CHAPTER I

Transcriber's Notes:

Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been silently corrected. A list

of other changes made can be found at the end of the book. Footnotes

were sequentially numbered and placed at the end of each chapter. The

page headers of the book on the odd numbered pages have been marked as

[Header]. For this text version, diacritical marks that cannot be

represented in plain text are shown in the following manner:

Ligature [oe] is encoded as oe.

p. 87: [O] o with macron above (dOucement).

[E] e with macron above (doucemEnt).

p. 283: [^] upside down V.

Mark up: _italics_

=bold=

PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

FRENCH SERIES No. III

THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN ENGLAND

Published by the University of Manchester at THE UNIVERSITY PRESS (H.

M. McKECHNIE, Secretary) 12 LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.

LONDON: 39 Paternoster Row

NEW YORK: 443-449 Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street

CHICAGO: Prairie Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street

BOMBAY: 8 Hornby Road

CALCUTTA: 6 Old Court House Street

MADRAS: 167 Mount Road

THE TEACHING AND CULTIVATION OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN ENGLAND DURING

TUDOR AND STUART TIMES

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ON THE PRECEDING PERIOD

BY

KATHLEEN LAMBLEY, M.A.

_Lecturer in French in the University of Durham_

_Sometime Assistant Lecturer in French in the University of Manchester_

MANCHESTER

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

12 LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, ETC.

1920

PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER No. CXXIX

_All rights reserved._

PREFACE

The present work, begun during the author's tenure of a Faulkner

Fellowship in the University of Manchester, and completed in subsequent

years, is an endeavour to trace the history of the teaching and use of

French in England during a given epoch, ending with the Revocation of

the Edict of Nantes and the Revolution of 1689, which events mark the

beginning of a new period in the study of the French language in this

country. No attempt has been made to treat the wider topic of French

influence in England in its literary and social aspects (this has

already been done by competent hands), though this side of the question

is naturally touched upon occasionally by way of reference or

illustration.

I gladly take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to Professor

L. E. Kastner, at whose suggestion this investigation was undertaken,

for his generous assistance, and the unfailing interest he has shown in

my work during the whole course of its preparation. I am likewise

considerably indebted to Dr. Phoebe Sheavyn for helpful criticism and

advice, to Professor Tout for kindly reading through the introductory

chapter, and to Mr. J. Marks for a careful revision of the proofs and

many useful indications. I owe a great deal to my father also, whose

sympathetic advice and encouragement did much to lighten my task. Nor

can I close this list of acknowledgments without recording my obligation

to the Secretary of the Press, Mr. H. M. McKechnie, for the valuable

assistance he has so freely given me during the progress of this volume

through the Press.

KATHLEEN LAMBLEY.

DURHAM, _January 1920_.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER I PAGE

THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES 3

French grammars in mediaeval England--The use of the French

language--Latin, French, and English vocabularies--French at the

Universities--Popularity of French in the thirteenth century--Ceases

to be a vernacular in England--Treatises for teaching French--A

treatise on French verbs--The _Orthographia Gallica_--The _Tractatus

Orthographiae_--T. H. Parisiis studentis--Walter de

Bibbesworth--French in the schools and Universities--The fourteenth

century--Treatises on French--The _Nominale_--Model letters--Recovery

of English in the second half of the fourteenth

century--Deterioration of Anglo-French--English in official documents

and correspondence--Decline in use of French.

CHAPTER II

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 26

Triumph of continental French over Anglo-French--"Doux françois de

Paris" a foreign language--Standard of French taught in

England--_Femina_--Treatises on Grammar--Barton's

_Donait_--Epistolaries--Books of conversation in French--The

Cambridge manuscript in French and English--First printed books for

teaching French--Dialogues in French and English--Caxton, Wynkyn de

Worde, and Pynson--French by conversation--Approaching improvement in

the standard of French taught in England--Palsgrave's Grammar.

PART II

TUDOR TIMES

CHAPTER I

THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AT COURT AND AMONG THE NOBILITY 61

French at the Court of the Tudors--English neglected by

foreigners--Latin a spoken language--Defective pronunciation of the

English--Interest in modern languages awakened--French holds the

first place--Its use in correspondence and in official documents--The

French of Henry VIII., his courtiers, and the ladies--Of Anne Boleyn

and the other Queens--Of the royal family, Edward, Mary, and

Elizabeth--French tutors--Bernard André--French Grammars--Alexander

Barclay's _Introductory_--Practice and Theory--Pierre Valence, tutor

to the Earl of Lincoln--His _Introductions in French_--Fragment of a

Grammar at Lambeth--French Humanists as Language masters--Bourbon and

Denisot--England and the _Pléiade_.

CHAPTER II

FRENCH TUTORS AT COURT--GILES DUWES--JOHN PALSGRAVE--JEAN BELLEMAIN 86

French tutors at Court--John Palsgrave and Giles Duwes--Palsgrave's

_Esclarcissement_--The pronunciation of French--His second and third

books--The vocabulary--The _Introductorie_ of Duwes--His

Dialogues--The methods of the two teachers--Dates of composition and

editions--Attitude of the two teachers to each other--Duwes on

English teachers of French--Palsgrave's claims--Palsgrave's

acquaintance with French literature--Incidents in Duwes's career in

England--His royal pupils--Palsgrave's teaching career--Mary Tudor

his pupil--The Duke of Richmond, Gregory Cromwell, etc.--Palsgrave in

the North, at Oxford, and in London--Jean Bellemain, tutor to Edward

VI.--The King's French exercises--Intercourse with Calvin--Bellemain

on French orthography--French tutor to Elizabeth--Her translations

from the French--A. R. Chevallier.

CHAPTER III

THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS REFUGEES ON THE TEACHING OF FRENCH IN

ENGLAND--OPENINGS FOR THEM AS TEACHERS--DEMAND FOR TEXT-BOOKS--FRENCH

SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND 114

Effects of the persecution of the Protestants on the teaching of

French in England--Protestant refugees--Registers and returns of

aliens--French churches in London--Reception and treatment of

foreigners--Incivility of the common people--Courtesy of the

gentry--Refugees received into English families--French in polite

education--French tutors and text-books--Converse with

foreigners--Shakespeare's French--Professional schoolmasters--No

opening in the grammar schools--French schools--Du Ploich's

school--His Treatise in French and English and method of

teaching--His works in manuscript--Claude Holyband--His _French

Schoolemaister_ and _French Littleton_--His French school--Holyband

as private tutor--His method of teaching--Schools in connection with

the French churches--Schools at Canterbury and elsewhere--Saravia's

school at Southampton--Joshua Sylvester--Place of French in the

public schools of Scotland--In the parish and private schools--No

French grammars produced in Scotland.

CHAPTER IV

HUGUENOT TEACHERS OF FRENCH--OTHER CLASSES OF FRENCH TEACHERS--RIVALRIES

IN THE PROFESSION--THE "DUTCH" AND ENGLISH TEACHERS 155

Importance of the Huguenot teachers in London--St. Paul's Churchyard

the centre of the profession--The group of Normans--Robert

Fontaine--Jacques Bellot--His French and English grammars, and

_Jardin de Vertu_--The _French Methode_--G. de La Mothe--His French

Alphabet and method of teaching--French teachers from the

Netherlands--Roman Catholic schoolmasters--Objections raised against

French teachers--The right of the English to teach French--John

Eliote--His attack on French teachers--His love of Rabelais and debt

to French literature--His 'merrie vaine'--The _Ortho-Epia Gallica_

and his other works.

CHAPTER V

METHODS OF TEACHING FRENCH--LATIN AND FRENCH--FRENCH AND ENGLISH

DICTIONARIES--STUDY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 179

Usual methods of learning French--Reading and

translation--Pronunciation--Rules of grammar--Importance of

'practice'--Latin and French text-books--Contrast of methods--Grammar

and Practice--Books in French and English--French by

translation--French dictionaries--Holyband's Dictionaries--Dictionary

printed by Harrison--A place given to French in some Latin

dictionaries--Veron--Baret--John Higgins--French-Latin

dictionaries--Cotgrave's great French-English Dictionary--Sherwood's

English-French Dictionary--Howell's editions of Cotgrave--The reading

of French literature--Attitude of French teachers--Favourite

authors--Histories and Memoirs of military life for soldiers and

statesmen.

CHAPTER VI

FRENCH AT THE UNIVERSITIES 198

Latin the language of the Universities--Retention of the use of

French formulae--Modern languages read--French a relaxation from

'severer studies'--French tutors and French grammars--Morlet's

_Janitrix_--French grammars written in Latin--Antonio de Corro--John

Sanford--Wye Saltonstall--Henry Leighton--French grammarians and

teachers at Oxford--Robert Farrear--Pierre Bense--French teachers at

Cambridge--Gabriel du Grès at Cambridge and Oxford--On the teaching

of French--French at the Universities at the time of the

Restoration--The French of the Universities and of the fashionable

world--French at the Inns of Court--One-sidedness of the University

curriculum--Steps taken to supplement it.

CHAPTER VII

THE STUDY OF FRENCH BY ENGLISH TRAVELLERS ABROAD 211

Travel in France and on the Continent--In the suite of

ambassadors--Children in France--Course of studies--Girls in

France--Objections to children being sent to France--France and

Italy--Protests against travel--Prejudices against travel--Preference

for France--Necessity of the French language--The travelling

tutor--The age for travel--Literati as travelling tutors--Travel

without a governor--Books on travel--'Methods' of travel--The study

of French--Dallington and Moryson--Study of French before

travel--French 'by rote'--Language masters for travellers--French

grammars for travellers--Charles Maupas of Blois and his son--Antoine

Oudin--Other grammars--Père Chiflet--The 'exercises'--Travellers at

the Universities--At the Protestant Academies--Geneva--Isaac

Casaubon--The 'idle traveller'--The 'beau'--Affectations of newly

returned travellers--Commendation and censure of travel.

CHAPTER VIII

THE STUDY OF FRENCH AMONG MERCHANTS AND SOLDIERS 239

Merchants and the study of French--Text-books for

merchants--Relations with the Netherlands--The 'book from

Anvers'--Barlement's book of dialogues--Meurier's manuals for

teaching French to the English in Antwerp--The study of French in the

Netherlands--French for soldiers--The Verneys--John Wodroeph--The

difficulty of the French language--Necessity of rules as well as

practice--_The Marrow of the French Tongue_.

PART III

STUART TIMES

CHAPTER I

FRENCH AT THE COURTS OF JAMES I. AND CHARLES I.--FRENCH STUDIED BY THE

LADIES--FRENCH PLAYERS IN LONDON--ENGLISH GENERALLY IGNORED BY

FOREIGNERS 259

The French language in England in the time of the early Stuarts--In

the royal family--French tutors--John Florio--Guy Le

Moyne--Massonet--Sir Robert Le Grys--French among the

ladies--Erondelle's _French Garden_ for English ladies--His

dialogues--His career as a teacher--His earlier works--The French

Queen of England--French plays in London--The English language

neglected by foreigners--English literature ignored in

France--English players abroad--The study of English--English

grammars for foreigners in England--French teachers and merchants

further the study of English--Provision for teaching English in the

Netherlands and in France.

CHAPTER II

FRENCH GRAMMARS--BOOKS FOR TEACHING LATIN AND FRENCH--FRENCH IN PRIVATE

INSTITUTIONS 281

Robert Sherwood, teacher of French and English--His school and

_French Tutour_--William Colson, another English teacher--His

'method' and writings--Maupas's French grammar in England--William

Aufeild--How to study French--The _Flower de Luce_--Laur du Terme on

the teaching of French--Paul Cogneau's French grammar--His

method--Continued use of the sixteenth-century French grammars--Latin

and French--Latin school-books adapted to teaching French--Books for

teaching Latin and French together--The _Janua_ of Comenius--Wye

Saltonstall--De Grave--French in private institutions--The _Museum

Minervae_--Gerbier's Academy--French in schools for ladies.

CHAPTER III

THE "LITTLE BLOIS" IN LONDON 301

The Blois group of French teachers--Claude Mauger and his French

grammar--Its popularity and development--Mauger's Letters--Other

writings--Life in London--Teaches English--Mauger's method of

teaching--Mauger at Paris--The demand for his grammar abroad--Paul

Festeau--His French and English grammars--Editions and

contents--Pierre Lainé--His French grammar--Encouragement of the

study of French literature.

CHAPTER IV

THE FRENCH TEACHING PROFESSION AND METHODS OF STUDYING THE

LANGUAGE 319

Vogue of French romances in England--Dorothy Osborne--Pepys on French

literature--His French books--French text-books and the _précieux_

spirit--William Herbert--His criticism of the French teaching

profession--Rivalry among teachers--Need for protection--Herbert's

later works--His early career in England--Quarrels with a minister of

the French church--English gentry at the French church--Pepys a

regular attender--French teachers encourage the practice--The method

of 'grammar and rote'--French 'by rote'--Examples of how French was

studied--Latin by grammar--Calls for reform--The case against

grammar--French taught on the 'right method'--Attempts to teach Latin

on the same lines as French--Contrast between the learning of Latin

in England 'by grammar' and of French in France 'by rote.'

CHAPTER V

THE TOUR IN FRANCE 341

The Protestant schools and Academies--A group of English students at

Saumur--Travellers at the French Universities--A method of

travel--Attitude of the French teachers to the tour in France--Guide

books--Routes followed--Favourite resorts for study--_Auberges_ and

_pensions_--Language masters in France--Grammars for

travellers--Howell's instructions for travellers--Suitable books for

students--The 'Grand' and 'Petit' Tour in

France--Paris--Inexperienced young travellers--Sir John Reresby in

France.

CHAPTER VI

GALLOMANIA AFTER THE RESTORATION 361

Gallomania in England after the Restoration--The royal family in

France--Their knowledge of the language--English courtiers and gentry

in France--Men of letters in France--French and the French at the

English court after the Restoration--French 'salons' London--French

valets, cooks, dancing masters, tailors--The French language--French

among the ladies--The 'Frenchified' lady--The 'beaux' or English

'monsieurs'--French influence at the theatre--Popularity of French

actors in London.

CHAPTER VII

THE TEACHING OF FRENCH AND ITS POPULARITY AFTER THE RESTORATION 381

French grammars after the Restoration--Pierre de Lainé, tutor to the

children of the Duke of York--The _Princely Way to the French

Tongue_--Guy Miège--His Dictionaries--His French Grammars--His method

of teaching--Rote and grammar--Miège's other works--Other French

Grammars--Pierre Berault--The universality of French--Supremacy over

Latin in the world of fashion and diplomacy--Position of French in

the educational world--The classics read in French--'All learning now

in French'--French recognized by writers on education--Projects for

reformed schools--Numerous French schools in and about

London--Villiers' school at Nottingham--Academies for

ladies--Academies for training gentlemen in the necessary social

accomplishments and for business--Effects of the Revocation of the

Edict of Nantes.

APPENDICES

I

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF MANUALS AND GRAMMARS FOR TEACHING FRENCH TO THE

ENGLISH 403

II

BIBLIOGRAPHY, ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY, OF MANUALS FOR TEACHING THE

FRENCH LANGUAGE TO THE ENGLISH, FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH

CENTURY TO THE END OF THE STUART PERIOD 410

INDEX 429

PART I

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER I

THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES

The first important grammar of the French language was printed in

England and written by an Englishman. This enterprising student was John

Palsgrave, "natyf de Londres et gradué de Paris," whose work, entitled

_L'Esclarcissement de la langue francoyse_, was published in 1530. It is

an enormous quarto of over a thousand pages, full of elaborate, detailed

and often obscure rules, written in English in spite of the French

title. It was no doubt the solid value and exhaustiveness of Palsgrave's

work which won for it the reputation of being the earliest grammar of

the French language.[1] Yet Palsgrave himself informs us that such was

not the case, though he claims to be the first to lay down 'absolute'

rules for the language.

The kings of England, he declares, have never ceased to encourage "suche

clerkes as were in theyr tymes, to prove and essay what they by theyr

dylygence in this matter myght do." "This like charge," he continues,

"have dyvers others had afore my dayes ... many sondrie clerkes have for

their tyme taken theyr penne in hande.... Some thyng have they in

writing lefte behynde them concerning into this mater, for the ease and

furtheraunce as well of suche as shilde in lyke charge after them

succede, as of them whiche from tyme to tyme in that tong were to be

instructed ... takyng light and erudition of theyr studious labours

whiche in this matter before me have taken paynes to write.... I dyd my

effectuall devoire to ensertche out suche bokes as had by others of this

mater before my tyme ben compyled, of which undouted, after enquery and

ensertche made for them dyvers came into my handes as well suche whose

authors be yet amongst us lyveng, as suche whiche were of this mater by

other sondrie persons longe afore my dayes composed."

The living predecessors to whom Palsgrave refers--authors of short works

of small philological value, but of great interest to-day as evidence of

the wide use of the French language in England--were likewise acquainted

with earlier works on the subject. Giles Duwes, tutor in French to Henry

VIII. and other members of the royal family, frequently invokes the

authority of the 'olde grammar.' The poet Alexander Barclay, in his

French Grammar of 1521, informs us that "the said treatyse hath ben

attempted of dyvers men before my dayes," and that he had "sene the

draughtes of others" made before his time; moreover, in times past, the

French language "hath ben so moche set by in England that who hath ben

ignorant in the same language hath not ben reputed to be of gentyll

blode. In so moche that, as the cronycles of englande recorde, in all

the gramer scoles throughout englande small scolars expounded theyr

construccyons bothe in Frenche and Englysshe."

Thus the French grammarians in England in the early sixteenth century

were acquainted with, and to some extent indebted to, a series of

mediaeval treatises on the French language,--a type of work which, even

at the time they wrote, was unknown on the Continent.[2] That England,

before other countries, took on herself the study of the French

language, was the result of events which followed the Conquest. From

that time French had taken its place by the side of English as a

vernacular. It was the language of the upper classes and landed gentry,

the cultivated and educated; English was used by the masses, while all

who read and wrote knew Latin, the language of clerks and scholars. For

nearly three centuries after the Conquest almost all writings of any

literary value produced in England were in French, though the bulk of

composition was in Latin; English never ceased to be written, but was

used in minor works for the most part.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that from an early date Latin

was at times construed or translated into French[3] as well as English

in the grammar schools, both languages serving as vernaculars. There are

still extant examples of this custom,[4] dating from the twelfth

century; for instance, a version of the psalter, in which the French

words are placed above the Latin without any regard to the order of the

French sentence.[5] Others are found in some of the first vocabularies

written for the purpose of teaching Latin,[6] which consist of lists of

words grouped round subjects and arranged, as a rule, in sentence form.

Two of these works seem to have been particularly well known, judging

from the number of manuscripts still in existence--those of the English

scholars, Alexander Neckam (1157-1217) and John de Garlande, both of

whom were indebted to France for most of their learning. Neckam, who in

1180 had attained celebrity as a Professor of the University of Paris,

was the author of a Latin Vocabulary--_De Utensilibus_--which was

glossed in Anglo-French.[7] In this he enumerates the various parts of a

house and the occupations and callings of men, and gives scenes from

feudal and agricultural life. The _Dictionarius_ (_c._ 1220) of John de

Garlande, a student of Oxford and Paris, and one of the first professors

of Toulouse University, deals roughly with the same topics.[8] It is

glossed in both French and English--the sign of a later period--as was

also a Latin vocabulary or _nominale_ of the names of plants,[9] dating

from a little later in the same century, though probably existing in

earlier manuscripts.

At the universities a decided preference for French was shown in the

rare occasions on which the use of a vernacular was allowed. The

speaking of French was encouraged in some of the colleges at both Oxford

and Cambridge, chiefly those belonging to the second set of

foundations.[10] The scholars and fellows of Oriel could use either

Latin or French in their familiar conversation and at meals. Similar

injunctions were in force at Exeter and Queen's. Among the Cambridge

colleges[11] the statutes of Peterhouse allow French to be used for

"just and reasonable cause"; at King's it was permitted on occasion, and

at Clare Hall French was countenanced only if foreigners were present as

visitors. At Pembroke, founded by a Frenchwoman, Mary de Valence,

special favour was shown to Frenchmen in the election of Fellows,

provided that their total number did not exceed a quarter of the whole

body.[12] The cosmopolitanism of the mediaeval centres of learning

encouraged a number of such French students to come to England. In 1259,

for instance, owing to the disturbed state of the University of Paris,

Henry III. invited the Paris students to come to England and take up

their abode wheresoever they pleased;[13] no doubt those who accepted

his invitation settled at one or other of the two English universities.

