The Academy has also undertaken to discover and bring together materials for forming the history of the national literature and an example of this activity is the article entitled Francisco Terrazas and other poets of the Sixteenth Century. Señor Don Francisco Pimentel, member de numero of this corporation has taken the lead in this and has, unaided, written that history and has begun to print it.
With the publication of the last Dictionary of the language, by the Royal Spanish Academy, the Mexican Academy considered the lexicographic work, which had been entrusted to it, as completed; not so with that which it had undertaken for forming a Diccionario de Provincialismos (Dictionary of Provincialisms), which should contain, in addition to those current throughout the Republic, those which have been limited to a certain State or to a district of whatever extent and importance. In order not to delay the publication of this Lexicon, it was decided, as soon as items were secured under each letter of the alphabet, to give the list at once to the press; then to make as many more, with new alphabets, as might be necessary.
The Venezuelan Academy, Correspondent of the Royal Spanish Academy, notified us promptly of its inauguration on the 26th and 27th of July, 1883, the Director being His Excellency, Señor General Don Antonio Guzmán Blanco, then President of that Republic. The Mexican Academy was delighted with such agreeable news and gave a cordial welcome to the Venezuelan. Later that learned body proposed the establishment between the two Academies of an exchange of national printed works and manuscripts of value for literary merit. The Mexican Academy consented with pleasure and later sent such parts of its Memorias as were not exhausted to that of Venezuela, and also to those of Ecuador and Colombia.
The Spanish Academy has given ours constant tokens of esteem and kindness, now, by accepting our additions and emendations to the Dictionary; now, in sending its diplomas of foreign correspondents to those individuals, whom the Mexican Academy recommended; and, again, by naming members for newly-established seats or by filling the chairs left vacant by the death of some Academicians.
Unhappily, there has hardly been a year which has not been mournfully marked by the loss of one or more members of this body....
Being desirous of knowing those provincialisms of each State which combine the conditions necessary for inclusion in the Diccionario, which it is forming, the Academy has considered it necessary to name as Academic Correspondents persons resident outside of the Capital, who are notable for their love of the Castilian tongue and for the knowledge of it which they possess. In this capacity, the following gentlemen belong to it: Señor Melesio Vázquez, Archdeacon of the Church of Tulancingo, Señor José María Oliver y Casares, residing in Campeche, and Señor Audormaro Molina, who resides in Merida.
In truth, the Mexican Academy has been able to do but little in behalf of our language and literature, but it can present in excuse the complete lack of all those means without which it is impossible to achieve the ends for which it was established.
The indispensable funds are lacking to the body and the time necessary for long and serious studies is lacking to the members. Those who compose it do not live entirely by literary pursuits; some give their chief attention to their professional occupations, others to the direction of affairs—personal or other—others, finally, to the discharge of high offices in State or Church.
Academies are, usually, liberally subsidized by their governments; they count upon their own sources of support, and those who compose them are suitably remunerated. The Mexican Academy lacks everything; there only remains to it the will to do what its scanty resources permit. Neither the poverty in which it lives, nor the little time at its disposition of its members and correspondents for carrying out the labors already begun, discourages it. Constant in its purposes, it will continue its labors, slow, it is true, but never interrupted; it will continue, by preference, to collect materials for the Diccionario de Provincialismos, and in a day, perhaps not very distant, will thus make known how the Castilian language is spoken in Mexico.