th 1755 and died in Vauxbuin the December 19th 1833, is a man of letters and printer and publisher French.

Reached blindness at the 24 years age, it is not devoted any less to one extraordinary literary activity as an author, translator, lexicographer, editor and a printer, and its fame is such as it is elected member of 38 French Academies and foreign.

Biography

With saying marchioness of Créquy, Charles de Pougens would be the natural son of the Prince de Conti. At all events, entrusted to the care of a certain Mrs Beaugé, it profits from a very neat education. He very early studies the music and the languages; a pupil of Jean-Baptiste Greuze gives him courses of drawing and Jean-Jacques Bachelier of the courses of painting. Its heat being studied is exceptional:

I had been reduced to four hours of sleep. To hold me waked up I took to ten cups of coffee and I threw a strong salt pinch in the last in order to give him more activity. Nineteen work hours, except the days when I was obliged to go supper at Mr. prince de Conti, then count of Walk. Mrs Beaugé was opposed, like reason, with these forced days before; but I flew of the ends of candle which I hid in a large case, then with the help of a small lighter I lit my modest luminary. In short, I soothsayers rather strong in the various kinds of old, modern, national and foreign literature.

In 1776, it is sent to Rome, where one intends it for the diplomacy and where it starts to write its Trésor of the origins and reasoned grammatical Dictionnaire of the French language . Its talents of painter make it admit with the Italian Academy of the Art schools. At the time of an epidemic of small pox in 1779, it falls seriously sick and loses the sight. Of return to Paris, it starts to compose of the tests on varied subjects. In 1786, it goes on mission diplomatic to London where, while continuing its linguistic research, it attends the knight of Éon and is made treat the eyes without success by the count de Cagliostro. A pneumonia the constrained one definitively to return to Paris in 1789. He works with a drama, Julie, or the Nun of Nimes , which is read by Talma in the literary living rooms. He binds to the philosophical , corresponds with Rousseau and publishes works of of Alembert.

When the Révolution occurs, he escapes repressions from the Terreur, but he is ruined by the depreciation of the Assignat S and the end of the royal pensions. To remain, it is made translator, then launches out in 1793 in the trade of the books. Through perseverance, it goes up in a few years one of the first houses of commission of bookstore of Paris. It is charged to prepare the library which must embark the forwarding of Egypt. It directs a printing works which provides work to about fifty fathers. He is elected member of the Académie of the inscriptions and the humanities in 1799 and creates a literary journal, the Bilbiothèque Frenchwoman , in 1800. Its trade of bookstore however is put at evil by a series of bankruptcies and it must be solved to borrow. Napoleon, then first consul, advances a considerable sum to him.

In 1805, it goes to the Netherlands to go ahead of of English that it had known in London and with which it Marie. It is withdrawn two years later in the valley of Vauxbuin, close to Soissons, while continuing without slackening its activities of editor and author. It publishes in 1819 what it calls a “specimen” of its major work, that is to say 500 pages of this dictionary for which it has, says it, “joined together more than five hundred and thousand quotations or examples drawn from the principal French writers and who are intended to extend the various meanings of the words of our language. ” But he dies of apoplexy before to have been able to complete his work. Emile Littré, which draws from the manuscripts of Charles de Pougens preserved by the Institut of France to compose its famous Dictionnaire , pays homage in its foreword thus to him:

I must about it say as much Pougens. He is of our century; it had projected a Trésor of the origins of the French language ; a Spécimen was published by it in 1819, and two volumes, under the title of French Archéologie , of it were drawn. To prepare there, it had made extracts of a great number of authors of every century; its examinations are immense; they fill nearly one hundred folio volumes; it is the library of the Institute which preserves them, and they are there only since two or three years; I throw the eyes there as I print, and with this help I strengthen more than one article, I filled more than one gap. The manuscripts of Curne of Holy-Palaye and Pougens are treasures open to which wants to draw there; but one cannot draw there without thanking those which left them to us.

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