We also find in the Treaty of Bretigny (1360) a clause to the effect

that the subjects of the French and English kings should henceforth be

free to resume their intercourse and to enjoy mutually the privileges of

the universities of the two countries, "comme ils povoient faire avant

ces presentes guerres et comme ils font a present."[14] On the other

hand, the English frequented the French universities in large numbers;

at Paris in the thirteenth century they formed one of the four nations

which composed the University.[15] The authors of the early Latin

vocabularies, Alexander Neckam and John de Garlande, were both

connected with the University of Paris, while most of the other English

scholars of the period were indebted for much of their learning to the

same great centre. Many, no doubt, could have written with Garlande:

Anglia cui mater fuerat, cui Gallia nutrix

Matri nutricem praefero mente meam.[16]

In the thirteenth century French was still widely used in England. The

fact that the fusion between conquerors and conquered was then

complete,[17] and that at the same time French was very popular on the

Continent undoubtedly helped to make its position in England stronger.

It was then that the Italian Brunetto Latini wrote his _Livres dou

Tresor_ (1265), in French rather than in his native tongue, because

French was "plus delitable et plus commune à toutes gens." During the

same century French came to be used in correspondence on both sides of

the Channel.[18] Little by little it was recognized as the most

convenient medium for official uses, and the language most generally

known in these sections of society which had to administer justice.[19]

In the second half of the thirteenth century Robert of Gloucester

complained that there was no land "that holdeth not to its kindly speech

save Englonde only," admitting at the same time, however, that ignorance

of French was a serious disadvantage. An idea of the extent to which the

language was current in England may be gathered from the fact that in

1301 Edward I. caused letters from the Pope to be translated into French

so that they might be understood by the whole army,[20] and in the

previous year the author of the _Miroir des Justices_ wrote in French as

being the language "le plus entendable de la comun people." French,

indeed, appears to have been used among all classes, save the very

poorest;[21] some of the French literature of the time was addressed

more particularly to the middle classes.[22]

Nevertheless, as the thirteenth century advanced, French began to hold

its own with some difficulty. While it was in the unusual position of a

vernacular gradually losing its power as such, there appeared the

earliest extant treatise on the language. This, and those that followed

it, were to some extent lessons in the vernacular; yet not entirely, as

may be judged from the fact that they are set forth and explained in

Latin, the language of all scholarship. The first work on the French

language, dating from not later than the middle of the thirteenth

century, is in the form of a short Latin treatise on French

conjugations,[23] in which a comparison of the French with the Latin

tenses is instituted.[24] As it appeared at a time when French was

becoming the literary language of the law, and was being used freely in

correspondence, it may have been intended mainly for the use of clerks.

A treatise of considerably more importance composed towards the end of

the century, appears to have had the same purpose. That he did not

intend it exclusively for clerks, however, the author showed by adding

rules for pronunciation, syntax and even morphology as well as for

orthography. Like most of the early grammatical writings on the French

language, this _Orthographia Gallica_ is in Latin. The obscurity of many

of its rules, however, called forth commentaries in French which

appeared during the fourteenth century, and exceed the size of the

original work. The _Orthographia_ was a very popular work, as the number

of manuscripts extant and the French commentary prove. The different

copies vary considerably, and there is a striking increase in the number

of rules given; from being about thirty in the earliest manuscript, they

number about a hundred in the latest.[25]

It opens with a rule that when the first or middle syllable of a French

word contains a short _e_, _i_ must be placed before the _e_, as in

_bien_, _rien_, etc.--a curious, fumbling attempt to explain the

development of Latin free short _e_ before nasals and oral consonants

into _ie_. On the other hand, continues the author, _e_ acute need not

be preceded by _i_, as _tenez_. It is not surprising that these early

writers, in spite of much patient observation, should almost always have

failed to grasp fundamental laws, and group a series of corresponding

facts into the form of a general rule. We continually find rules drawn

up for a few isolated examples, with no general application. The most

striking feature in the treatment of French orthography in this work is

the continual reference to Latin roots, and the clear statement of the

principle that, wherever possible, the spelling of French words should

be based on that of Latin.

The _Orthographia_ does not by any means limit its observations to

spelling; there are also rules for pronunciation, a subject which in

later times naturally held a very important place in French grammars

written for the use of Englishmen, while orthography became one of the

chief concerns of French grammarians. That orthography received so much

attention at this early period in this country, is explained by the fact

that these manuals were partly intended for "clerks," who would

frequently have to write in French. As to the pronunciation, we find,

amongst others, the familiar rule that when a French word ending in a

consonant comes before another word beginning with a consonant, the

first consonant is not pronounced. An _s_ occurring after a vowel and

before an _m_, writes the author, in another rule, is not pronounced, as

in _mandasmes_, and _l_ coming after _a_, _e_, or _o_, and followed by a

consonant is pronounced like _u_, as in _m'almi_, _loialment_, and the

like. A list of synonyms[26] is also given, which throws some light on

the English pronunciation of French at this period, and there are also a

few hints for the translation of both Latin and English into French.

Nor are syntax and morphology neglected; rules concerning these are

scattered among those on orthography and pronunciation, with the lack of

orderly arrangement characteristic of the whole work. Thus we are told

to use _me_ in the accusative case, and _moy_ in all other cases; that

we should form the plural of verbs ending in _t_ in the singular by

adding _z_, as _il amet_, _il list_ become _vous amez_, _vous lisez_;

that when we ask any one for something, we may say _vous pri_ without

_je_, but that, when we do this, we should write _pri_ with a _y_, as

_pry_, and so on.

The claim of the _Orthographia Gallica_ to be the first extant work on

French orthography, has been disputed by another treatise, also written

in Latin, and known as the _Tractatus Orthographiae_. More methodically

arranged than the _Orthographia_, this work deals more particularly with

pronunciation and orthography.[27] It opens with a short introduction

announcing that here are the means for the youth of the time to make

their way in the world speedily and learn French pronunciation and

orthography. Each letter of the alphabet is first treated in turn,[28]

and then come a few more general observations. Like the author of the

_Orthographia_, the writer of the _Tractatus_ would have the spelling of

French words based on that of Latin whenever possible. He claims that

his own French is "secundum dulce Gallicum" and "secundum usum et modum

modernorum tam partibus transmarinis quam cismarinis." Though he

apparently places the French of England and the French of France on the

same footing, it is noteworthy that he carefully distinguishes between

the two.

The _Tractatus Orthographiae_ bears a striking resemblance to another

work of like nature, which is better known--the _Tractatus Orthographiae_

of Canon M. T. Coyfurelly, doctor in Law of Orleans[29]--and for some

time it was thought to be merely a rehandling of Coyfurelly's treatise

which did not appear till somewhere about the end of the fourteenth

century, if not later. But Coyfurelly admits that his work was based on

the labours of one 'T. H. Parisii Studentis,' and there appears, on

examination,[30] to be no doubt as to the priority of the anonymous

_Tractatus_ described above, which, on the contrary, is evidently the

treatise rehandled by Coyfurelly, and the work of 'T. H. Student of

Paris.' Besides being the original which Coyfurelly recast in his

_Tractatus_, it also appears that T. H. may reasonably dispute with the

author of the _Orthographia Gallica_, the honour of being the first in

the field. His work shows no advance on the rules given for

pronunciation in the _Orthographia_, while the orthography is of a

decidedly older stamp.

At about the same time as these two treatises on orthography, probably a

few years earlier, there was composed a work of similar purpose but very

different character. It is of particular interest, and shows that,

towards the end of the thirteenth century, French was beginning to be

treated as a foreign language; the French is accompanied by a partial

English gloss, and the author states that "touz dis troverez-vous primes

le Frauncois et pus le Engleys suaunt." The author, Gautier or Walter de

Bibbesworth,[31] was an Englishman, and appears to have mixed with the

best society of the day. He was a friend of the celebrated statesman of

the reign of Edward I., Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln. The only work by

which his name is known to-day, in addition to the treatise in question,

is a short piece of Anglo-Norman verse,[32] written on the occasion of

the expedition of Edward I. to the Holy Land in 1270, shortly before he

came to the throne. We gather from letters of protection granted him in

that year that Bibbesworth himself took part in this venture. In this

poem he is pictured discussing the Crusade with Lacy, and trying to

persuade his friend to take part in it. The name of Bibbesworth also

occurs several times[33] in official documents of no special interest,

and as late as 1302 a writ of Privy Seal was addressed to the Chancellor

suing for a pardon under the Great Seal to W. de Bibbesworth, in

consideration of his good services rendered in Scotland, for a breach of

the park of Robert de Seales at Ravenhall, and of the king's prison at

Colchester.[34]

Bibbesworth, however, interests us less as a crusader or a disturber of

public order, than as the author of a treatise for teaching the French

language, entitled _Le Treytyz qe mounsire Gauter de Bibelesworthe fist

a ma dame Dyonisie de Mounchensy[35] pur aprise de langwage_. The large

number of manuscripts still in existence[36] suggest that it was a

popular text-book among the children of the higher classes of society.

The treatise reproduces, as might be expected, the chief characteristics

of the vocabularies for teaching Latin. In addition to giving a

collection of words and phrases arranged in the form of a narrative, it

also incidentally aims at imparting some slight grammatical information.

Its contents are of a very practical character, and deal exclusively

with the occurrences and occupations of daily life. Beginning with the

new-born child, it tells in French verses how it is to be nursed and

fed. Rime was no doubt introduced to aid the memory, as the pupil would,

in all probability, have to learn the whole by heart. The French is

accompanied by a partial interlinear English gloss, giving the

equivalent of the more difficult French words. This may, perhaps, be

taken as an indication of the extent to which French was regarded as a

foreign language.[37]

After describing the life of the child during its earliest infancy,

Bibbesworth goes on to tell how it is to be taught French as soon as it

can speak, "that it may be better learned in speach and held up to scorn

by none":

Quaunt le enfes ad tel age

Ke il set entendre langage,

Primes en Fraunceys ly devez dire

Coment soun cors deyt descrivere,

Pur le ordre aver de moun et ma,

Toun et ta, soun et sa,

_better lered_

Ke en parlole seyt meut apris

_scorned_

E de nul autre escharnys.

In accordance with this programme the parts of the human body, which

almost invariably forms the central theme in this type of manual, are

enumerated. Special care is taken to distinguish the genders and cases,

to teach the children "Kaunt deivunt dire _moun_ et _ma_, _soun_ et

_sa_, _le_ et _la_, _moy_ et _jo_ . . .," and to explain how the meaning

of words of similar sound often depends on their gender:

_lippe and an hare_

Vous avet la levere et le levere,

_a pound_ _a book_

Et la livere et le livere.

La levere si enclost les dens;

Le levere en boys se tent dedens;

La livere sert en marchaundye;

Le livere nous aprent clergye.

Throughout Bibbesworth seizes every opportunity to point out

distinctions of gender of this kind, regardless, it appears, of the

difference between the definite and indefinite articles. When the pupil

can describe his body, the teacher proceeds to give him an account of

"all that concerns it both inside and out" ("kaunt ke il apent dedens et

deores"), that is of its clothing and food:

Vestet vos draps mes chers enfauns,

Chaucez vos brays, soulers, e gauns;

Mettet le chaperoun, covrez le chef, etc.

--a passage which illustrates the practical nature of the treatise,

Bibbesworth's aim being to teach children to know the properties of the

things they see ("les propretez des choses ke veyunt").

When the child is clothed, Bibbesworth next feeds him, giving a full

account of the meals and the food which is provided, and, by way of

variety, at the end of the dinner, he teaches his pupil the names given

to groups of different animals, and of the verbs used to describe their

various cries. ("Homme parle, cheval hennist," etc.). By this time the

child is ready to observe Nature, and to learn the terms of

husbandry,[38] and the processes by which his food is produced. From the

fields he passes to the woods and the river, where he learns to hunt and

to fish, subjects which naturally lead to the introduction of the French

names of the seasons, and of the beasts and birds that are supposed to

present themselves to his view.

During the whole of this long category the verse form is maintained, and

the intention of avoiding a vocabulary pure and simple is manifest. How

superior this method was to the more modern lists of words separated

from the context is also evident. Besides giving a description of all

the objects with which the child comes in contact, and of all the

actions he has to perform, as well as examples for the distinctions of

genders and of _moy_ and _jo_--difficulties for which he makes no

attempts to draw up rules--Bibbesworth claims for his work that it

provides gentlemen with adequate instruction for conversational purposes

("tot le ordre en parler e respoundre ke checun gentyshomme covent

saver"). And as he did not wish to neglect any of the items of daily

life, he finally gives a description of the building of a house and

various domestic arrangements, ending with a description of an old

English feast with its familiar dish, the boar's head:

Au primer fust apporté

_a boris heued_

La teste de un sengler tot armé,

_the snout_ _wit baneres of flurs_

E au groyn le colere en banere;

E pus veneysoun, ou la fourmenté;

Assez par my la mesoun

_tahen of gres tyme_

De treste du fermeyson.

Pus avyent diversetez en rost,

Eit checun autre de cost,

_Cranes_, _pokokes_, _swannes_

Grues, pounes, e cygnes,

_Wilde ges_, _gryses_ (_porceaus_), _hennes_,

Owes, rosées, porceus, gelyns;

Au tercez cours avient conyns en gravé,

Et viaunde de Cypre enfundré,

De maces, e quibibes, e clous de orré,

Vyn blanc e vermayl a graunt plenté.

_wodekok_

Pus avoyunt fesauns, assez, et perdriz,

_Feldefares larkes_

Grives, alowes, e pluviers ben rostez;

E braoun, e crispes, e fritune;

Ke soucre roset poudra la temprune.

Apres manger avyunt a graunt plenté

Blaunche poudre, ou la grosse dragé,

Et d'autre nobleie a fusoun,

Ensi vous fynys ceo sermoun;

Kar de fraunceis i ad assez,

De meynte manere dyversetez,

Dount le vous fynys, seynurs, ataunt

A filz Dieu vous comaund.

Ici finest la doctrine monsire Gauter De Byblesworde.

As time went on a conscious effort was made to retain the use of the

French language in England. Higden, writing at about the middle of the

fourteenth century,[39] informs us that English was then neglected for

two reasons: "One is bycause that children than gon to schole lerne to

speke first Englysshe and then ben compelled constrewe ther lessons in

Frenssh"; "Also gentilmens children ben lerned and taught from theyr

yougthe to speke frenssh.[40] And uplandish men will counterfete and

likene them self to gentilmen and arn besy to speke frensshe for to be

more sette by. Wherefor it is sayd by a common proverbe Jack wold be a

gentilmen if he coude speke frensshe."

At the University of Oxford, likewise, the Grammar masters were enjoined

to teach the boys to construe in English and in French, "so that the

latter language be not forgotten."[41] The same university gave some

slight encouragement to the study of French. There were special teachers

who, although not enjoying the privileges of those lecturing in the

usual academic subjects, were none the less recognised by the

University. They had to observe the Statutes, and to promise not to give

their lessons at times which would interfere with the ordinary lectures

in arts. The French teachers were under the superintendence of the

masters of grammar, and had to pay thirteen shillings a year to the

Masters in Arts to compensate them for any disadvantage they might

suffer from any loss of pupils; if there was only one teacher of French

he had to pay the whole amount himself. As for those learning "to

write, to compose, and speak French," they had to attend lectures in

rhetoric and grammar--the courses most akin to their studies[42]--and to

contribute to the maintenance of the lecturers in these subjects, there

being no ordinary lectures in French.

In the meantime, more treatises for teaching French appeared;

Bibbesworth's book soon found imitators, and early in the new century an

anonymous author, clearly an Englishman, made free use of Bibbesworth in

a treatise called _The Nominale sive Verbale in Gallicis cum expositione

ejusdem in Anglicis_.[43] This anonymous writer[44] however, thought it

necessary to make the interlinear English gloss much fuller than

Bibbesworth had done, which shows that French had become more of a

foreign language in the interval between the two works. He also placed

the English rendering after the French, instead of above it. The later

work differs further from the earlier in the order of the subject

headings, as well as by the introduction of a few new topics.

Enumerating the parts of the body,[45] as Bibbesworth had done, the

author proceeds to make his most considerable addition to the subjects

introduced by Bibbesworth in describing "la noyse et des faitz que homme

naturalment fait":

Homme parle et espire:

_Man spekyth & vndyth._

Femme teinge et suspire:

_Woman pantyth & syketh._

Homme bale et babeie:

_Man dravelith & wlaffyth._

Femme bale et bleseie:

_Woman galpyth & wlispyth._

He then describes all the daily actions and occupations of men:

Homme va a la herce:

_Man goth at the harewe._

Femme bercelet berce:

_Woman childe in cradel rokkith...._

Enfant sa lessone reherce:

_His lessone recordeth_,

and so on for about 350 lines. Other additions are of little

importance, and, for the rest, the author treats subjects first

introduced by Bibbesworth, though the wording often differs to a certain

extent.[46]

When, towards the end of the thirteenth century, French began to be used

in correspondence, need for instruction in French epistolary art arose;

and early in the fourteenth century guides to letter-writing in French,

in the form of epistolaries or collections of model letters, were

produced.[47] The letters themselves are given in French, but the

accompanying rules and instructions for composing them are in Latin.

French and Latin have changed rôles; in earlier times Latin had been

explained to school children by means of French. Forms for addressing

members of the different grades of society are supplied, from epistles

to the king and high state and ecclesiastical dignitaries down to

commercial letters for merchants, and familiar ones for private

individuals. Women, too, were not forgotten; we find similar examples

covering the same range--from the queen and the ladies of the nobility

to her more humble subjects. Each letter is almost invariably followed

by its answer, likewise in French. Some contain interesting references

to the great men or events of the day, but those of a more private

nature possess a greater attraction, and throw light on the family life

of the age. A letter from a mother to her son at school may be

quoted:[48]

Salut avesque ma beniçon, tres chier filz. Sachiez que je desire

grandement de savoir bons nouelles de vous et de vostre estat: car

vostre pere et moy estions a la faisance de ces lettres en bon

poynt le Dieu merci. Et sachiez que je vous envoie par le portour

de ces lettres demy marc pur diverses necessaires que vous en avez

a faire sans escient de vostre pere. Et vous pri cherement, beau

tres doulz filz, que vous laissez tous mals et folyes et ne hantez

mye mauvaise compagnie, car si vous le faitez il vous fera grant

damage, avant que vous l'aperceiverez. Et je vous aiderai selon mon

pooir oultre ce que vostre pere vous donnra. Dieus vous doint sa

beniçon, car je vous donne la mienne. . . .

From about the middle of the fourteenth century a feeling of discontent

with the prerogative of the French language in England becomes

prominent. The loss of the greater part of the French possessions, and

the continued state of hostilities with France during the reign of

Edward III. brought home forcibly to the English mind the fact that the

French were a distinct nation, and French a foreign tongue. This tardy

recovery is sufficient proof of the strong resistance which had to be

overcome. Chaucer is the greatest representative of the new movement.

"Let Frenchmen endite their quaint terms in French," he exclaims, "for

it is kindly to their mouths, but let us show our fantaisies in suche

words as we learned from our dames' tongues." His contemporary, Gower,

was less quick to discern the signs of the times. Of the four volumes of

his works, two are in Latin, one in French, and one in English; but the

order in which he uses these languages is instructive--first French,

then Latin, and lastly English. Some writers made a compromise by

employing a mixture of French and English.[49] French, however,

continued to hold an important place in prose writings until the middle

of the fifteenth century; but such works are of little literary value.

The reign of French as the literary language of England, as Chaucer had

been quick to discern, was approaching its end.

The same period is marked by a growing disrespect for Anglo-French as

compared with the French of France. The French of England, cut off from

the living source, had developed apart, and often with more rapidity

than the other French dialects on the Continent. What is more, the

language brought by the invaders was not a pure form of the Norman

dialect; men from various parts of France had joined in William's

expedition. The invaders, always called 'French' by their contemporaries,

brought in a strong Picard element; and in the twelfth century there

was a similar Angevin influence. Moreover, during Norman and Angevin

times, craftsmen and others immigrated to England, each bringing with

him the dialectal peculiarities of his own province.[50] Thus no regular

development of Anglo-French was possible, and it can hardly be regarded

as an ordinary dialect, notwithstanding its literary importance.[51]

This disparity in the quality of Anglo-French is illustrated in a

remarkable way by the literature of the period. Those who had received

special educational advantages, or had travelled on the Continent, spoke

and wrote French correctly; others used forms which contrasted pitiably

with continental French. Moreover, the fourteenth century saw the

triumph of the Île de France dialect in France; the other dialects

ceased, as a rule, to be used in literature,[52] and this change was not

without effect on Anglo-French, which shared their degradation. Chaucer

lets us know the poor opinion he had of the French of England; his

Prioress speaks French "full fayre and fetisly," but

After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,

For French of Paris was to her unknowe.

William Langland admits that he knew "no frenche in feith, but of the

ferthest ende of Norfolke."[53] As early as the thirteenth century

English writers had felt bound to apologize as Englishmen for their

French. Nor were their excuses superfluous in many cases; William of

Wadington, the author of the _Manuel des Pechiez_, for example,

wrote:[54]

De le françois ne del rimer

Ne me doit nuls hom blamer,

Car en Engleterre fu né

Et nurri lenz et ordiné.

