Annual public meeting of the Académie Française
of Thursday 11 November 1875.

Report by the Académie's perpetual secretary, Mr Henri Patin, on the 1875 competitions.

Gentlemen,

We cannot inaugurate today the triennial prize founded by M. Guizot to encourage and reward fine critical works, either on the great periods of French literature, or on the lives and works of its great writers, without experiencing renewed and painful regret. [...] However, after careful consideration, the Académie's choice fell on the in every respect considerable work that a learned professor at the École des Chartes, M. Léon Gautier, has devoted specifically to the Roland's Song. [...] Mr Léon Gautier has given us what we were entitled to expect from him. We owe him, after other publishers no doubt, other interpreters, of whom it would be unfair not to take great account, as he himself does, a text of the Roland's Song, It has been skilfully reconstructed using the rigorous procedures and skilful resources of modern criticism, faithfully and elegantly translated, and extensively commented on in a variety of forms. [...]

The first award that we are given to make of the prize instituted by M. Guizot is, by a happy coincidence, an indirect tribute to the memory of the founder. It was M. Guizot who, in 1833, during his first ministry, gave M. Francisque Michel the task of copying it at Oxford and publishing it; it is to him that France and literate Europe owe it. If, in accordance with our wishes, his life had been prolonged enough for him to preside over the first application of his generous provisions, we have no doubt that he himself would have proposed to our choice the skilful interpreter of the Roland's Song. As a judge of Mr Léon Gautier for several years in the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, he has always taken a keen interest in his work, and more recently showed his esteem for it when, in his latest work, which was so sadly interrupted, he recalled the disaster of Roncesvalles, first from history and then from legend, and even quoted a few stanzas from the old poem, borrowing the translation from Mr Léon Gautier's book. Mr Léon Gautier has the right to believe that he received this noble Guizot prize, which he was the first to have the honour of winning, from Mr Guizot himself [...].