Such apologies became all the more necessary as time went on. Even

Gower, whose French was comparatively pure,[55] owing no doubt to travel

in France in early life, deemed it advisable to explain that he wrote in

French for "tout le monde en general," and to ask pardon if he has not

"de François la faconde":

Jeo suis Englois si quier par tiele voie

Estre excusé.

At about the same time the anonymous author of the _Testament of Love_

finds fault with the English for their persistence in writing in bad

French, "of which speech the Frenchmen have as good a fantasy as we have

in hearing of Frenchmen's English."[56]

The notoriety of the French of Englishmen reached France. Indeed this

was a time when the English were more generally known in France than

they were to be for several hundreds of years afterwards--until the

eighteenth century. Englishmen filled positions in their possessions in

France, and during the long wars between the two countries in the reign

of Edward III., many of the English nobility resided in that country

with their families. Montaigne refers to traces of the English in

Guyenne, which still remained in the sixteenth century: "Il est une

nation," he writes in one of his Essays, "a laquelle ceux de mon

quartier ont eu autrefois si privée accointance qu'il reste encore en ma

maison aucune trace de leur ancien cousinage."[57] The opinions formed

by the French of the English were naturally anything but flattering. We

find them expressed in songs of the time.[58] But the recriminations

were mutual, and the English had already hit upon the epithet which for

centuries they applied to Frenchmen, and most other foreigners

indiscriminately:

Franche dogue dit un Anglois.

Vous ne faites que boire vin,

Si faisons bien dist le François,

Mais vous buvez le lunnequin. (bière.)[59]

Even in the _Roman de Renart_ we come across traces of familiarity with

English ways, and also of the English language.[60]

It is not surprising, then, that Anglo-French was a subject of remark in

France, especially when we remember that already in the thirteenth

century the provincial accents of the different parts of France herself

had been the object of some considerable amount of raillery.[61] The

English, says Froissart, a good judge, for he spent many years in

England, "disoient bien que le françois que ils avoient apris chies eulx

d'enfance n'estoit pas de telle nature et condition que celluy de France

estoit."[62] And this 'condition' was soon recognized as a plentiful

store for facetious remarks and parodies of all kinds. In the _Roman de

Jehan et Blonde_, the young Frenchman's rival, the Duke of Gloucester,

is made to appear ridiculous by speaking bad French; and one of the

tricks played by Renart on Ysengrin, in the _Roman de Renart_, is to

pretend he is an Englishman:[63]

Ez vos Renart qui le salue:

"Godehelpe," fait il, "bel Sire!

Non saver point ton reson dire."

And Ysengrin answers:

Et dex saut vos, bau dous amis!

Dont estes vos? de quel pais?

Vous n'estes mie nés de France,

Ne de la nostre connoissance.

A _fabliau_ of the fourteenth century[64] pictures the dilemma of two

Englishmen trying to make their French understood in France; one of them

is ill and would have some lamb:

Si tu avez un anel cras

Mi porra bien mengier ce croi.

His friend sets out to try to get the 'anel' or 'lamb'; but no one

understands him, and he becomes the laughing-stock of the villagers. At

last some one gives him a 'small donkey' instead of the desired 'agnel,'

and out of this he makes a dish for the invalid who finds the bones

rather large. In the face of a reputation such as this it is no wonder

that the English found additional encouragement to abandon the foreign

language and cultivate their own tongue.

English was also beginning to make its way into official documents.[65]

In 1362 the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament was pronounced

in English, and in the following year it was directed that all pleas in

the courts of justice should be pleaded and judged in English, because

French was "trope desconue en ledit realme." Despite that, the act was

very tardily obeyed, and English progressed but slowly, French

continuing to be written long after it ceased to be spoken in the Law

Courts. There were a few public documents issued in English at the end

of the century, but the Acts and Records of Parliament continued to be

written in French for many years subsequently. English first made its

way into the operative parts of the Statutes, and till 1503 the formal

parts were still written in French and Latin. Protests were made to

Henry VIII. against the continued use of French, "as thereby ys

testyfied our subjectyon to the Normannys"; yet it was not before the

eighteenth century that English was exclusively used in the Law Courts,

and for many years French, in its corrupt form, remained the literary

language of the English law. Till the seventeenth century works on

jurisprudence and reports on cases were mainly written in French. _Les

Cases de Gray's Inn_ shows French in accounts of discussions on

difficult legal cases as late as 1680.[66] Sir John Fortescue

(1394?-1476), Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, in his _De

Laudibus Legum Angliae_, suggests that this Law French is more correct

at bottom than ordinary spoken French, which, he contends, is much

"altered by common use, whereas Law French is more often writ than

spoken." In later times no such illusions prevailed. Swift thus

estimates the value of the three languages of the English Law:[67]

Then from the bar harangues the bench,

In English vile, and viler French,

And Latin vilest of the three.

At about the same time as Swift wrote, the 'frenchified' Lady, then in

fashion, who prided herself on her knowledge of the "language à la mode"

is described as being able to "keep the field against a whole army of

Lawyers, and that in their own language, French gibberish."[68] And long

after French ceased to be used in the Law many law terms and legal and

official phrases remained, and are still in use to-day.[69]

Anglo-French also lingered in some of the religious houses after it had

fallen into discredit elsewhere, and continued to do so in some cases

till the time of their dissolution. The rules and accounts of the

nunneries were more often in French than not.[70] And John ap Rhys,

visitor of monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII., wrote to Cromwell

regarding the monastery of Laycock in Wiltshire, that he had observed

one thing "worthy th'advertisement; the ladies have their Rule,

th'institutes of their Religion and the ceremonies of the same written

in the Frenche tongue, which they understand well and are very perfyt in

the same, albeit that it varieth from vulgar Frenche that is now used,

and is moche like the Frenche that the common Lawe is written in."[71]

During this same period English began to be used occasionally in

correspondence; but here again its progress was slow. Some idea of the

extent to which French was utilized for that purpose may be gathered

from the fact that three extant letters of William de Wykeham, addressed

to Englishmen, are all in that tongue. Not till the second and third

decades of the fifteenth century were English and French employed in

correspondence to an almost equal extent, and during the following

years, especially in the reign of Henry VI., English gradually became

predominant.[72] French remained in use longer in correspondence of a

public and official nature, but became more and more restricted to

foreign diplomacy.

Towards the middle of the fourteenth century, at the beginning of the

long wars with France, French lost ground in England in yet another

direction. Edward III. is said to have found it necessary to proclaim

that all lords, barons, knights, burgesses, should see that their

children learn French for political and military reasons;[73] and when

Trevisa translated Higden's _Polychronicon_, he wrote in correction of

the earlier chronicler's description of the teaching of French in the

grammar schools of England:[74] "This maner was moche used before the

grete deth (1349). But syth it is somdele chaunged. Now (_i.e._ 1387)

they leave all Frensch in scholes, and use all construction in Englisch.

Wherin they have advantage on way that they lerne the soner ther gramer.

And in another disadvantage. For nowe they lerne no Frenssh ne can none,

whiche is hurte for them that shall passe the see," and thus children of

the grammar schools know "no more French than knows their lefte heele."

Thus the custom of translating Latin into French passed out of use early

in the second half of the fourteenth century. No doubt there had been

signs of the approaching change in the preceding period, and it is of

interest here to notice that while Neckham's Latin vocabulary, which

dates from the second half of the twelfth century, is glossed in French

alone, that of Garlande, which belongs approximately to the third decade

of the following century, is accompanied by translations in both French

and English. In the universities, however, where French had been slower

in gaining a foothold, it remained longer; in the fifteenth century

teachers of French were still allowed to lecture there as they had done

previously, but it is to be noticed that in all the colleges founded

after the Black Death (1349), from which the change in the grammar

schools is dated, the regulations encouraging the speaking of French in

Hall are absent. The change appears also to have affected the higher

classes, who did not usually frequent the grammar schools and

universities, but depended on more private methods of instruction.

Trevisa here again adds a correction to the earlier chronicle, and

informs us that "gentylmen haveth now myche lefte for to teach their

children Frensch."

We thus witness the gradual disappearance of the effects of the Norman

Conquest in the history of the use of the French language in England.

The Conquest had made Norman-French the language of the Court, and to

some extent, of the Church; it had brought with it a French literature

which nearly smothered the national literature and replaced it

temporarily; it had led to the system of translating Latin into French

as well as into English in the schools. In the later fourteenth century

French was no longer the chief language of the Court, and the king spoke

English and was addressed in the same tongue. In the Church the

employment of French had been restricted and transitory, though, as has

been mentioned, it lingered in some of the monasteries until the

sixteenth century; yet Latin never found in it a serious rival in this

sphere, and the ecclesiastical department of the law never followed the

civil in the adoption of the use of French. How French lost ground in

the other spheres has already been traced: in all these cases its

employment may be regarded as a direct result of the Conquest.

This great event had also indirect results. French became the official

language of England, and the favourite medium of correspondence in the

thirteenth century, when the fusion between the two races was complete.

But it is highly improbable that French would have spread in these

directions if the Conquest had not in the first place made French the

vernacular of a considerable portion of Englishmen, and that the most

influential. With its use in official documents and in correspondence,

may be classed the slight encouragement French received at Oxford. In

all these spheres it remained longer than it had done where its status

had been a more direct result of the Conquest.

Meanwhile the desire to cultivate and imitate the French of France had

been growing stronger and stronger; and when, towards the end of the

fourteenth century, the older influences were getting feebler, and in

some cases had passed away, the influence of the continental French,

especially the French of Paris, now supreme over the other dialects,

became more and more marked. And it is this language which henceforth

Englishmen strove to learn, gradually relinquishing the corrupt idiom

with which for so long their name had been associated.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This was the opinion of Ames: "This seems to be the first grammar of

the French language in our own country, if not in Europe." Dibdin,

Herbert Ames's _Typographical Antiquities_, 1819, iii. p. 365.

[2] The grammar of Jacques Sylvius or Dubois appeared in 1531, a year

after Palsgrave's. No attempt at a theoretical treatment of the French

language appeared in France in the Middle Ages. There are, however, two

Provençal ones extant. (F. Brunot, "Le Français à l'étranger," in L.

Petit de Julleville's _Histoire de la langue et de la littérature

française_, ii. p. 528.)

[3] One of the chief effects of the Conquest in the schools is said to

have been the substitution of Norman for English schoolmasters (Leach,

_Schools of Mediaeval England_, 1915, p. 103).

[4] The majority of early Latin vocabularies extant, however, are

accompanied by English translations (cp. T. Wright, _Volume of

Vocabularies_, 2 vols., 1857), as was also the comparatively well-known

_Promptorium Parvulorum_ (_c._ 1440), Camden Soc., 1865.

[5] The text is given in L. E. Menger's _Anglo-Norman Dialect_, Columbia

University Press, 1904, p. 14. The psalms, together with Cato, Ovid, or

possibly Virgil, formed the usual reading material in the Grammar

Schools. Cp. Rashdall, _Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_,

Oxford, 1895, ii. p. 603.

[6] Adam du Petit Pont (_d._ 1150) wrote an epistle in Latin, many words

of which were glossed in French. But there is no evidence that it was

used in England. It was published by E. Scheler in his _Trois traités de

lexicographie latine du 12e et 13e siècles_, Leipzig, 1867.

[7] Ed. T. Wright, _Volume of Vocabularies_, i. 96, and Scheler, _op.

cit._ Both editions are deemed unsatisfactory by Paul Meyer (_Romania_,

xxxvi. 482).

[8] It has been published five times: (1) At Caen by Vincent Correr in

1508 (_Romania_, _ut supra_); (2) H. Géraud, in _Documents inédits sur

l'histoire de France_: "Paris sous Philippe le Bel d'après les documents

originaux," 1837; (3) Kervyn de Lettenhove, 1851; (4) T. Wright, _Volume

of Vocabularies_, i. pp. 120 _sqq._; (5) Scheler, _Trois traités de

lexicographie latine_.

[9] Wright, _op. cit._ pp. 139-141.

[10] _Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford_, 3 vols., Oxford and London,

1853; A. Clark, _Colleges of Oxford_, 1891, p. 140; H. C. Maxwell Lyte,

_History of the University of Oxford_, 1880, pp. 140-151.

[11] _Documents relating to the Universities and Colleges of Cambridge_,

1852, ii. p. 33; J. Bass Mullinger, _The University of Cambridge_, 1873;

G. Peacock, _Observations on the Statutes of the University of

Cambridge_, 1841, p. 4.

[12] J. Heywood, _Early Cambridge University and College Statutes_,

1885, ii. p. 182.

[13] C. H. Cooper, _Annals of Cambridge_, Cambridge, 1852, i. p. 40.

[14] Rashdall, _op. cit._ ii. p. 519 _n._

[15] Rashdall, _op. cit._ i. pp. 319 _et seq._ Later the English nation

was known as the German; it included all students from the north and

east of Europe. On the English in the University of Paris see Ch.

Thurot, _De l'organisation de l'enseignement dans l'Université de

Paris_, Paris, 1850; and J. E. Sandys, "English Scholars of Paris, and

Franciscans of Oxford," in _The Cambridge History of English

Literature_, i., 1908, chap. x. pp. 183 _et seq._

[16] Quoted, E. J. B. Rathery, _Les Relations sociales et

intellectuelles entre la France et l'Angleterre_, Paris, 1856, p. 11.

[17] A writer of about 1180 says it was impossible to tell who were

Normans and who English ("Dialogus de Scaccario": Stubbs, _Select

Charters_, 4th ed., 1881, p. 168).

[18] "Discours sur l'état des lettres au 13e siècle," in the _Histoire

littéraire de la France_, xvi. p. 168.

[19] D. Behrens, in H. Paul's _Grundiss der germanischen Philologie_,

Strassbourg, 1901, pp. 953-55; Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, v. 1876, pp.

528 _sqq._; Maitland, "Anglo-French Law Language," in the _Cambridge

History of English Literature_, i. pp. 407 _sqq._, _History of English

Law_, 1895, pp. 58 _sqq._, and _Collected Papers_, 1911, ii. p. 436. At

the universities, where Latin was the usual language of correspondence,

letters and petitions were often drawn up in French (Oxford Hist. Soc.,

_Collectanea_, 1st series, 1885, pp. 8 _sqq._).

[20] Bateson, _Mediaeval England_, 1903, p. 319.

[21] Maitland, _Collected Papers_, 1911, ii. p. 437.

[22] Such are Bozon's _Contes moralisés_ (_c._ 1320), ed. P. Meyer, in

the _Anciens Textes Français_, 1889. In his Introduction Meyer lays

stress on the widespread use of French in England at this time, and its

chance of becoming the national language of England, an eventuality

which, he thinks, might have been a benefit to humanity.

[23] MS. at Trinity Col. Cambridge (R. 3. 56).

[24] Paul Meyer calls it the work of a true grammarian (_Romania_,

xxxii. p. 65).

[25] There are four MSS. extant. These have been collated and published

by J. Sturzinger in the _Altfranzösische Bibliothek_, vol. viii.,

Heilbronn, 1884; cp. _Romania_, xiv. p. 60. The earliest MS. is in the

Record Office, and was published by T. Wright in Haupt and Hoffman's

_Altdeutsche Blaetter_ (ii. p. 193). Diez quoted from this edition in

his _Grammaire des langues romanes_, 3rd ed. i. pp. 415, 418 _sqq._ The

three other MSS. are in the Brit. Mus., Camb. Univ. Libr. and Magdalen

Col. Oxon., and belong to the three succeeding centuries. Portions of

the Magdalen Col. MS. are quoted by A. J. Ellis, in his _Early English

Pronunciation_, pp. 836-839, and by F. Génin, in his preface to the

French Government reprint of Palsgrave's Grammar, 1852. It is the

British Museum copy, made in the reign of Edward III., which contains

the French commentary.

[26] Early English writers on the French tongue were fond of drawing

attention to the opportunities for punning afforded by the language.

[27] Edited by Miss M. K. Pope in the _Modern Language Review_ (vol. v.,

1910, pt. ii. pp. 188 _sqq._), from the Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 17716, ff.

88-91; it also exists at All Souls, Oxford (MS. 182 f. 340), and at

Trinity Col. Cambridge (MS. B 14. 39, 40); in the last MS. the

introduction of the two preceding ones is lacking (cp. Meyer, _Romania_,

xxxii. p. 59).

[28] For instance, we are told that _a_ is sounded almost like _e_ as in

_savez vous faire un chauncoun . . ._; that the phrases _a_, _en a_, _i

a_ which mean one and the same thing when they come from the Latin

_habet_, should be written without _d_; that _aura_, _en array_ should

be written without _e_ in the middle, and sounded without _u_, as

_aray_, _en array_, though the English include the _e_.

[29] Published by Stengel, in the _Zeitschrift für neufranzösische

Sprache und Literatur_, 1879, pp. 16-22.

[30] Miss Pope, _ut supra_.

[31] His name has provoked some discussion as to its correct form. It is

frequently written as Biblesworth, and one MS. gives it the form of

Bithesway; the correct form, however, is Bibbesworth, the name of a

manor in the parish of Kempton (Herts), of which Walter was the owner

(P. Meyer, _Romania_, xv. p. 312, and xxx. p. 44 _n._; W. Aldis Wright,

_Notes and Queries_, 1877, 4th Series, viii. p. 64).

[32] Printed from the MS. in the Bodleian, in Wright and Halliwell's

_Reliquiae Antiquae_, i. p. 134.

[33] _Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1247-58_, pp. 58, 103, 187. He received

exemption from being put on assizes or juries in 1249.

[34] _Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1301-1307_, p. 39.

[35] She died in 1304; her father was one of the leaders on the king's

side at the battle of Lewes (1264).

[36] There are many MSS. in the British Museum; others at Oxford and

Cambridge, and one in the Library of Sir Th. Phillips at Cheltenham. The

best-known edition of the vocabulary is that of T. Wright, _Volume of

Vocabularies_, i. pp. 142-174, which is the one here quoted, and which

reproduces Arundel MS. 220, collated with Sloane MS. 809. P. Meyer has

given a critical edition of the first eighty-six lines in his _Recueil

d'anciens textes--partie française_, No. 367 (cp. _Romania_, xiii. p.

500).

[37] In the vocabularies written in imitation of Bibbesworth at later

dates, the English gloss is fuller, and in the latest one complete, as

French became more and more a foreign language.

[38] "Pus to le frauncoys com il en court en age de husbonderie, com pur

arer, rebiner, waretter, semer, sarcher, syer, faucher, carier, batre,

moudre, pestrer, briser," etc.

[39] _Polychronicon_, lib. 1, cap. 59 (ed. Babington and Lumly, Rolls

Publications, 41, 1865-66, vol. ii. pp. 159 _sqq._).

[40] Cp. the thirteenth-century romance in which Jehan de Dammartin

teaches French to Blonde of Oxford (ed. Le Roux de Lincy, Camden Soc.,

1858).

[41] F. Anstey, _Monumenta Academica_, 1868, p. 438.

[42] Anstey, _op. cit._, 1868, p. 302.

[43] Published from a MS. in Cambridge University Library (Ee 4, 20), by

Skeat, in the _Transactions of the Philological Society_ (1903-1906).

[44] The MS. in which the work is preserved dates from about 1340, but

is probably copied from an earlier one.

[45]

"Corps teste et hanapel

_Body heuede and heuedepanne_

Et peil cresceant sur la peal.

_And here growende on the skyn_," etc.

[46] How close the resemblance is between the two works may be judged by

the following quotations:

Par le gel nous avons glas,

Et de glas vient verglas. (NOMINALE.)

Pur le gel vous avomus glas,

Et pluvye e gele fount vereglas. (BIBBESWORTH.)

And it is in words almost identical with those of Bibbesworth that the

author describes the difference in the meaning of some words according

to their gender:

La levere deit clore les dentz.

_The lippe._

Le levere en boys se tient de deynz.

_The hare._

La livre sert a marchauntz.

_The pounde._

Le livere aprent nous enfauntz.

_The boke._

[47] The earliest of these MSS. dates from the second decade of the

fourteenth century. These epistolaries are found in the following MSS.:

Harleian 4971 and 3988, Addit. 17716, in the Brit. Mus.; Ee 4, 20 in

Cantab. Univ. Library; B 14. 39, 40 in Trinity Col. Camb.; 182 at All

Souls, Oxford, and 188 Magdalen Col. Oxford (cp. Stürzinger,

_Altfranzösiche Bibliothek_), viii. pp. xvii-xix. The Introductions to

these letters were edited in a Griefswald Dissertation (1898), by W.

Uerkvitz.

[48] Stengel, _op. cit._ pp. 8-10.

[49] _Romania_, iv. p. 381, xxxii. p, 22.

[50] W. Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_,

Cambridge, 1896, pp. 635 _sqq._

[51] L. Menger, _Anglo-Norman Dialect_; Behrens, _art. cit._ pp. 960

_sqq._; Brunot, _Histoire de la langue française_, i. pp. 319 _sqq._,

369.

[52] Brunot, _op. cit._ i. p. 331.

[53] Jusserand, _Histoire littéraire du peuple anglais_, 1896. p. 240 n.

[54] Brunot, _op. cit._ i. p. 369.

[55] P. Meyer commends Gower's French (_Romania_, xxxii. p. 43).

[56] T. R. Lounsbury, _Studies in Chaucer_, London, 1892, p. 458.

[57] Livre ii. ch. xii.

[58] As in those of Olivier Basselin.

[59] Eustache Deschamps, _Oeuvres_, ed. Crapelet, p. 91, quoted by

Rathery, _op. cit._ p. 181 (cp. also _English Political Songs_, ed. T.

Wright. Camden Soc., 1839).

[60] Jusserand, _op. cit._ p. 153 n. The fourteenth branch of the

_Roman_ is specially mentioned: cp. Brunot, _op. cit._ i. p. 369, n. 4.

[61] Brunot, _op. cit._ i. 330. It is not rare to find English

pronunciation of French ridiculed in France, and Englishmen represented

as talking a sort of gibberish; cp. _Romania_, xiv. pp. 99, 279, and

Brunot, _op. cit._ p. 369 n.

[62] Behrens, _op. cit._ p. 957.

[63] Ed. E. Martin, 1882, l. 2351 _sqq._

[64] _Recueil général et complet des fabliaux_, ed. Montaiglon et

Raynaud, ii. p. 178.

[65] Maitland, _Collected Papers_, 1911, ii. p. 436; Freeman, _op. cit._

p. 536; Brunot, _op. cit._ i. p. 373.

[66] F. Watson, _Religious Refugees and English Education_, London,

1911, p. 6. There are numerous entries of such works in the _Stationers'

Register_.

[67] Answer to Dr. Lindsey's epigram, _Works_, ed. 1841, i. p. 634.

[68] [H. Dell], _The Frenchified Lady never in Paris_, London, 1757.

[69] Pepys in his Diary notes the use of French in such phrases, and the

Abbé Le Blanc (_Lettres d'un Français sur les Anglais_, à la Haye, 1745)

was also struck by the custom.

[70] Bateson, _Mediaeval England_, p. 342; Warton, _History of English

Poetry_, p. 10 n.

[71] Ellis, _Original Letters_, 3rd series, 1846, i. p. xi.

[72] M. A. E. Green (_née_ Wood), _Letters of Royal and Illustrious

Ladies_, London, 1846; _The Paston Letters_, new edition by J. Gairdner,

3 vols., London, 1872-75; H. Ellis, _Original Letters_, 3rd series,

London, 1846; J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, _Letters of the Kings of

England_, London, 1846; C. L. Kingsford, _English Historical Literature

in the Fifteenth Century_, Oxford, 1893, pp. 193 _et seq._; Hallam,

_Literature of Europe_, 6th ed., London, 1860, i. p. 54.

[73] "Que tout seigneur, baron, chevalier et honestes hommes de bonnes

villes mesissent cure et dilligence de estruire et apprendre leurs

enfans le langhe françoise, par quoy il en fuissent plus avec et plus

costumier ens leurs gherres" (Froissart, quoted by Behrens, _op. cit._

p. 957 n.).

[74] Higden, _ut supra_.

CHAPTER II

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

These great changes which took place in the status of French in England

did not, however, affect fundamentally the popularity of the language:

they had to do with Anglo-French alone. French, as distinct from this

and as a foreign language, received more attention than ever before,

especially from the higher classes, and from travellers and merchants.

It was the language of politeness and refinement in the eyes of

Englishmen, not only as a result of the Conquest, but for its inherent

qualities; and so it retained this position when it gave way to English

or Latin in other spheres where its predominance had been due, either

directly or indirectly, to the Conquest. French had enjoyed a social

reputation in England before the arrival of the invaders,[75] and had

already made some progress towards becoming the language which the

English loved and cultivated above all modern foreign tongues, and to

which they devoted for a great many years more care than they did to

their own. "Doulz françois," writes an Englishman at the end of the

fourteenth century in a treatise for teaching the language,[76] is the

most beautiful and gracious language in the world, after the Latin of

the schools,[77] "et de tous gens mieulx prisée et amée que nul autre;

quar Dieu le fist se doulce et amiable principalement a l'oneur et

loenge de luy mesmes. Et pour ce il peut bien comparer au parler des

angels du ciel, pour la grant doulceur et biaultée d'icel"--a more

eloquent tribute even than the more famous lines of Brunetto Latini.

Another writer of the same period informs us that "les bones gens du

Roiaume d'Engleterre sont embrasez a scavoir lire et escrire, entendre

et parler droit François," and that he himself thinks it is very

necessary for the English to know the "droict nature de François," for

many reasons.[78] For instance, that they may enjoy intercourse with

their neighbours, the good folk of the kingdom of France; that they may

better understand the laws of England, of which a great many are still

written in French; and also because "beaucoup de bones choses sont misez

en François," and the lords and ladies of England are very fond of

writing to each other in the same tongue.[79]

As a result of the altered circumstances which were modifying the

attitude of the English, there is a corresponding change in the standard

of the French which the manuals for teaching that language sought to

attain. All the best text-books of the end of the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries endeavour with few exceptions to impart a knowledge

of the French of Paris, "doux françois de Paris" or "la droite language

de Paris," as it was called, in contrast with the French of

Stratford-atte-Bowe and other parts of England. Those authors of

treatises for teaching French of whose lives we have any details, had

studied French in France, at Paris, Orleans, or some other University

town. The fact that many of their productions still contain numbers of

words belonging to the Norman and other dialects does not diminish the

importance and significance of their more ambitious aims. These pioneer

works on the French language, written in England by Englishmen without

the guidance of any similar work produced in France, were bound to

contain archaisms as well as anglicisms.[80]

Fluency in speaking French was the chief need of the classes of society

in which the demand for instruction was greatest. Correctness in detail

was only of secondary importance, and grammar, though desirable, was not

considered indispensable. The importance of speaking French naturally

brought the subject of pronunciation to the fore. No doubt most of the

early teachers shared the opinions of their successors, that rules and

theoretical information were of little avail in teaching the sounds of

the language, compared with the practice of imitation and repetition;

nevertheless, many of them attempted to supply some information on the

subject. When, in the second decade of the fifteenth century, another

writer based a new treatise for teaching French on the vocabulary of

Bibbesworth, which had then been current for well over a century, the

chief point in which it differed from its original was precisely in the

provision of guidance to facilitate pronunciation.

This new treatise was styled _Femina_,[81] because just as the mother

teaches her young child to speak his native tongue, so does this work

teach children to speak French naturally.[82] It covers almost exactly

the same ground as the vocabulary of Bibbesworth, but, as in the case of

the earlier imitation of the same work, the _Nominale_, the order of

arrangement varies, and the whole is permeated with a lively humour

which makes it at least equal in interest to the work on which it is

based. The French lines are octosyllabic and arranged in distichs, each

pair being followed by an English translation, which is given in full,

contrary to the practice in the earlier works of the same kind. The

author endeavours to teach the French of France[83] as distinguished

from that of England, and, although he lavishes provincialisms from the

local dialects of France--Norman, Picard, Walloon--in the main they are

French provincialisms, and many of them may be due to errors on the part

of the scribe. To assist pronunciation notes are provided at the bottom

of the page, giving pseudo-English equivalents of the sounds of words

written otherwise in the text.

The treatise opens with an exhortation to the child to learn French that

he may speak fairly before wise men, for "heavy is he that is not

taught":

Cap: primum docet rethorice loqui de assimilitudine bestiarum.

a b

Beau enfaunt pur apprendre

c d

En franceis devez bien entendre

Ffayre chyld for to lerne

In french ye schal wel understande

e

Coment vous parlerez bealment,

Et devaunt les sagez naturalment.

How ye schal speke fayre,

And afore ye wysemen kyndly.

f g

Ceo est veir que vous dy,

h i

Hony est il qui n'est norry.

That ys soth that y yow say

Hevy ys he that ys not taugth

k l

Parlez tout ditz com affaites

m

Et nenny come dissafaites

Spekep alway as man ys tauth

And not as man untauth.

Parlez imprimer de tout assemblé

n o

Dez bestez que Dieu ad formé.

Spekep fyrst of manere assemble alle

Of bestes that God hath y maked.

(_a_) beau debet legi bev, (_b_) enfaunt, (_c_) fraunceys, (_d_) bein,

(_e_) belement, (_f_) ce, (_g_) cet vel eyztt, (_h_) Iil, (_i_) neot,

(_k_) toutdiz, (_l_) afetes, (_m_) dissafetes, (_n_) beetez, (_o_) dv

et non Dieu.

The subsequent chapters deal with the same subjects as in Bibbesworth,

and sometimes the wording is almost identical. The concluding chapter,

"De moribus infantis," is taken from another source, and gives

admonitions for discreet behaviour, quoting the moral treatise of the

pseudo-Cato, the Proverbs of Solomon, and the like. The passage in which

_Femina_ deals with the upbringing of the child may be of interest, as

showing how the later author repeats the earlier, while altering the

wording; and as throwing some light on the way French was then learnt:

Et quaunt il court en graunt age

Mettez ly apprendre langage.

And when he runs in great age[84]

Put him to learn language.

En fraunceys a luy vous devez dire

Comez il doit soun corps discrire.

In French to him ye shall say

How first he shall his body describe.

Et pur ordre garder de moun et ma,

Toun et ta, son et sa, masculino et feminino.

And for order to kepe of mon and ma,

Toun and ta, soun and sa, for ma souneth.

Quia ma sonat feminino moun masculino.

To femynyn gender and moun to masculyn.

Cy que en parle soit bien apris,

Et de nule homme escharnis.

So that in speach he be well learned,

And of no man scorned.

At the end is a 'calendar,' or table of words arranged alphabetically in

three parallel columns. The first gives the orthography of the word, the

second the pronunciation, and the third the explanation of its meaning

and construction, which usually takes the form of an English equivalent.

In the meanwhile the grammatical study of French was not neglected.

There are still extant numerous small treatises[85] dealing with

different aspects of French grammar, chiefly the flexions, and belonging

to the end of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The conjugation of

verbs receives special attention, and there are several manuscripts

providing paradigms and lists of the chief parts of speech--often very

incorrect, and of more value as showing the interest taken in French in

England than as illustrating any development in the history of the

conjugations of French verbs. The usual verbs described in these

fragmentary works[86] are _amo_, _habeo_, _sum_, _volo_, _facio_, and

the French paradigms are generally accompanied by Latin ones, on which

they are naturally based, and which were intended to help the student to

understand the French ("cum expositione earundem in Latinis"). The two

most considerable of these works known add many verbs to the list

mentioned above. Of these the first, the _Liber Donati_,[87] gives

examples of law French rather than literary French;[88] but the other,

written in French, endeavours to teach "douce françois de Paris"--_cy

comence le Donait soloum douce franceis de Paris_.[89] The _Donait_

belongs to the fifteenth century, and is the work of one R. Dove, who

also wrote some _Regulae de Orthographia Gallica_ in Latin,[90] which

show considerable resemblance to those of the earlier _Orthographia

Gallica_. The same is true of some of the rules devoted to orthography

in the _Liber Donati_, which also owes something to the work of 'T. H.,

Student of Paris,' either in the original form, or, more probably, in

the recast, due to Canon Coyfurelly. In this respect, Coyfurelly

continues the efforts of the earlier writer to purify English spelling

of French--efforts which at this time would meet with more success than

was the case earlier.[91]

Another topic touched on in the _Regulae_ of R. Dove is the formation of

the plural of nouns, and of the feminine of adjectives. The substance of

one of these rules may be quoted, as an example of the failure of these

early writers to grasp general principles. All nouns ending in _ge_,

like _lange_, says the grammarian, take _s_ in the plural, as _langes_;

all nouns ending in _urc_, as _bourc_, have _z_ or _s_ in the plural and

drop the _c_, as _bours_; all nouns ending in _nyn_, as _conyn_, take

_s_ in the plural, as _chemyns_; all nouns ending in _eyn_, as _peyn_,

form their plural by adding _s_, as _peyns_. Such is the rule for the

formation of the plural of nouns, and that for the feminine of

adjectives, which follows, is on the same lines. Pronouns also received

some attention from these early grammarians. The _Liber Donati_[92]

contains a few remarks on the personal, demonstrative and possessive

pronouns, giving the different forms for the singular and plural and the

various cases; thus it tells us that _jeo_ and sometimes _moy_ are used

for _I_ (_ego_) in the nominative case, and in other cases _moy_ or _me_

in the singular, while _nous_ is used for the plural in all cases, and

so forth.

We thus see that the verbs, nouns and pronouns received consideration,

varying in degree, at the hands of these pioneers in French grammar.

Neither were the indeclinable parts of speech neglected; at the end of

the _Liber Donati_ there is a list of some of these as well as of the

ordinal and cardinal numbers in both Latin and French, while the

_Donait_ gives the numbers only. Some manuscripts contain lists of

adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions in Latin and French.[93] Others

give lists of the cardinal and ordinal numbers in French, and one adds

to these a nomenclature of the different colours.[94] The names of the

days, months, and feast-days were another favourite subject.

Of these small treatises that which nearest approaches the form of a

comprehensive grammar is the _Liber Donati_, which includes observations

on the orthography and pronunciation, on verbs and pronouns, and lists

of adverbs, conjunctions, and numerals. But there appeared at the

beginning of the fifteenth century, before 1409, a more comprehensive

treatise of some real value--the _Donait françois pur briefment

entroduyr les Anglois en la droit langue du Paris et de pais la

d'entour_,[95] a work which but for its very many anglicisms might be

placed on a level with some of the similar grammars of the sixteenth

century.[96] The origin of this _Donait_ is interesting. A certain

Englishman, John Barton, born and bred in the county of Cheshire, but a

student of Paris, and a passionate lover of the French language, engaged

some good clerks to compose the _Donait_, at his own great cost and

trouble, for the benefit of the English, who are so eager ("embrasez")

to learn French.[97] Judging from the lines with which Barton closes his

short but communicative preface, the work was intended mainly for the

use of young people--the "chers enfants" and "tres douces pucelles,"

'hungering' to learn French: "Pur ce, mes chiers enfantz et tresdoulcez

puselles," he writes, "que avez fam d'apprendre cest Donait scachez

qu'il est divisé en belcoup de chapiters si come il apperera cy avale."

Barton then retires to make way for his 'clerks,' whose remarks are

entirely confined to grammatical teaching and who, like Barton, write in

French.

Most of the early treatises on French grammar which appeared in England

are written in Latin. Latin appears to have been the medium through

which French was learnt and explained to a large extent, although in the

case of the riming vocabularies English was used for teaching the young

children for whom these nomenclatures were chiefly written. But grammar,

probably intended to be learnt by older students, was usually studied in

Latin, which was also found to be a help in learning French. Students

are told to base French orthography on that of Latin, and there are

constant references from French words to their Latin originals. The

_Donait soloum douce franceis de Paris_ is apparently the only work of

any importance written in French before that of Barton. English was not

used for this purpose before the sixteenth century, when it was almost

invariably employed, even by Frenchmen. A grammar such as Barton's

would, no doubt, be read and translated with the help of a tutor; and it

is highly probable that the children for whom it was intended would have

previously acquired some practical knowledge of French from some such

elementary treatise as Bibbesworth's vocabulary. Moreover, French was so

generally in use in the higher classes of society, and had been for so

long a kind of semi-national tongue, that it would hardly be approached

as an entirely foreign language, as in later times. In writing a French

grammar in French, Barton and those who followed the same course merely

adopted for the teaching of French a method in common use in the

teaching of Latin. The advisability of writing French grammars in French

was a question, as we shall see, much discussed in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries as well as in much more recent times.

The clerks employed by Barton made free use of the observations on

French grammar which had appeared previously. But their work had an

additional value; the rules are stated with considerable clearness and

are usually correct.[98] The opening chapters deal with the letters and

their pronunciation, set forth, like the rest of the grammar, in a

series of questions and answers:

Quantez letters est il? Vint. Quellez? Cinq voielx et quinse

consonantez. Quelx sont les voielx et ou seroit ils sonnés? Le

premier vouyel est _a_ et serra sonné en la poetrine, la seconde

est _e_ et serra sonné en la gorge, le tiers est _i_ et serra sonné

entre les joues, le quart est _o_ et serra sonné du palat de la

bouche, le quint est _u_ et serra sonné entre les levres.

To these observations on the vowels are added a few on the consonants,

and "belcoup de bones rieules" (six in all) treating the avoidance of

hiatus between two consonants and the effects of certain vowels and

consonants on each other's pronunciation. Next come a few observations

on the parts of speech; for "apres le Chapitre des lettres il nous fault

dire des accidens." Instead of giving a number of isolated instances as

rules for the formation of the plural, the general rule for the addition

of _s_ to the singular is evolved and emphasized by this advice: "Pour

ceo gardez vous que vous ne mettez pas le singuler pour le pulier

(pluriel) ne a contraire, si come font les sots." Further, we must avoid

imitating the 'sottez gens,' to whom frequent reference is made, in

using one person of a tense for another, and saying _je ferra_ for _je

ferray_.[99] In this section of the work the rules follow each other

without any orderly arrangement.[100]

At about the same time an English poet is said to have written a French

grammar, as another poet, Alexander Barclay, actually did later. An

early bibliographer[101] includes in his list of Lydgate's works one

entitled _Praeceptiones Linguae Gallicae_, in one book, of which no

further trace remains to-day. Lydgate, however, was well acquainted with

French; he made the customary foreign tour, besides visiting Paris again

on a later occasion in attendance on noble patrons, and put his

knowledge of the language to the test by translating or adapting several

works from the French, like most contemporary writers.[102] The same

early authority informs us that, as soon as Lydgate returned from his

travels, he opened a school for the sons of noblemen, possibly at Bury

St. Edmunds. Probably Lydgate wrote a French grammar for the use of

these young noblemen, who would certainly have to learn the language;

and, after serving their immediate purpose, these rules, we may surmise,

were lost and soon forgotten.

In the fifteenth century, instruction in French epistolary style of all

degrees continued to be supplied in collections of model letters; and at

the end of the fourteenth century a new kind of book for teaching French

appeared--the _Manière de Langage_ or model conversation book, intended

for the use of travellers, merchants, and others desiring a

conversational and practical rather than a thorough and grammatical

knowledge of French. Contrary to the custom, prevalent at this later

period, of providing English translations, the earliest of these contain

no English gloss, but simply the French text without any attempt at even

the slight grammatical instruction provided in the vocabularies. Their

sole purpose was to give the traveller or wayfarer a supply of phrases

and expressions on the customary topics; grammatical instruction could

be sought elsewhere.

The earliest of these[103] is the first work for teaching French to

which a definite date can be assigned. A sort of dedication at the end

is dated from Bury St. Edmunds, "la veille du Pentecote, 1396." We have

not the same definite information as to the author.[104] The anglicisms

make it clear that he was an Englishman, while the references to Orleans

and its university, and the trouble there between the students and the

townspeople in 1389, suggest that he was a student of that university,

then much frequented by the English and other foreigners, especially law

students. He may have been Canon M. T. Coyfurelly, Doctor of Law of

Orleans,[105] and author of the contemporary recasting of T. H.'s

treatise on French orthography. The author tells us he undertook his

task at the request of a "tres honoré et tres gentil sire"; that he had

learnt French "es parties la mere," and that he wrote according to the

knowledge he acquired there, which, he admits, may not be perfect.

Indeed his French is full of anglicisms; _que homme_ is written for

'that man'; _oeuvrer_ for 'worker'; _que_ for 'why,' and so on; there

are also many grammatical mistakes such as wrong genders, _au homme_,

_de les_ for _des_, _de le_ for _du_. This "manière" must have enjoyed a

very considerable popularity, judging from the number of manuscripts, of

various dates, still in existence. And, in modern times, it presents a

greater interest to the reader than any of the treatises mentioned

before, partly from the naïveté and quaintness of its style, partly

owing to the vivid picture it gives us of the life of the time at which

it was written.

It opens in a religious strain, with a prayer that the students of the

book may have "sens naturel" to learn to speak, pronounce, and write

"doulz françois":

A noster commencement nous dirons ainsi: en nom du pere, filz et

Saint Esperit, amen. Ci comence la Maniere de Language qui

t'enseignera bien a droit parler et escrire doulz françois selon

l'usage et la coustume de France. Primiers, au commencement de

nostre fait et besogne nous prierons Dieu devoutement et nostre

Dame la benoite vierge Marie sa tres douce mere, et toute la

glorieuse compaigne du Saint reaume de Paradis celeste, ou Dieux

mette ses amis et ses eslus, de quoi vient toute science, sapience,

grace et entendement et tous manieres vertuz, qu'il luy plaist de

sa grande misericorde et grace tous les escoliers estudianz en cest

livre ainsi abruver et enluminer de la rousée de sa haute sapience

et entendement, qu'ils pouront avoir sens naturel d'aprendre a

parler, bien soner et a droit escrire doulz françois.

Then, because man is the noblest of all created things, the author

proceeds to give a list of the parts of his body, which recalls the old

riming vocabularies. This, however, is the only portion in which

conversation is sacrificed to vocabulary. In the rest of the work,

though the vocabulary is increased by alternative phrases wherever

possible, it is never allowed to encroach too much on the conversation.

The second chapter presents a scene between a lord and his page, in

which the page receives minute instructions for commissions to the

draper, the mercer, and upholsterer--an excellent opportunity of

introducing a large choice of words. Conversation for travellers is the

subject of the third chapter, the most important, and certainly the most

interesting in the whole book. It tells, "Coment un homme chivalchant ou

cheminant se doit contenir et parler sur son chemin qui voult aler bien

loin hors de son pais." After witnessing the preparations for the

journey, the reader accompanies the lord and his page through an

imaginary journey in France. Dialogue and narrative alternate, and the

lord talks with his page Janyn or whiles away the time with songs:

Et quant il aura achevée sa chanson il comencera a parler a son

escuier ou a ses escuiers, ainsi disant: "Mes amys, il est bien pres

de nuyt," vel sic: "Il sera par temps nuyt." Doncques respont Janyn

au son signeur bien gentilment en cest maniere: "Vrayement mon

seigneur, vous ditez verité"; vel sic: "vous ditez voir"; vel sic:

"vous dites vray"--"Je panse bien qu'il feroit mieux pour nous

d'arester en ce ville que d'aller plus avant maishuy. Coment vous

est avis?"--"Ainsi comme vous vuillez, mon seigneur." "Janyn!"--"Mon

signeur?"--"Va devant et prennez nostre hostel par temps."--"Si

ferai-je, mon seigneur." Et s'en vait tout droit en sa voie, et

quant il sera venu a l'ostel il dira tout courtoisement en cest

maniere. "Hosteler, hosteler," etc.

The page then proceeds to make hasty preparations for the coming of his

master to the inn, and we next assist at the arrival of the lord and his

evening meal and diversions--another opportunity for the introduction of

songs--and his departure in the morning towards Étampes and Orleans.

More humble characters appear in the next chapter: "Un autre manière de

parler de pietalle, comme des labourers et oeuvrers de mestiers." Here

we have conversations between members of the working classes. A gardener

and a ditcher discuss their respective earnings, describe their work,

and finally go and dine together; a baker talks with his servant, and so

gives us the names of the chief things used in his trade, just as the

gardener gave a list of flowers and fruits. A merchant scolds his

apprentice for various misdemeanours, and then sends him off to market:

Doncques l'apprentiz s'en vait au marchié pour vendre les danrées de

son maistre et la vienment grant cop des gens de divers pais de les

achater: et apprentiz leur dit tout courtoisement en cest

maniere,--'Mes amis venez vous ciens et je vous monstrerai de aussi

bon drap comme vous trouverez en tout ce ville, et vous en aurez de

aussi bon marché comme nul autre. Ore regardez, biau sire, comment

vous est avis; vel sic: comment vous plaist il;

and after some bargaining he sells his goods.

In the next "manière de parler" a servant brings a torn doublet to a

mender of old clothes, and enlists his services. A chapter of more

interest and importance is that dealing with greetings and salutations

to be used at different times of the day to members of the various ranks

of society:

Quant un homme encontrera aucun au matinée il luy dira tout

courtoisement ainsi: "Mon signour Dieux vous donne boun matin et

bonne aventure," vel sic: "Sire Dieux vous doint boun matin et bonne

estraine, Mon amy, Dieux vous doint bon jour et bonne encontre." Et

a midi vous parlerez en cest maniere: "Monsieur Dieux vous donne bon

jour et bonnes heures"; vel sic: "Sire, Dieu vous beneit et la

compaignie!" A peitaille vous direz ainsi: "Dieux vous gart!" . . .

Et as oeuvrers et labourers vous direz ainsi: "Dieux vous ait, mon

amy,"

and so on. One traveller asks another whence he comes and where he was

born, and the other says he comes from Orleans, where there is a fierce

quarrel between the students and the townspeople; and was born in

Hainaut, where they love the English well, and there is a saying that

"qui tient un Henner (Hennuyer) par la main, tient un Englois par le

cuer." We are next taught how to speak to children: "Quant vous verez un

enfant plorer et gemir, vous direz ainsi: Qu'as tu, mon enfant," and

comfort him, and when a poor man asks you for alms, you shall answer,

"Mon amy, se je pourroi je vous aidasse tres volantiers. . . ."

From this we return to subjects more suited to merchants and

wayfarers--how to inquire the road, and to go on a pilgrimage to the

tomb of St. Thomas-à-Becket. The work closes with a gathering of

companions in an inn, which, like the rest of the chapters, is full of

life and interest. Last of all, a sort of supplement is added in the

form of a short poem on the drawbacks of poverty:

Il est hony qui pouveres est,

and a _fatrasie_ in prose.

Another treatise of the same kind, written about three years later, was

intended chiefly for the use of children, _Un petit livre pour enseigner

les enfantz de leur entreparler comun françois_.[106] It was not the

first of its kind. The metrical vocabularies of Bibbesworth and his

successors were chiefly intended for the use of children. There is also

some evidence to show that the grammatical treatises were used by

children; the commentary was added to the _Orthographica Gallica_

because the rules were somewhat obscure "pour jeosne gentz," and Barton,

in his introduction, mentions the "chiers enfantz" and "tresdoulez

puselles," as those whom his grammar particularly concerns.

In the _Petit livre_, however, the teaching is of the simplest kind, and

specially suited to children. The dialogue lacks the interest of the

earlier 'manière,' and inclines, in places, to become a list of phrases

pure and simple. The work opens abruptly with the words: "Pour ce sachez

premierement que le an est divisé en deux, c'est asscavoir le yver et

la esté. Le yver a six mois et la esté atant, que vallent douse," and so

on to the other divisions of the year and time. The children are then

taught the numbers in French, the names of the coins, and those of the

persons and things with which they come into daily contact. Then follow

appropriate terms for addressing and greeting different persons, and the

author even goes so far as to provide the child with a stock of

insulting terms for use in quarrels. The rest of the treatise does not

appear to be intended for children. There are conversations in a tavern,

lists of salutations, familiar talk for the wayside and for buying and

selling, all of which has little special interest, and is designed

apparently to meet the needs of merchants more than any other class. In

the chatter on the events of the day there occurs a passage which

enables us to date the work. The traveller tells the hostess of the

captivity of Richard II. as a recent event:

"Dieu, dame, j'ay ouy dire que le roy d'Angleterre est osté."--"Quoy

desioie!"--"Par ma alme voir."--"Et les Anglois n'ont ils point de

roy donques?"--"Marie, ouy, et que celuy que fust duc de Lancastre,

que est nepveu a celluy que est osté."--"Voire?"--"Voire

vraiement."--"Et le roygne que fera elle?"--"Par dieu dame, je ne

sçay, je n'ay pas esté en conceille."--"Et le roy d'Angleterre ou

fust il coronné?"--"A Westmynstre."--"Fustez vous la

donques?"--"Marie, oy, il y avoit tant de presse que par un pou que

ne mouru quar a paine je eschapey a vie."--"Et ou serra il a

nouvel?"--"Par ma foy je ne sçay, mais l'en dit qu'il serra en

Escoce."

The authorship is not so easy to ascertain. The manual may be due to

Canon T. Coyfurelly, probable author of the earlier and better-known

work also.[107] The many mistakes and anglicisms, such as _quoy_ for

_quelle_ ('what') and the exclamatory 'Marie' in the quotation just

given, show it to be the work of an Englishman.

Another book of conversation appeared in 1415,[108] as may be gathered

from its first two chapters, in which a person fresh from the wars in

France tells of the siege of Harfleur and the battle of Agincourt, and

announces the return of the victorious English army. The rest of the

dialogues are represented as taking place in and about Oxford. There is

the usual tavern scene. Travellers from Tetsworth arrive at an Oxford

inn, and are present at the evening meal and diversions. The hostess

describes the fair at Woodstock and the articles bought and sold there;

her son, a boy of twelve years, wants to be apprenticed in London; he

goes to the school of Will Kyngesmylle, where writing, counting, and

French are taught. One of the merchants calls the lad and questions him

as to his knowledge of French: "Et que savez vous en fraunceys

dire?--Sir je say moun noun et moun corps bien descrire.--Ditez moy

qu'avez a noun.--J'ay a noun Johan, bon enfant, beal et sage et bien

parlant engleys, fraunceys et bon normand, beneyt soit la verge que

chastie l'enfant et le bon maistre qui me prist taunt! Je pri a Dieu

tout puissant nous graunte le joye tous diz durant!" The lad then

proceeds to give proof of his knowledge by naming the parts of his body

and his clothing, always, it appears, the first things learnt.

This reference to the teaching of French in the school of an Oxford

pedagogue shows that, though French had at this time lost all

standing in the Grammar Schools, it was still taught in private

establishments.[109] It seems highly probable that Will Kyngesmylle was

the author of this work, and that he used his text-book as a means of

self-advertisement, a method very common among later teachers of French.

At the close comes a chapter belonging to another work of the same type,

which is only preserved in this fragment; no doubt other such works

existed and have been entirely lost.

It is likely that in the fifteenth century these conversational manuals

supplanted, to a considerable extent, the earlier type of practical

manual for teaching French--the metrical vocabulary--with which they had

something in common. At any rate, there is no copy of such nomenclatures

extant after _Femina_ (1415). The 'manières' provided in their dialogues

much of the material found in the vocabularies, giving, wherever

possible, groups of words on the same topics--the body, its clothing,

houses, and men's occupations. Further, the vocabularies, which had

never departed from the type instituted by Bibbesworth in the thirteenth

century, dealt more with the feudal and agricultural life of the Middle

Ages, and so had fallen behind the times. The 'Manières de Langage' were

more in keeping with the new conditions. Towards the end of the century

(and perhaps at the beginning of the sixteenth century) we come to a

manual,[110] which, while resembling the 'manières' in most points,

reproduces some of the distinctive external marks of the vocabularies.

For instance, the French is arranged in short lines, which, however, do

not rime, and vary considerably in the number of syllables they contain;

and these are followed by a full interlinear English gloss, as in the

later vocabularies. The subject matter, however, is similar to that of

the early conversation books. First comes gossip at taverns and by the

wayside:

Ditez puisse ie savement aler?

Saie may I saufly goo?

Ye sir le chemyn est sure assez.

Yes sir the wey is sure inough.

Mes il convent que vous hastez.

But it behoveth to spede you.

Sir dieu vous donne bon aventure.

Sir god geve you good happe.

Sir a dieu vous commaunde.

Sir to god I you betake.

Sir dieu vous esploide.

Sir god spede you.

Sir bon aventure avez vous.

Sir good chaunce have ye.

Sir par saint Marie cy est bon servise.

Sir by saint Marie her is good ale.

Sir pernes le hanappe, vous comenceres.

Sir take the coppe, ye shal beginne.

Dame ie ne feray point devaunt vous.

Dame I wil not doo bifor you.

Sir vous ferrez verrement.

Sir ye shal sothely.

After some disconnected discourse on inquiring the time, asking the way,

etc., we again return to the tavern:

Dame dieu vous donne bon jour.

Dame god geve you good daie.

Dame avez hostel pour nous trois compaignons?

Dame have ye hostel for us iij felowes?

Sir quant longement voudrez demourer?

Sir how long wol ye abide?

Dame nous ne savons point.

Dame we wote not.

Et que vouldrez donner le iour pour vostre table?

And what wil ye geve a daie for your table?

Dame que vouldrez prendr pour le iour?

Dame what wol ye take for the daie?

Sir non meynns que vj deniers le iour.

Sir noo lesse thenne vj d. the day ... etc.

Next comes the usual scene between buyers and sellers, followed by

another inn scene of greater length. After attending to their horses,

the travellers sup and spend the night at the inn, and set out the next

morning after reckoning with their hostess. The manuscript ends abruptly

in the midst of a list of salutations. The nature of the French[111]

betrays the author's nationality; he was evidently an Englishman. As to

the English, the quaint turn given to many of the phrases is usually

explained by the writer's desire to give a literal translation of the

French; many of the inaccuracies in both versions are probably due to

careless work on the part of the scribe.

Merchants thus appear to have been one of the chief classes among which

there was a demand for instruction in French. In addition to the large

part assigned to them in the 'Manières de Langage,' and in the

epistolaries, where letters of a commercial nature are a usual feature,

there exist collections of model forms for drawing up bills, indentures,

receipts and other documents of similar import. They are usually called

'cartularies,' are accompanied by explanations in Latin, and may be

looked upon as the first text-books of commercial French.[112] One

author explains their origin and aim by this introductory remark:[113]

"Pour ceo qe j'estoie requis par ascunz prodeshommez de faire un

chartuarie pour lour enfantz enformer de faire chartours, endenturs,

obligations, defesance, acquitancez, contuaries, salutaries, en Latin et

Franceys ensemblement . . . fesant les chartours, escripts munimentz a

de primes en Latyn et puis en Franceys."

More emphasis is laid on the demand for instruction in French among the

merchant class by the fact that the earliest printed text-books were

designed chiefly for their use. The first of these may be classed with

the new development of the 'Manières de Langage,' comprising dialogues

in French and English, although it does not exactly answer to this

description.[114] It was issued from the press of William Caxton in

about 1483, and at least one other edition appeared at a later

date.[115] In form it is a sort of narrative in French, with an English

translation opposite. The aim of the work is stated clearly in an

introductory passage which informs the reader that "who this book shall

learn may well enterprise merchandise from one land to another and to

know many wares which to him shall be good to be bought, or sold for

rich to become." Caxton thus recommends the book to the learner:

Tres bonne doctrine Rygt good lernyng

Pour aprendre For to lerne

Briefment fransoys et engloys. Shortly frenssh & englyssh.

Au nom du pere In the name of the fadre

Et du filz And of the soone

Et du sainte esperite And of the holy ghost

Veul comnencier I wyll begynne

Et ordonner ung livre, And ordeyne this book,

Par le quel on pourra By the which men shall mowe

Raysonnablement entendre Resonably understande

Françoys et Anglois, Frenssh and Englissh,

Du tant comme cest escript Of as moche as this writing

Pourra contenir et estendre, Shall conteyne & stratche,

Car il ne peut tout comprendre. For he may not all comprise.

Mais ce qu'on n'y trouvera But that which cannot be founden

Declairé en cestui Declared in this

Pourra on trouver ailleurs Shall be founde somwhere els

En aultres livres. In other bookes.

Mais sachies pour voir But knowe for truthe

Que es lignes de cest aucteur That in the lynes of this auctour

Sount plus de parolles et de raysons Ben moo wordes & reasons

Comprinses, et de responses Comprised, & of answers

Que en moult d'aultres livres. Than in many other bookes.

Qui ceste livre vouldra aprendre Who this booke shall wylle lerne

Bien pourra entreprendre May well enterprise

Merchandises d'un pays a Marchandise fro one land to

l'autre, anoothir,

Et cognoistre maintes denrées And to know many wares

Que lui seroient bon Which to him shall be good to be

achetés bought

Ou vendues pour riche devenir. Or sold for rich to become.

Aprendes ce livre diligement, Lerne this book diligently,

Grande prouffyt y gyst vrayement. Grete prouffyt lieth therein truly.

The 'doctrine' itself opens with a list of salutations with the

appropriate answers. A house and all its contents come next, then its

inhabitants, which introduces the subject of degrees of kinship:

Or entendes petys et grands,

Je vous dirai maintenant

Dune autre matere

La quele ie commence.

Se vous estes mariés

Et vous avez femme

Et vous ayez marye,

Se vous maintiens paisiblement

Que vos voisins ne disent

De vous fors que bien:

Ce seroit vergoigne.

Se vous aves pere et mere,

Si les honnourés tousiours;

Faictes leur honneur;. . .

Si vous aves enfans,

Si les instrues

De bonnes meurs;

Le temps qu'ilz soient josnes

Les envoyes a l'escole

Aprendre lire et escripre. . . .

At the end of the category come the servants and their occupations,

which affords an opportunity of bringing in the different shops to which

they are sent and of specifying the meat and drink they purchase there.

We then pass to buying, selling, and bargaining in general, and to

merchandise of all kinds, with a list of coins, popular fairs, and

fête-days.

After an enumeration of the great persons of the earth comes the main

chapter of the work, giving a fairly complete list of crafts and trades.

This takes the form of an alphabetical list of Christian names, each of

which is made to represent one of the trades, beginning with Adam the

ostler: "For this that many words shall fall or may fall which be not

plainly heretofore written, so shall I write you from henceforth divers

matters of all things, first of one thing, then of another, in which

chapter I will conclude the names of men and women after the order of a,

b, c." The baker may be selected as a fair example:

Ferin le boulengier Fierin the baker

Vend blanc pain et brun. Selleth whit brede and brown.

Il a sour son grenier gisant He hath upon his garner lieng

Cent quartiers de bled. One hundred quarters of corn.

Il achete a temps et a heure, He byeth in tyme and at hour,

Si qu'il n'a point So that he hath not

Du chier marchiet. Of the dere chepe (high buying prices).

At last the author, "all weary of so many names to name, of so many

crafts, so many offices, so many services," finds relief in certain

considerations of a religious order: "God hath made us unto the likeness

of himself, he will reward those who do well and punish those who do not

repent of their sins, and attend the holy services: If ye owe any

pilgrimages, so pay them hastily; when you be moved for to go your

journey, and ye know not the waye, so axe it thus." The usual

directions for inquiring the way follow with the description of the

arrival at an inn, and the customary gossip. The reckoning and departure

on the following morning afford an opportunity of including a further

list of Flemish and English coins together with the numerals; and Caxton

concludes his work by commending it to the reader with a prayer that

those who study it may persevere sufficiently to profit by it:

Cy fine ceste doctrine, Here endeth this doctrine,

A Westmestre les Loundres At Westmestre by London

En formes impressée, In fourmes enprinted,

En le quelle ung chaucun In the whiche one everish

Pourra briefment aprendre May shortly lerne

François et Engloys. French and English.

La grace de sainct esperit The grace of the holy ghosst

Veul enluminer les cures Wylle enlyghte the hertes

De ceulx qui le aprendront, Of them that shall lerne it,

Et nous doinst perseverance And us gyve perseverans

En bonnes operacions, In good werkes,

Et apres cest vie transitorie And after lyf transitorie

La pardurable ioye et glorie! The everlasting ioye and glorie!

The short introduction and epilogue were most probably the composition

of Caxton himself. The rest of the book is drawn from a set of dialogues

in French and Flemish, first written at the beginning of the fourteenth

century, called _Le Livre des Mestiers_ in reference to its main

chapter.[116] This would possibly be known to merchants trading with

Bruges and other centres of the Low Countries; and when we notice the

numerous points of resemblance between it and the English manuals of

conversation, the first of which did not appear before the end of the

same century, it seems very probable that the Flemish original had some

influence on the works produced in England. Caxton was a silk mercer of

London, and his business took him to the towns of the Low Countries,

especially Bruges, where the English merchants had a large commercial

connexion. There, no doubt, he became acquainted with the _Livre des

Mestiers_, and probably improved his knowledge of French by its help,

for he studied and read the language a good deal during his long sojourn

abroad. There also he probably added an English column to his copy of

the French-Flemish phrase-book, as a sort of exercise rather than with

any serious intention of publication; and when he had set up his press

at Westminster, remembering the need he had felt for French, in his own

commercial experience, and the little book which had assisted him, he

would decide to print it. Caxton's copy of the _Livre des Mestiers_

belonged, no doubt, to a later date than the one extant to-day,[117]

probably to the beginning of the fifteenth century. It must have been

fuller, and have had different names attached to the characters, so

that, as the names are still arranged in alphabetical order, it is

difficult, at a glance, to distinguish the identity of the two texts.

Caxton's rendering of the French is often inaccurate, owing perhaps to

the influence of the Flemish version from which he seems to have made

his translation.[117] Moreover, at the early date at which Caxton,

probably, added the English column to the _Livre des Mestiers_, his

knowledge of French had not yet reached that state of thoroughness which

was to enable him to translate such a remarkable number of French works

into English. He himself tells us in the prologue to the _Recuyell of

the Histories of Troy_ of Raoul le Fèvre (Bruges, 1475)--the first of

his translations from the French, and, indeed, the first book to be

printed in English--that his knowledge of French was not by any means

perfect. With the exception of the introductory and closing sentences,

Caxton made few additions to his original. He did indeed supply the

names of English towns, coins, bishoprics, and so on; but, on the whole,

the setting of the work is foreign; Bruges, not London, is the centre of

the action, and no doubt the place where the original was composed.

Not long after the publication of Caxton's doctrine another work of like

character and purpose appeared. It claims to be "a good book to learn to

speak French for those who wish to do merchandise in France, and

elsewhere in other lands where the folk speak French." The atmosphere is

entirely English, and consequently its contents bear a closer

resemblance to its English predecessors. In the arrangement of the

dialogue it is identical with the Cambridge conversation book, except

that the English lines come before the French, and not the French before

the English.[118] The four subjects round which the dialogue turns,

namely, salutations, buying and selling, inquiring the way, and

conversation at the inn, were all favourites in the early "Manières de

Langage." For the rest it follows in the steps of its English

predecessors in confining itself to dialogue pure and simple, while

Caxton's 'doctrine' adopted the narrative form. In one point, however,

the work differs from the latest development of the old "Manière de

Langage," as preserved in the Cambridge Dialogues in French and English;

the dialogues are followed by a vocabulary, then a reprint of one of the

old books on courtesy and demeanour for children, with a French version

added, and finally commercial letters in French and English. The work is

thus made much more comprehensive than any of its type which had as yet

appeared, and includes samples, so to speak, of all the practical

treatises for teaching French which had appeared in the Middle Ages.

It was printed separately by the two chief printers of the time, both

foreigners: Richard Pynson, a native of Normandy and student of Paris,

who came to England and began printing on his own account about

1590-1591; and Wynkyn de Worde, a native of Alsace, and apprentice to

Caxton, with whom he probably came to England from Bruges in 1476, and

to whose business he succeeded in 1491.[119] Although neither of the

printers dated their work, it seems probable that the earliest edition

was issued by Pynson. There is a unique copy of his edition in the

British Museum; it is without title-page, pagination, or catch-words,

and the colophon reads simply "Per me Ricardum Pynson." The colophon of

Wynkyn's work, of which there is a complete copy in the Grenville

Library (British Museum),[120] and a fragment of two leaves in the

Bodleian, is slightly more instructive and runs as follows: "Here endeth

a lytyll treatyse for to lern Englyshe and Frensshe. Emprynted at

Westmynster by my Wynken de Worde." Now as Wynkyn moved from Westminster

in 1500 to set up his shop in the centre of the trade in Fleet Street,

opposite to that of his rival Pynson, his edition of the work must have

appeared before that date, because it was issued from what had been

Caxton's house in Westminster. On the other hand, the type used by

Pynson is archaic,[121] and the work is evidently one of the earliest

issued from his press. It is inferior to Wynkyn's edition from the

technical point of view. A headline is all there is by way of title;

while in Wynkyn's copy we find a separate title-page, containing the

words, "Here begynneth a lytell treatyse for to lern Englishe and

Frensshe," and a woodcut of a schoolmaster seated in a large chair, with

a large birch-rod in his left hand, and, on a stool at his feet, three

small boys holding open books. This particular woodcut was a favourite

in school-books of the period;[122] it appears, for instance, in a

little treatise entitled _Pervula_, giving instructions for turning

English into Latin, which Wynkyn de Worde printed about 1495.[123]

Moreover, each page of Wynkyn's edition has a descriptive headline,

"Englysshe and Frensshe," which is not found in Pynson's. The text also

is in many places more accurate than that of the Norman printer, and

gives the impression of having been corrected here and there. It is

therefore probable that Pynson first printed the treatise shortly after

1490,[124] and that another edition was issued by Wynkyn de Worde during

the period intervening between the date of the issue of Pynson's edition

and the end of the century. A remnant, consisting of one page of yet

another edition, is preserved in the British Museum, and shows some

variations in spelling from the two other texts.

This little book, then, seems to have enjoyed considerable popularity

during its short life. On the whole it is more elementary in character

than the 'doctrine' of Caxton. The first things taught are the numbers

and a list of ordinary mercantile phrases. The opening passage is very

much like that written by Caxton for his work:

Here is a good boke to lerne to speke Frenshe.

Vecy ung bon livre apprendre parler françoys.

In the name of the fader and the sone

En nom du pere et du filz

And of the holy goost, I wyll begynne

Et du saint esperit, je vueil commencer

To lerne to speke Frensshe,

A apprendre a parler françoys,

Soo that I maye doo my marchandise

Affin que je puisse faire ma marchandise

In Fraunce & elles where in other londes,

En France et ailieurs en aultre pays,

There as the folk speke Frensshe.

La ou les gens parlent françoys.

And fyrst I wylle lerne to reken by lettre.

Et premierement je veux aprendre a compter par lettre. . . .

Next come the cardinal numbers and a vocabulary of words "goode for

suche as use marchaundyse":

Of gold & sylver.

D'or et d'argent.

Of cloth of golde.

De drap d'or.

Of perles & precyous stones.

De perles et Pieres precieuses.

Of velvet & damaskes.

De velours et damas etc. . . .

and so on for nearly a page, in which the names of various cloths,

spices, and wines are provided.

Then follows another "manner of speeche" in a list of salutations

arranged in dialogue form:

Other maner of speche in frensshe.

Autre magniere de langage en françoys.

Syr, God gyve you good daye.

Sire, Dieu vous doint bon iour.

Syr, God gyve you goode evyn.

Sire, Dieu vous doint bon vespere.

Syr, God gyve you goode nyght & goode reste.

Sire, Dieu vous doint bon nuyt et bon repos.

Syr, how fare ye?

Sire, comment vous portez vous?

Well at your commaundement.

Bien a vostre commandement.

How fare my lorde & my lady?

Coment se porte mon seigneur et ma dame?

Ryght well blessyd be God.

Tres bien benoit soit Dieu.

Syr, whan go ye agayne to my lorde,

Sire, quant retournez vous a mon seigneour,

I praye you that ye wyll recommaunde me unto hym,

Je vous prie que me recomandez a lui,

And also to my lady his wyfe.

Et aussi a ma dame sa femme.

Syr, God be wyth you.

Sire, Dieu soit avecques vous.

Yet another favourite subject is next introduced--a conversation on

buying and selling:

Other maner of speche to bye and selle.

Aultre magniere de langage pour vendre et achatter.

Syr, God spede you.

Sire, Dieu vous garde.

Syr, have ye not good cloth to sell?

Sire, n'avez vous point de bon drapt a vendre?

Ye syr ryght good.

Ouy sire tres bon.

Now lette me see it and it please you.

Or le me laisses voir s'il vous plest.

I shall doo it with a good wyll.

Je le feray voulentiers.

Holde, here it is.

Tenez sire, le veez cy.

Now saye how moche the yerde is worthe

Or me dites combyen l'aune vault.

Ten shelynges.

Dix solz.

Forsothe ye set it to dere.

Vrayment vous le faictez trop cher.

I shall gyve you eyght shelynges.

Je vous en donneray huyt soulz.

I wyll not, it is to lytell.

Non feroy, cest trop pou.

The yerde shall coste you nyne shelynges,

L'aune vous coustra neuf soulz,

Yf that ye have it.

Si vous l'airez.

Ye shall have it for no lasse.

Vous ne l'avrez pour riens mains.

The merchant has also to be able to ask for directions on his way, and

to gossip with the landlady of the wayside inn; the phrases necessary

for these purposes are recorded in the next "manner of speech," where,

as in the first treatise of 1396, the scene is laid in France:

For to aske the waye.

Pour demander le chemin.

Frende, God save you.

Amy, Dieu vous sauve.

Whiche is the ryght waye

Quelle est la voye droite

For to goo from hens to Parys?

Pour aller d'icy a Paris?

Syr, ye muste holde the waye on the ryght hande.

Sire, il vous fault tenir le chemin a la droite main.

Now saye me, my frende,

Or me ditez, mon amy,

Yf that any good lodginge

Y a il point de bon logis

Be betwixt this and the next vyllage?

Entre cy et ce prochayn village?

There is a ryght good one.

Il en y a ung tres bon.

Ye shall be there ryght well lodged,

Vous serez tres bien logé,

Ye & also your horse.

Vous et aussi vostre chevaul.

My frende, God yelde it you,

Mon ami, Dieu vous le rende,

And I shall doo an other tyme

Et ie feraye ung aultre foiz

As moche for you and I maye.

Autant pour vous se ie puis.

God be with you.

Dieu soit avecques vous.

The passage proceeds to describe, always in the form of a dialogue, the

traveller's arrival at the inn, his entertainment there, and his

departure:

Dame, shall I be here well lodged?

Dame, seroy ie icy bien logé?

Ye syr, ryght well.

Ouy sire, tres bien.

Nowe doo me have a good chambre

Or me faites avoir ungue bonne chambre

And a good fyre,

Et bon feu,

And doo that my horse

Et faites que mon chevaul

Maye be well governed,

Puisse estre bien gouverné,

And gyve hym good hay and good otes.

Et lui donnés bon foin et bon avoine.

Dame, is all redy for to dyne?

Dame, est tout prest pour aller digner?

Ye syr, whan it please you.

Oui sire, quant il vous plaise.

Syr, moche good do it you.

Sire, bon preu vous face.

I praye you make good chere

Je vous prie faictez bonne chere

And be mery, I drynke to you.

Et soyez ioieux, ie boy a vous.

Now, hostes, saye me how moche have we spende at this dyner.

Hostesse, or me dites combien nous avons despendu a ce digner.

I shall tell you with a good wyll.

Je vous le diray voulentiers.

Ye have in alle eyght shelyngs.

Vous avez en tout huyt solz.

Nowe well holde your sylver and gramercy.

Or bien tenez vostre argent et grandmercy.

Do my horse come to me.

Or me faittz venir mon cheval.

Is he sadled and redy for to ryde?

Est il sellé et appointé pour chevaucher?

Ye syr, all redy.

Ouy sire, tout prest.

Now fare well and gramercy.

Or adiu et grandmercy.

Here the 'manière de langage' ends. It is followed by a list of nouns

arranged under headings. The enumeration begins with the parts of the

body,[125] followed by the clothing and armour--a list containing

valuable information on the fashions of the time; then come the natural

phenomena, the sun, the stars, water, the winds, and so on; the products

of the earth and the food they supply, and finally, the names of the

days of the week. With the exception of the last page, each word is

preceded by a possessive adjective or an article indicating its gender.

The English rendering is sometimes placed above the French word,

sometimes opposite.

After the vocabulary, which covers nearly five pages, comes the courtesy

book in English and French, occupying the next seven pages. It is a

reprint of the _Lytylle Chyldrenes Lytil Boke_,[126] which contains a

set of maxims for discreet behaviour at meals, in which children are

told not to snatch meat from the table before grace is said; not to

throw bones on the floor; nor pick their teeth with their knife; nor do

many other things, which, when we remember that such books were intended

for the instruction of the gentry, throw interesting sidelights on

contemporary manners. The inclusion of such precepts for children in a

text-book for teaching French was not without precedent; in the last of

the series of riming vocabularies, _Femina_ (1415), there is a

collection of moral maxims taken, in this instance, from the ancient

writers, and printed in Latin, French, and English.

In conclusion, the author reverts to the more strictly commercial side

of the treatise, with two letters, given in both French and English. One

is from an apprentice who writes to his master reporting on some

business he is transacting at Paris, and asking for more money. In the

second a merchant communicates to his 'gossip' the news of the arrival

at London and Southampton of ships laden with rich merchandise, and

proposes that they should "find means and ways in this that their shops

shall be well stuffed of all manner of merchandise." In both these

letters the English comes first:

_A prentyse wryteth to his mayster, fyrste in Englysshe and after

in frensshe._[127]

Ryght worshypful syr, I recommaunde me unto you as moche as I may,

and please you wete that I am in ryght goode helth thanked be God.

To whome I praye that so it may be of you and of all your good

frendes. As for the mater for the whiche ye sent me to Parys, I

have spoken with kynges advocate the which sayd to me I must go to

the kynge and enfourme his royalle majeste thereof, and have

specyal commaundement. Therfore consyderynge the tyme I have taryed

at Parys in the pursute of this and the grete coste and expence

done bycause of this. Please you for to knowe that for to pursue

that mater unto the kyng, the which is at Monthason next Tours, and

for to go thyder it is nedefull to sende me some monye and with the

grace of God I shalle do suche dylygence that I shall gete your

hertes desyre. No more wryte I to you at this tyme but God have you

in hys protectyon. Wryten hastely the XIX daye of this moneth.

Tres honnoré sire, ie me recommande a vous tant comme je puis, et

plaise vous savoir que ie suis en tres bonne santé la marcy Dieu au

quel ie prie que ainsi soit il de vous et de tous vos bons amys.

Quant pour la matiere pour la quelle vous me envoiastes a Parys,

g'ay parlé avec l'advocat du roy le quel m'a dit quil me fault

aller au roy et advertir sa royalle maiesté de ce et ay un specyal

commandement. Pource consyderant le temps que j'ay attendu a Paris

en cest poursuite et lez granz costz et despens faitz par cause de

ce. Plaise vous savoir que pour poursuir ceste matiere au roy, le

qyel est a Monthason pres Tours, et pour aller la il est mestier de

m'enuoyer de l'argent. Et avecques la grace de Dieu je feray telle

diligence que aurez ce que vostre cueur desire. Aultre chos ne vous

escripz a ceste foiz mays que Dieu vous ayt en sa protection.

Escript hastivement le dixneufieme jour du moys.

And so ends this interesting little book.[128] The texts of the two

complete editions are in the main identical. The arrangement of the

matter on the pages is different, and the spelling of the words, both

French and English, varies considerably. Slips which occur in Pynson's

text, such as the rendering of 'neuf' by 'ten,' or the accidental

omission of a word in the French version, are sometimes corrected in

Wynkyn's version. On the other hand, similar mistakes, though much fewer

in number, are found in Wynkyn's edition and not in Pynson's; while yet

others are common to both the printers. Dialect forms are scattered

through the two editions with equal capriciousness. Both texts contain

a few anglo-normanisms. Pynson's shows numerous characteristics of the

North-Eastern dialects, Picard or Lorrain, but at times there is a

Picard form in Wynkyn's version, where the pure French form occurs in

the other. Apart from such variations, the wording of the two editions

is usually similar. In cases where it differs, the improvements are

found in Wynkyn's edition, in spite of the fact that, as a general rule,

the output of Pynson's press reaches a higher literary level than that

of the more business-like Alsatian. This exception may, no doubt, be

explained by the fact that Pynson was the first to print the _Good Book

to learn to speak French_.[129] Yet here again mistakes are sometimes

common to both texts, as, for instance, the rendering of the lines:

For the clerks that the seven arts can

Sythen that courtesy from heaven came,

by the French:

Pour les clers qui les sept arts savent

Puisque courtoisie de paradis vint,

in which the wrong interpretation of the English 'for' (conjunction) and

'sythen' (taken as meaning 'since,' not 'say') destroys the sense.

On the whole, the impression conveyed by the perusal of the two editions

is that the work is a compilation of treatises already in existence in

manuscript. Neither the letters nor the vocabulary present any

strikingly new features. The origin of the courtesy book is known, and

it is even possible that the fragment of one leaf preserved belongs, not

to another edition of the _Good Book to learn to speak French_, but to

an earlier edition of the courtesy book in French and English, printed

probably by Caxton, with the intention of imparting a knowledge of

polite behaviour and of the favourite language of polite society at the

same time. The fact that it reproduces the original courtesy book more

fully than does either of the complete texts of Wynkyn and Pynson,

suggests that it belonged to some such edition, or to an edition of the

_Good Book_ earlier than either of these. As to the dialogues, they may

have belonged to the group of conversational manuals, which were, no

doubt, fairly numerous. Caxton, while maintaining that his 'doctrine'

contains more than "many other books," adds: "That which cannot be found

declared in it, shall be found elsewhere in other books." That such

practical little books shared the fate of the great majority of school

manuals is not surprising.

The hypothesis that the work is a compilation of older treatises would,

moreover, explain the variations in the quality of the French. The

dialogues and letters, it would appear, were in the first place written

by Englishmen. Pynson corrected them here and there, without, however,

eliminating all the anglicisms, archaisms, and provincial forms; and

when they passed through the hands of Wynkyn they underwent still

further emendation. The English version contains gallicisms, just as the

French contains anglicisms,[130] which were, however, probably due to a

desire to make the English tally with the French. This same supposition

also makes it easier to understand how it came about that the treatise

was printed by the two rival printers within the space of a few years,

and explains how it was they repeated the same obvious mistakes.

Thus, of the matter found in the mediaeval treatises for teaching

French, grammar rules alone are unrepresented in this _Good Book_. Its

aim is entirely practical. It seeks to teach those who wish to "lerne to

_speke_ Frensshe" for practical purposes, that is, "to do their

merchaundise," and there is no mention of any deeper or wider knowledge

of the language. That the work was intended for the use of children as

well as for merchants is shown by the introduction of the courtesy book,

and, in the later edition, of the favourite frontispiece for children's

school-books described above. But these do not form a vital part of the

work itself, and are mere supplements, added probably with the intention

of increasing the public to which the book would appeal. The children

who used it, we may assume, would probably be of the class of the boy,

"John, enfant beal et sage," who appears in the 'manière' of 1415, and

learns French that he may the more quickly achieve his end of being

apprenticed to a London merchant. To such children the apprentice's

letter quoted above would be of much interest.

Grammar did not hold a very large place in the teaching of French at

this time. Practice and conversation were the usual methods of acquiring

a knowledge of spoken French, and no doubt such books as those of Caxton

and of Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde found many eager students. The two

editions of the first and the three editions of the second with which we

are acquainted, all of which probably appeared in the course of the last

decade of the fifteenth century, bear testimony to this. Reference has

already been made to the probable existence of numerous works of a

similar scope in manuscript, and later in print. Such were the "little

pages, set in print, with no precepts," to which Claude Holyband, the

most popular French teacher of London in the second half of the

sixteenth century, refers with contempt; he accuses them of wandering

from the 'true phrase' of the language, and of teaching nothing of the

reading and pronunciation, "which is the chiefest point to be considered

in that behalf," and hence of serving but little to the "furtherance of

the knowledge of the French tongue." Yet, though such was the case in

all these early works, they seem, without exception, to have enjoyed

great popularity at the time they were written, when to speak French

fluently was an all-important matter. The difficulty of this

accomplishment was realised to the full. We find it expressed in a few

disconnected sentences added in French probably at the beginning of the

sixteenth century, at the end of the 'manière de langage' of 1396: "We

need very long practice before we are able to speak French perfectly,"

says the anonymous writer, evidently an Englishman, "for the French and

English do not correspond word for word, and the fine distinctions are

difficult to seize." He proceeds to urge the necessity of a glib tongue

in making progress in French, and quotes the case of an unfortunate man,

good fellow though he might otherwise be, who lacked this faculty: "Il

ne luy avient plus a parler franceis qu'à une vache de porter une selle,

a cause que sa langue n'est pas bien afilée, et pour cela n'entremette

il pas à parler entre les fraunceis."

In the early part of the sixteenth century, however, French began to be

studied with more thoroughness in England. Communication with France and

the tour in France were no longer fraught with the same dangers and

difficulties, and favoured the use of a purer form of French. Fluent was

no longer sufficient without correct pronunciation and grammar. The

standard of French taught was also raised by the arrival of numerous

Frenchmen, who made the teaching of their language the business of their

lives. Further, the spread of the art of printing had rendered French

literature more accessible, and supplied a rich material from which the

rules of the language might be deduced. And so it became possible for

John Palsgrave, the London teacher and student of Paris, to complete the

first great work on the French language, in which, however, he did not

forget to render due homage to his humble predecessors,[131] then fast

passing into oblivion.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, ii., 1868, pp. 16 _sqq._, 28 _sqq._

[76] _Manière de Langage_, 1396; cp. _infra_, p. 35.

[77] "Doulz françois qu'est la plus bel et la plus gracious language et

plus noble parler, apres latin d'escole, qui soit au monde."

[78] Jehan Barton, _Donait François_, _c._ 1400.

[79] "Afin qu'ils puissent entrecomuner bonement ove lour voisin c'est a

dire les bones gens du roiaume de France, et ainsi pour ce que les leys

d'Engleterre pour le graigneur partie et ainsi beaucoup de bones choses

sont misez en François, et aussi bien pres touz les sirs et toutes les

dames en mesme roiaume d'Engleterre volentiers s'entrescrivent en

romance--tresnecessaire je cuide estre aus Englois de scavoir la nature

de François."

[80] Which no doubt became more numerous, as English, rather than Latin,

became the medium through which French was learnt. Thus we find _pour

honte_ written for 'for shame'; _il est haut temps_, for 'it is high

time'; _quoi_ ('why') for _pourquoi_; _de les_ for _des_, and so on.

[81] Edited from a unique MS. in Trinity College, Cambridge, by W. Aldis

Wright, for the Roxburghe Club, 1909 (Camb. Univ. Press). G. Hickes

published part of the first chapter, with remarks on its philological

value, in his _Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus

Grammatico-Criticus et Archaeologicus_, Oxford, 1705, i. pp. 144-151.

[82] "Liber iste vocatur femina quia sicut femina docet infantem loqui

maternam, sic docet iste liber iuvenes rethorice loqui Gallicum prout

infra patebit."

[83] P. Meyer, _Romania_, xxxii. pp. 43 _et seq._

[84] The English spelling, very corrupt in the original, is here

modernized.

[85] These MSS. have been described and classified by J. Stürzinger,

_Altfranzösische Bibliothek_, viii. pp. v-x.

[86] Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 4971; Addit. MS. 11716, and Camb. Univ. Libr.

MS. Ee 4, 20.

[87] Camb. Univ. Libr. MSS. Dd 12, 23. and Gg 6, 44.

[88] P. Meyer, _Romania_, xv. p. 262.

[89] Brit. Mus. Sloane MS. 513, pp. 135-138.

[90] Brit. Mus. Sloane MS. 513, fol. 139.

[91] There is a fragment, very indistinct, on French pronunciation in

the Brit. Mus. MS. Harl. 4971: _Modus pronunciandi dictiones in

Gallicis_.

[92] Cp. also the Brit. Mus. Addit MS. 17716, fol. 100.

[93] Camb. Univ. Libr. MS., Ee 4, 20; Oxford, All Souls, MS. 182.

[94] Brit. Mus. MS. Harl. 4971; MS. Addit. 17716 (preceding the

observations on pronouns and verbs mentioned above); Camb. Univ. Libr.,

Ee 4, 20; Oxford Magdalen College, MS. 188, and All Souls, MS. 182.

[95] Published by Stengel, _op. cit._ pp. 25-40, from MS. 182 of All

Souls, Oxford.

[96] Brunot, _op. cit._ i. p. 376.

[97] "A le honneur de Dieu et de sa tresdoulce miere et toutz les

saintez de paradis, je Johan Barton, escolier de Paris, née et nourie

toutes foiez d'Engleterre en la conté de Cestre, j'ey baillé aus

avantdiz Anglois un Donait françois pur les briefment entroduyr en la

droit language du Paris et de pais la d'entour la quelle language en

Engleterre on appelle doulce France. Et cest Donat je le fis la fair a

mes despenses et tres grande peine par pluseurs bons clercs du language

avantdite."

[98] Brunot, _op. cit._ i. p. 376.

[99] "Cy endroit il fault prendre garde qu'en parlant François on ne

mette pas une personne pour une aultre si come font les sottez gens,

disantz ainsi _je ferra_ pour _je ferray_. . . ."

[100] We pass from the numbers of nouns to the person of verbs, then to

the genders and kinds (proper, appellative) of nouns and their cases,

six in number on the analogy of Latin, which is naturally the basis of

the terminology of this work and all others for many years after; then

come observations on the degrees of comparison, after which we return to

the verbs, and their moods and tenses. The following sections deal with

the parts of speech; the four indeclinables (adverbs, prepositions,

conjunctions, and interjections) are merely mentioned. Nouns,

adjectives, and pronouns receive some attention, but the chief subject

is the verb: "Cy maintenant nous vous baillerons un exemple coment vous

fourmeres touz les verbs françois du monde, soient-ils actifez,

soient-ils passivez, en quelque meuf ou temps qu'ils soient. Et ceste

exemple serra pour cest verbe _jeo aime_. . . ." But the verbs are not

classified, and only a few of the best known are conjugated as examples.

In the list of impersonal verbs which closes the treatise, English is

sometimes used to explain their meaning: "Me est avis, _Me seemth_."

[101] J. Bale, _Illustrium Maioris Britanniae scriptorum summarium_.

Ipswich, 1548, p. 203.

[102] _Dict. Nat. Biog._, ad nom.

[103] Preserved in a considerable number of MSS.: Brit. Mus. (Harl.

3988, Addit. 17716), Oxford (All Souls, 182), Camb. Univ. Libr. (Bd 12,

23), and in Sir Thomas Philipps's Library at Cheltenham (MS. No. 8188).

The earliest (Harl. 3988) was published by P. Meyer in the _Revue

Critique_, 1873, pp. 373-408.

[104] The name of Kirmington, which occurs at the end, is no doubt that

of the copyist.

[105] _Athenaeum_, Oct. 5, 1878: article by Stengel.

[106] Published by Stengel, _op. cit._ pp. 12-15.

[107] Stengel, _Athenaeum_, Oct. 5, 1878. Coyfurelly also rehandled the

_Tractatus Orthographiae_ of 'T. H., Student of Paris.'

[108] Ed. Paul Meyer, _Romania_, xxxii. pp. 49-58. It exists in three

MSS.; at the end of _Femina_ in Camb. Univ. Libr. (Dd 12, 23), at

Trinity Col. Camb. (B 14. 39, 40), and in the Brit. Mus. (Addit. 17716).

[109] French, however, still had some standing at Oxford at this date.

[110] Preserved in Cambridge University Library.

[111] Containing such anglicisms as the rendering of 'already' by _tout

prest_.

[112] Such collections exist in MSS. Harl. 4971 and Addit. 17716, Brit.

Mus.; and in Ee 4, 20, Camb. Univ. Libr.

[113] Harl. 4971; cp. Stürzinger, _op. cit._ p. xvi.

[114] Early bibliographers seem to have been uncertain as to what

category it belonged to: for some time it was called a _Book for

Travellers_; then a _Vocabulary in French and English_ (Blades, _Life

and Typography of Wm. Caxton_, 1861-63), and finally by the more

appropriate title of _Dialogues in French and English_.

[115] Caxton's edition contains ff. 24, with about 24 lines on a page.

There are three complete texts extant (at Ripon Cathedral, Rylands

Library, and Bamborough Castle), and one fragmentary one (in the Duke of

Devonshire's Library). The Ripon copy was reprinted for the Early

English Text Society in 1900, by H. Bradley (extra series lxxix.). The

other edition, of which a fragment exists in the Bodleian, was probably

printed by Wynkyn de Worde (W. C. Hazlitt, _Handbook ... to the

Literature of Great Britain_, 1867, p. 631).

[116] Published from a MS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale, by M.

Michelant: _Le Livre des Mestiers, dialogues français-flamands, composés

au 14e siècle par un maître d'école de la ville de Bruges_. Paris, 1875.

[117] H. Bradley: Introduction to the edition of Caxton's _Dialogues_.

[118] Caxton's arrangement of the French and English in opposite columns

is no doubt accounted for by the fact that he wrote the English version

by the side of the French in his copy of the original phrase book.

[119] E. G. Duff, _A Century of the English Book Trade_, Bibliographical

Soc., 1905; and _Handlists of Books Printed by London Printers_,

Bibliog. Soc., 1913, ad nom. The work is here given the inappropriate

title of a "Vocabulary in French and English."

[120] It was to have been reprinted by H. B. Wheatley in a collection of

early grammars, for the Early English Text Society.

[121] W. C. Hazlitt, _Bibliographical Collections and Notes_, 3rd

series, London, 1887, p. 293.

[122] For instance, the _Cato cum commento_ (1514), _Stans puer ad

mensam_ (1516), and _Vulgaria Stanbrigi_ (_c._ 1520).

[123] "What shalt thou do when thou haste an englyssh to be made in

Latine? I shall reherce myn englyssh fyrst, ones, twyces, and loke out

my princypal verbe, and aske hym this questyon _who_ or _what_. And that

worde that answeryth to the questyon shall be the nomynatif case to the

verbe."

[124] In the British Museum Catalogue Wynkyn's edition is dated 1493?

and Pynson's 1500?; the year 1500? is also put forward as the date for

the fragmentary edition. W. C. Hazlitt dates Wynkyn's edition at about

the year 1498, and Pynson's at about 1492-3 (_Bibliographical

Collections_, _ut supra_, and _Handbook_, London, 1867, p. 210).

[125]

My heres.

Mes cheveulx.

My browes.

Mez sourcieulx.

Myn eres.

Mez oreilles.

Myn teeth.

Mez dens.

My forhede.

Mon front.

Myn eyen.

Mez yeulx.

My nose.

Mon nez.

My tong.

Ma langue . . . etc.

[126] Published by E. J. Furnivall, _Manners and Meals in Olden Time_,

1868, pp. 16 _sqq._ The MS. used by the compiler of the French manual

was no doubt of a later date than the one here printed.

[127] Pp. 19-20 _in fine_.

[128] It contains 11 quarto leaves, of the size of the time, with

usually 29 lines to a page.

[129] Thus in Pynson's edition the order of the personal pronouns before

the verb is often inverted ("le vous diray," "le vous rende"), while it

is correct in Wynkyn's; and some lines of the French version of the

courtesy book are almost unintelligible, whereas their meaning is

clearly expressed by Wynkyn.

[130] Such phrases as "say me my friend" for _dites-moi mon ami_; "do me

have a good chamber" for _faites-moi avoir une bonne chambre_.

[131] In addition to the works already mentioned, some reference to

these mediaeval treatises is also found in an article by H. Oelsner, in

the _Athenaeum_ (Feb. 11, 1905); in A. Way's edition of the _Promptorium

Parvulorum_ (Camden Soc., 1865, No. 89; Appendix, pp. xxvii _sqq._ and

pp. lxxi _sqq._); Ellis, _Original Letters_, 3rd series, ii. p. 208.

PART II

TUDOR TIMES

CHAPTER I

THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AT COURT AND AMONG THE NOBILITY

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the gradual changes which

brought about the extinction of Anglo-French were complete to all

intents and purposes; this corrupt form of the language lingered only in

a few religious houses and the law courts. The French spoken at the

English Court in the Middle Ages had remained purer than elsewhere; for

centuries the kings of England were as much attached to France as to

England; they had spent much of their time in France and fought for the

French crown as their natural right, not as Englishmen in strife with

Frenchmen. From the thirteenth century, however, English was understood,

though not widely spoken, at Court. It progressed gradually until, two

centuries later, in the reign of Henry VI., it was used more frequently

than French. By the sixteenth century French was an entirely foreign

language at the English Court, and it was round the Court circles that

developed the new and more serious study of the language which then

arose--a study which led to the production of so important a work as

John Palsgrave's _L'Esclarcissement de la langue françoyse_. It will

therefore be well to consider the extent to which French was used among

the nobility and gentry of the time.

The personal ascendancy of the Tudors and the pomp of their Court began

to attract the attention of foreigners, and to excite their curiosity.

Consequently numerous travellers made their way to the English capital;

and later in the same period religious persecution, raging on the

Continent, drove many Protestants, frequently men of distinction, to

seek refuge in England. What language would these visitors employ in

their intercourse with their hosts? English is excluded from the

purview, because at this time, and indeed for some time after, our

language received no recognition, and certainly no homage from any

foreigner, and but scant deference from English scholars themselves.[132]

Several foreign visitors in London have left an account of their

impressions on hearing this entirely unknown and strange language

spoken. Thus Nicander Nucius, the Greek Envoy at the Court of Henry

VIII., says of the English that "they possess a peculiar language,

differing in some measure from all others"; although it is "barbarous,"

he finds in it a certain charm and attraction, and judges it "sweeter"

than German or Flemish.[133] Others formed a less favourable

opinion.[134] The physician Girolamo Cordano, for instance, when he

first heard Englishmen speaking, thought they were Italians gone mad and

raving, "for they inflect the tongue upon the palate, twist words in the

mouth, and maintain a sort of gnashing with the teeth." The Dutchman,

Immanuel von Meteren, gathered the impression that English is broken

German, "not spoken from the heart as the latter, but only prattling

with the tongue."

We have, however, to recollect that, among the learned, Latin was in

general use as a spoken language; it was the ideal of the Humanists to

make Latin the universal language of the educated world. Erasmus was

able to live several years in England, and in familiar intercourse with

Englishmen, without feeling the necessity for learning English or using

any other modern language; but he mingled almost entirely with scholars,

such as Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer, Colet, and More--men with whom Henry

VIII. loved to surround himself. Still, the great Dutchman was an

exception even amongst Humanists, who nearly all, at some period in

their lives, forsook Latin for their native tongue. Moreover, Latin was

not fluently or colloquially spoken by the majority of the English

nobility and gentry. The poet, Alexander Barclay, tells us that "the

understandyne of Latyn," in the early years of the sixteenth century,

was "almost contemned by Gentylmen."[135] [Header: THE SPEAKING OF

LATIN] "I have not these twenty years used any Latin tongue,"[136] said

Latimer at his trial for heresy in 1554--a striking testimony on the

lips of one whose natural sympathies were towards Humanism. Some years

later the great Huguenot scholar, Hubert Languet, wrote to his young

English friend, Sir Philip Sidney--then newly returned from continental

travel--to express his apprehension lest the young man should forget all

his Latin at the English Court and entirely give up the practice of it;

he urges him to do his best to prevent this, and maintain his Latin

along with his French. Languet affirms that he has never heard Sidney

pronounce a syllable of French incorrectly, and wishes his pronunciation

of Latin were as perfect.[137] Sidney, however, does not appear to have

considered Latin of as much importance to a courtier as French: "So you

can speake and write Latine not barbarously," he wrote to his brother

Robert in 1580,[138] "I never require great study ordinarily in

Ciceronianisme, the cheife abuse of Oxford." No doubt Sidney voices a

general sentiment in this verdict. It is increasingly clear that the

supremacy of Latin was beginning to be questioned on all sides, and,

while Latin remained to a large extent the language of scholars, it was

not generally employed in society.

Further, when the English did speak Latin, foreigners had considerable

difficulty in understanding them, on account of their notoriously bad

pronunciation. The great scholar Scaliger, who was in England in 1590,

tells that he once listened to an Englishman talking Latin for a quarter

of an hour, and at last excused himself, saying that he did not

understand English![139] To the same effect is the observation of Tom

Coryat, the traveller, who, on his journey on the Continent,[140] found

his Latin so little understood, that he had to modify his pronunciation.

At a later date, when the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosmo III., visited the

two English Universities,[141] he was unable to understand the Latin

speeches and orations with which he was greeted. A Latin comedy which

the Cambridge students performed in his honour was equally

unintelligible to him. "To smatter Latin with an English mouth," wrote

Milton in a well-known passage, "is as ill a hearing as Law French."

At the same time a quickened interest in modern languages generally was

felt in England as in other countries. Two of these, Italian and

Spanish, entered the arena to challenge the supremacy of French in the

world of fashion and intellect. The real issue of the contest, however,

was never in doubt. The Renaissance and the new Humanism appeared for a

time to favour the Italian rival,[142] but the inherent merits of

French, with its particular genius for precision and clarity, easily won

the day. Those circles--often very brilliant circles--of distinguished

men and women for whom the Renaissance was as the dawn of a new day,

often made Italian a more serious object of study than French; but

though it was widely learned for the sake of its literature, it was

never so widely spoken or so universally popular as French. Italian, and

to a minor degree Spanish, were indeed seriously cultivated by the Tudor

group of distinguished linguists,[143] and so became a sort of fashion,

which, spreading to more frivolous circles, soon degenerated into mere

affectation. These dilettanti had been at a great feast of languages and

stolen the scraps, to use Shakespeare's words. Such affectation was

naturally felt to be dangerous. While Roger Ascham renders due homage to

the linguistic attainments of his queen,[144] he finds it necessary to

reproach the young gentlemen of the day with their deficiency in this

respect. [Header: INTEREST IN MODERN LANGUAGES] Professional teachers of

modern languages likewise complain of the lack of seriousness on the

part of many of their pupils. John Florio,[145] for example, bewails the

fact that when they have learned two words of Spanish, three words of

French, and four words of Italian, they think they have enough, and will

study no more; and a French teacher[146] expresses the same thought in

almost identical terms; according to him they learn a little French one

day, then a bit of Italian and a snatch of Spanish, and think themselves

qualified for an embassy to the Grand Turk. Shakespeare's Falconbridge,

the young baron of England, may be taken as a fair example of such

dilettantism.[147]

Thus Italian was never a really dangerous rival to French, which had

struck its roots deep into the English soil long before Italian

influence reached our shores. Not only was this the case, but French was

also widely known throughout Europe. Even in the early years of this

period, the poet Alexander Barclay, himself the author of a French

grammar, affirms that French was spoken even by the Turks and Saracens.

The French themselves are said to have been in love with their own

language, and, as a result, to have neglected Latin;[148] when the

English ambassador at Paris, Sir Amias Poulet, sent to England for a

chaplain for his household, he wrote: "Yt were to be wished that he had

at the least some understandinge in the French tongue for his better

conference with the Frenche ministers, whereof many are not best able to

utter there mynde in Lattyn."[149]

We may therefore safely conclude that French was the language commonly

spoken by Englishmen in their intercourse with foreigners, although

Latin was sometimes used in conversation, and Italians were occasionally

addressed in their own tongue. English was so little used in the Court

and its circles that foreigners were apt to forget that England had a

language of her own; one of them considers it a merit in Henry VIII.

that he was able to speak English! In London, indeed, the use of French

was so common that several foreign observers deemed the fact worthy of

note. Nicander Nucius, the Greek envoy who visited London in 1545,

remarks[150] that, for the most part, the English use the French

language, besides having a great admiration for everything else

French--an observation which cannot safely be taken as referring to any

other class than the nobility, as his relations would be almost wholly

restricted to that class. When the Duke of Württemberg visited the court

of Elizabeth, where he found ample occasion to exercise his own

admirable knowledge of French, he left on record the fact that many

English courtiers understood and spoke French very well. The spread of

French at the English Court attracted the attention of Frenchmen also,

and several years after Nicander's account, Peletier du Mans states that

in England, at least among the princes and their courts, French is

spoken on all occasions.[151]

French was also not infrequently used in correspondence. Apart from such

diplomatic correspondence as exists, numerous examples of the

interchange of private letters in French among the English nobility have

come down to us. Even among scholars Latin was by no means the only

medium of communication. In the sixteenth century the chief scholars of

the two countries corresponded with each other, and, though Englishmen

never wrote in their native tongue, Frenchmen did occasionally use their

own language rather than Latin. Bacon wrote in French to the Marquis of

Effiat, and Hotman, on the other hand, in French to Camden: "Me sentant

detraqué de l'usage de la langue latine, je vous escris cette lettre en

françois pour renouveller avec vous notre amitié ancienne et

correspondance."[152] John Calvin corresponded with Edward VI. and

Protector Somerset in French, and Henry IV. of France carried on a

voluminous correspondence in his own language with his "tres chere et

tres aimée bonne soeur," Elizabeth, as well as with her chief

ministers.[153] [Header: FRENCH REGARDED WITH SPECIAL FAVOUR] French was

thus more than a mere accomplishment for the English gentleman, and soon

became an absolute necessity for all those who desired employment under

the Crown. It is true that an interpreter might be had, but the practice

was looked upon with great disfavour as very unsuitable where private

negotiations had to be conducted. The necessity for a knowledge of

French on the part of a minister of state may be gathered from the large

number of petitions and other documents addressed to them in that

language and preserved among the State Papers.[154] A rather curious

instance of the favour with which the use of French was regarded in

official circles is supplied by the case of a Scotch prisoner in London,

who, when he desired leave on parole, on the ground of ill-health, was

advised to make his application in French, "to shew his

scholarship."[155] Copies of proclamations, issued in foreign countries,

were frequently translated into French before being sent to the English

Government; and time after time we find a lack of knowledge of French

regarded as a serious disqualification for diplomatic or other public

service. One young gentleman regrets that he "cannot be engaged on any

work of importance as he does not know French." The drawbacks arising

from an inadequate knowledge of the language appear from the case of a

certain Thomas Thyrleby who writes from Valance to Wriothesly in 1538

telling him how much discouraged he is concerning his knowledge of

French. He says he went with the Bishop of Winchester and Brian to the

Constable that morning at eight o'clock, and that he could understand

them, but not the Grand Master's answer, except by conjecture, guessing

at a word here and there; after dinner he had audience of the French

king and bore away never one word but "l'empereur, l'empereur" often

rehearsed; and he feels he must diligently apply himself to learn the

language or the king will be ill served when he is left alone.[156]

The Tudors appear to have regarded the study of French with much favour.

The first king of this line had lived for many years in France and was

strongly imbued with French tastes.[157] He encouraged Frenchmen to

visit England, and appointed one of them, Bernard André, his Poet

Laureate and Historiographer as well as tutor to his sons. There were

also troupes of French comedians and minstrels who performed at Court

from time to time.[158] The king always received with favour at his

Court those who were fluent in the French tongue. No doubt Stephen Hawes

secured the king's patronage partly by his facility in the use of this

language, and partly from his really profound knowledge of French

literature, of which the king also was an eager student. Yet this first

of the Tudor kings belongs rather to the Middle Ages and the Old

Learning than to the Renaissance.

Not until we reach the period of Henry VIII., a distinct favourer of the

New Learning, do we enter fully into the spirit of the new movement. In

a true sense Henry may be called the first King of England, for England

was his real home, and while using the ancient title "King of France,"

he had no truly filial attachment to the country. He may thus be taken

as a fair example of the attitude of the cultivated English noble

towards foreign languages. He spoke French fluently though he had never

been in France, and also conversed in Latin with ease; Italian he

understood, but made no attempt to speak. He always addressed foreigners

in either French or Latin.[159] An admirer of French fashions, he copied

in such matters his friend and rival, the French king, even allowing his

beard to grow when he heard that Francis wore one, and having his hair

dressed "short and straight after the French fashion." When the Venetian

ambassador, Piero Pasqualigo, came from Paris to London in 1515, Henry

eagerly seized the opportunity to institute a comparison between himself

and the French king. Pasqualigo, meeting Henry at Greenwich, writes how

he on one occasion beheld his majesty mounted on a bay Frieslander, and

dressed entirely in green velvet; directly the envoy came in sight, he

began to make his horse to curvet and perform such feats, that

Pasqualigo says he thought himself looking upon Mars. He came into our

tent, the narrator continues, and, addressing me in French, said, "Talk

with me a while."[160] [Header: HENRY VIII.'S KNOWLEDGE OF FRENCH]

Henry then proceeded to question him about Francis and to induce him to

draw comparisons between himself and the French king. The ambassador

remarks that Henry spoke French "very well indeed." The campaign of 1513

supplies another example of the ease with which Henry spoke French. The

English king was accompanied by Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who later

incurred the royal anger by his presumption in marrying Henry's sister

Mary, the Dowager of France. On the present occasion, however, the

king's knowledge of French was of great service to Suffolk, who found

some difficulty in pressing his suit with the Lady Margaret of Savoy,

owing to his ignorance of that language. The Duke had half seriously

removed a ring from the lady's finger, and, as she particularly desired

to reclaim it, and he refused to return it, she called him a thief; but

he could not understand the word "larron," so she was forced to call

upon the king to explain.[161]

There are extant several examples of Henry's compositions in French.

Much of his private correspondence was written in this tongue; and he

also essayed to write verses in French, possibly in imitation of Francis

I. Their quality may be judged from the following specimens:[162]

Adieu madam et ma mastres,

Adieu mon solas et mon joy,

Adieu jusque vous revoy,

Adieu vous diz par graunt tristesse.

or:

Helas madam cel qe je metant [j'eme tant],

soffre qe soie voutre humble svant [servant];

ie seray [vous] a tousiours e tant que ie

vivray alt n'airay qe vous.[163]

We gather from Henry's spelling of French that he had learnt the

language chiefly by ear.

There is a curious example of the fluency with which the king and his

courtiers spoke French, in a scene described by Wolsey's gentleman usher

and afterwards dramatized by Shakespeare.[164] The cardinal was among

the few at the Court of Henry VIII. who did not speak French with ease.

During a banquet he was giving at the palace of Whitehall, Henry and a

band of courtiers landed unexpectedly at the Whitehall Stairs, disguised

as foreign noblemen. Wolsey sent the Lord Chancellor to bid them

welcome, because he could not speak French himself.[165] The visitors

were introduced, and passed for a time as foreigners, the Lord

Chancellor acting as their interpreter to Wolsey. At last the royal

joker and his companions disclosed their identity amidst a tumult of

exclamations, and then joined in the festivities.[166]

The ladies of the Court rivalled the noblemen in their knowledge of

French. When the French ambassadors with their brilliant suite, who had

come to England for the ratification of peace in 1514, were entertained

in great state at Greenwich, all the ladies and gentlewomen were able to

converse in good French with their French partners, "which delighted

them much to heare the Ladies speake to them in their owne

language."[167] It is not surprising, therefore, to find French holding

an important place in the education of women of high birth. The princess

Mary Tudor, one of the most attractive figures at the English Court,

had, like the king her brother, been early initiated in the difficulties

of the French language.[168] At the age of twelve she pronounced in

French her betrothal vows to the Prince of Castile (1513); and when it

fell to her lot to marry Louis XII. of France, she continued still more

to apply herself to the study of the language. She was able to write to

her future husband in his own tongue,[169] and even occasionally made

use of it in her correspondence with her brother, the English king.

[Header: FRENCH AMONG THE LADIES]

Henry's first queen did little to forward French tastes and never

modified her natural preference for all things Spanish, but with the

advent of Queen Anne Boleyn French acquired a powerful and enthusiastic

patroness. Anne was entirely French by education and tastes. She had

been brought up by a French governess,[170] and had from an early age

used the French language in her correspondence with her father during

his absences at the Court and elsewhere. It was her fluency in this

language which led to her rapid advancement on her arrival at Court. She

was soon chosen to accompany the king's sister Mary to France, and just

before her appointment wrote to her father in French, telling him that

the presence of the Queen of France would inspire her with a still

greater desire to speak French well.[171] Anne stayed in France several

years, first in the service of Mary during the few months she was Queen

of France, then in that of her successor, Queen Claude, consort of

Francis I., and finally in the more lively household of Margaret of

Alençon, afterwards Queen of Navarre. On her return to the English Court

she became maid of honour to Queen Katherine, and her skill in dress and

her French manners[172] did much to promote the taste for French

fashions. The famous Elizabethan antiquary Camden asserts that Anne's

French jollity first attracted to her the notice of Henry. At any rate

the courtship was largely carried on in French. Out of the seventeen

love letters of Henry to Anne Boleyn, which are preserved in the Vatican

Library, more than half are in French.[173] One of these may be quoted

as an example of the English king's powers in French prose. It was

written to Anne during one of the absences she deemed expedient to make

from the Court:

Ma Maitresse et amie, moy et mon coeur s'en remettent en vos mains,

vous suppliant les avoir pour recommander a votre bonne grace, et

que par absence votre affection ne leur soit diminué. Car pur

augmenter leur peine ce seroit grande pitié, car l'absence leur fait

assez, et plus que jamais je n'eusse pensé . . . vous asseurant que

de ma part l'ennuye de l'absence deja m'est trop grande. Et quand je

pense a l'augmentation d'iceluy que par force faut que je soufre il

m'est presque intollerable, s'il n'estoit le ferme espoir que j'aye

de votre indissoluble affection vers moi, et pour le vous

rementevoir alcune fois cela, et voyant que personellement je ne

puis estre en votre presence, chose la plus approchante a cela qui

m'est possible au present, je vous envoye, c'est-a-dire ma picture

mise en braisselettes a toute la devise que deja sçavez, me

souhaitant en leur place quant il vous plairoit. C'est de la main

de--Votre serviteur et amy,

H. R.

Of Henry's other queens, Jane Seymour and Katherine Howard were both

ardent admirers of the French language. The former had, like Anne

Boleyn, completed her education at the French Court. Henry's chief

objection to Anne of Cleves was her lack of French refinements. We know

from the French ambassador Marillac that Henry was ill pleased at Anne's

German costume and made her dress in the French style,[174] which,

according to the same authority, had been favoured by Queen Katherine

Howard and all her ladies. Moreover, the new queen could speak neither

French[175] nor English, and her own language was displeasing to the

king's ears; consequently he refused to converse much with her by means

of an interpreter.[176] As for Katharine Parr, she was one of the most

distinguished linguists of her time, and did much to encourage the

studies of the royal family.

French was one of the principal studies of Henry VIII.'s children. It

appears to have been the only modern foreign language with which Edward

VI. was acquainted; he is said to have been "in the French and Latin

Tongues singularly perfect."[177] Mary, on the other hand, knew Spanish

as well as she did French. This is, however, accounted for by the fact

that she was early destined to become the wife of the Emperor Charles

V. [Header: FRENCH STUDIED IN THE ROYAL FAMILY] The emperor had even

tried to persuade Henry to allow his daughter to be brought up in Spain.

His request was refused, but a promise was given that the princess

should be educated in all points as a Spanish lady.[178] In addition to

this, her mother, Katherine of Aragon, superintended her early

education, and her attendants were all Spanish. Thus Spanish was for a

time almost her native tongue. Yet French was by no means neglected,

especially after the Spanish marriage was broken off. Fresh impetus was

given to this study by the possibility of a French match, when in 1518

negotiations for a union with the Dauphin, son of Francis I., were set

on foot. On the testimony of Marillac, Mary spoke and wrote French well;

the ambassador had seen letters of hers written in French at the time of

her mother's divorce.[179] The princess was also well acquainted with

Latin, and understood Italian, though, like many others, she did not

attempt to speak it.[180]

Elizabeth alone of the royal family spoke Italian with almost as much

ease as she did French.[181] "French and Italian she speaks like

English," wrote her tutor, Roger Ascham, "Latin with fluency, propriety,

and judgment"; and in addition she had some knowledge of Greek. When

queen, she retained her early fancy for Italian, and prided herself on

using no other language in the presence of Italians.[182] The Scotch

ambassador, Sir James Melville, a very competent judge, remarks that she

spoke it "raisonable weill."[183] French, however, was her usual means

of intercourse with other foreigners, even when, like Melville, they

spoke English. The queen commended Melville's French. "She said my

French was gud," he writes in his memoirs, where he likewise gives his

own opinion of the queen's attainments in the language: "hir Maiestie

culd speak as gud Frenche as any that had never bene out of the

contrie, but yet she laiketh the use of the Frenche court language,

quhilk was frank and schort and had oft tymes twa significations, quhilk

discreit and famylier frendes tok always in the best part."[184] If not

idiomatic, the queen's French is generally allowed to have been fluent.

Her accent is reported to have been harsh and unpleasing; she spoke with

a drawl, and, according to M. Drizanval, resident in London for the

French king,[185] she constantly repeated the phrase "_paar Dieu, paar

maa foi_" in a ridiculous tone. Another visitor, the Duke of

Württemberg, records that he once heard her deliver an appropriate

speech in French,[186] which, as usual, was the language in which he

addressed her. Towards the end of her reign the queen still practised

the use of French and Italian. In 1598 the German Hentzner, travelling

in England, describes how he saw Elizabeth "as she went along in all her

State and magnificence," and how "she spoke very graciously first to one

then to another (whether foreign ministers or those who attend for

different reasons) in English, French, and Italian."[187] She also wrote

French with some ease. One of her earliest literary efforts was a

translation from the French of Margaret of Navarre's _Miroir de l'Ame

pécheresse_. She likewise composed devotions and prayers in French--a

habit which she retained after she had been queen for many years. At the

time when her marriage with the Duke of Alençon, her "little frog," as

she calls him, was under discussion, the queen compiled a curious little

volume, containing six prayers, written on vellum in a very neat hand;

in addition to devotions in French and English there are others in

Italian, Latin, and Greek. In the front of this work there is a

miniature of the Duke, and at the end, one of Elizabeth.[188] Other

examples of her compositions in French are found in her correspondence,

where this language holds a considerable place.

It thus appears that the majority of the English nobility and gentry

spoke and understood French at least tolerably well. [Header: FRENCH

TUTORS AND FRENCH GRAMMARS] We are led to ask how they came by their

knowledge, and what facilities there were in England for learning

French, seeing that many of them never visited France. In the sixteenth

century private tuition played a large part in the education of the

gentry; and the professional tutor was, in many cases, a Frenchman, who

would naturally further the study of his native tongue. The Court itself

encouraged the custom of employing French tutors by engaging several in

its midst; and as, at this time, the Court became a powerful factor in

English social life, and the chief means of entering the service of the

State, noblemen and gentlemen wishing to figure on the social stage

endeavoured to adapt themselves to Court requirements. French tutors

were to be found in all the chief families of the time. Étienne Pasquier

remarks that there was no noble family in England without its French

tutor to instruct the children in the French language.[189] This

condition of things was still further developed a few years later when

religious persecution in France and the Netherlands drove increasingly

large numbers of Protestant refugees to take asylum in England. All

traces of the majority of these tutors have been lost; those of whom

anything is known were, for the most part, either the authors of manuals

for teaching French, or had won repute as writers or Humanists before

leaving their native land.

One of these Humanists was Bernard André, familiarly called "Master

Barnard," the blind poet--an infirmity to which he frequently refers. He

was a native of Toulouse, and probably came to England with Henry VII.,

his patron.[190] It is a curious fact that soon after his accession

Henry appointed this Frenchman, author of verses in French and Latin but

never a line in English, Poet Laureate of England. In addition to this

he bestowed on him repeated marks of favour. For a time André was

engaged as a tutor at Oxford, and in 1496 was chosen as governor to

Prince Arthur, and probably had much to do with the education of his

brother, afterwards Henry VIII. Appointed Historiographer Royal, he

began in this capacity to write his patron's life. Like so many other

men of education, André was in Holy Orders; he received preferment from

time to time, and was finally presented to the living of Guisnes near

Calais, which he resigned in 1521, having attained an "extreme old age."

In the early sixteenth century, as in the Middle Ages, England took the

initiative in the production of French grammars.[191] The numbers which

appeared are so many testimonies to Englishmen's interest in the French

language. The chief and best known of these grammars is the great work

of John Palsgrave (1530), already mentioned, which stands out in

contrast with the slight treatises which had previously appeared on the

subject in England. Considering the time when it was written and the

irregular and unsettled condition of the language with which it deals,

it is truly remarkable for its fulness and comprehensiveness. Almost

alone of its predecessors and its immediate successors, it answered more

than a merely temporary and professional purpose, and is still of very

great value to the student of the English and French languages at that

time, and a great storehouse of obsolete words in both languages.

Perhaps the very reason which makes it so valuable to the student of

to-day hindered its success in the sixteenth century; most students of

French then preferred the shorter and more practical manuals. Palsgrave

had a very exalted idea of the French tongue; he desired to place it on

a level with the "three perfect tonges"--Latin, Greek, and Hebrew--and

to make it a fourth and classical tongue, by drawing up "absolute" rules

for its use.

Palsgrave's grammar acquires additional importance from the fact that no

similar work had been produced in France. It is the first systematized

attempt to formulate rules for the French language, or indeed for any

modern tongue. Only one year later, however, Sylvius or Dubois published

his _In Linguam Gallicam Eisagoge_ (1531). In the address to Henry

VIII., which precedes his work, Palsgrave speaks of the "great nombre of

clerkes, whiche before season of this mater have written nowe sithe the

beginnyng of your most fortunate and most prosperous raigne." All these

"clerkes," he says, have treated chiefly of two things, which they

judged specially useful to the English--the pronunciation of French, and

"wherein the true analogie of the two tongues did rest." [Header:

BARCLAY'S "INTRODUCTORY"] No doubt many of these treatises were in

manuscript and are among the lost treasures of the sixteenth century.

Yet some have come down to us. Palsgrave mentions three writers by name,

Alexander Barclay, Petrus Vallensys, and Giles Duwes, copies of whose

works are still in existence.

The earliest of these grammars--so far as is known the first French

grammar ever printed--was the work of Alexander Barclay, well known as a

prolific writer and poet, who devoted much of his time to translation

and did much to make contemporary French literature known in England.

Barclay had spent a time "full of foly and unprofytable stody" at some

university, possibly Paris; he had travelled, and was well acquainted

with French; from his youth upwards, he says, he had been exercised in

the two languages of French and English. It was late in his literary

career, when he had "withdrawen" his pen from its "olde dylygence," that

he undertook to compose a grammar of the French language, at the request

of the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Treasurer of England, and of "certain other

gentlemen." The work appeared in 1521[192] under the title of _Here

begynneth the introductory to wryte and to pronounce frenche compyled by

Alexander Barclay, compendiously at the commandement of the right hye

excellent and myghty prynce, Th. duke of Northfolke_. The printer,

Robert Coplande, himself a good French scholar, composed some lines on

the coat of arms of the Duke in French, and printed them at the

beginning of the book; at the end he placed a translation of Lambert

Danneau's _Traité des Danses_, also from his own pen.[193]

Barclay's endeavour is to make his grammar as short and concise as

possible; his rules, so far as they go, are stated very clearly; he

plunges straight away into his subject without any preliminary

observations: "_je_ in frenche," he begins, "is as moche to say in

english as I, _tu_, thou, _il_, he, _nous_, _vous_, _ilz_ or _els_: we

may use sometyme _ceux_ for this worde _ilz_. If we answere to a

question by this worde 'I' usynynge no verbe withall then shall not

'_ie_' be set for 'I' but '_moy_,' as in this example, '_qui fist ce

livre_' ... If I sholde answere saynge I, addynge no verbe withall, I

must say '_moy_,' and not '_ie_.'" After giving similar rules for the

second person singular, he proceeds to explain how, when the words

_nous_, _vous_, _ilz_ are placed before a verb beginning with a

consonant, their last consonant is not pronounced, although it remains

in the spelling; but if they come before a verb beginning with a vowel,

the consonants are pronounced. He then turns to the conjugation of the

two auxiliaries and some of the most common irregular verbs, to show

"how these pronouns are ioyned with verbes." On the back of folio 4 he

begins his "introductory of orthography or true wrytynge wherby the

diligent reder may be infourmed truly and perfytely to wryte and

pronounce the Frenche tunge after the dyvers customes of many contress

of France." Barclay, then, does not adopt an exclusive attitude towards

provincial accents; he rather calls attention to them,[194] though

probably merely stating facts and drawing distinctions with no intention

of teaching provincial forms. Palsgrave, on the other hand, deals only

with the French spoken between the Seine and the Loire, which he

regarded as the only pure French. Barclay's attitude to dialectal forms

may possibly be explained by the fact that he transcribed freely from

the mediaeval treatises, especially the _Donait françois_ of John

Barton. His debt was early noted by Palsgrave, who wrote: "I have sene

an olde boke written in parchment, in all thynges lyke to his sayd

_Introductory_, whiche, by conjecture, was not unwritten this hundred

yeares."[195] So freely, indeed, and so carelessly did Barclay use his

sources, that he did not even trouble to modernize the spelling, which

contains many obsolete forms; in this connexion Palsgrave, who

criticizes Barclay very severely when occasion arises,[196] remarks on

his use of _k_ for _c_.

Having exemplified the pronunciation of some of the French letters by

comparison with English sounds,[197] Barclay suddenly[198] passes to the

consideration of the number and gender of nouns,[199] besides supplying

a short list of nouns beginning with the first two letters of the

alphabet. After this digression he concludes his observations on the

pronunciation,[200] and proceeds to give an alphabetical vocabulary of

nouns,[201] adjectives and verbs, apparently the earliest known attempt

at an alphabetical French-English vocabulary; the earlier method of

arranging words under headings is discarded, though it continued to be

the usual form adopted in most French grammars until the end of the

eighteenth century. Barclay's vocabulary consists of a list of words

pure and simple, with no indication of gender or flexions. The

_Introductory_ ends with lists of ordinal numerals, days, seasons, and

so on, together with words of learned origin common to both languages

"amonge eloquent men," and, last of all, pieces of prose composition in

both French and English, arranged in alternate lines.[202]

As is usual in these early grammars, there is an obvious lack of orderly

arrangement, and the work, as a whole, gives the impression of being a

collection of rough notes rather than a carefully planned treatise.

Barclay does not, however, make any claim to completeness, nor pretend

to lay down "absolute" rules as Palsgrave claimed to do. He shared the

opinion, common at that time among Frenchmen, that it was impossible to

formulate anything like adequate rules for the French language. The

sketchy nature of his rules may be judged by that given for the position

of the objective pronoun: "oft times that thynge whiche cometh before

the verbe in Englyshe commyth after it in frenche as il m'a fait

tort . . . je ne me puis lever." He was of opinion that rules were not

of much use in learning French: that language is best learnt by "custome

and use of redynge and spekynge, by often enquirynge and frequentynge of

company of frenchmen and of suche as have perfytnes in spekynge the sayd

language." This opinion prevailed throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries in England, and, as a result, rules are reduced to a minimum

in manuals for teaching French.

"Who so desyreth to knowe more of the sayd language, must provyde for mo

bokes made for the same intent," Barclay notes at the end of his short

and interesting treatise. Charles, Duke of Suffolk, the husband of Mary,

sister to Henry VIII. and Dowager Queen of France, was soon to make the

necessary provision. This "syngular good lorde," says Palsgrave, "by

cause that my poore labours required a longe tracte of tyme, hath also

in the meane season encouraged maister Petrus Vallensys, scole maister

to his excellent yong sonne the Erle of Lyncolne to shewe his lernynge

and opinion on this behalfe." Such was the origin of the _Introductions

in Frensche for Henry the Yonge Erle of Lyncoln (childe of greate

esperaunce) sonne of the most noble and excellent princesse Mary (by the

grace of God, queen of France etc.)_,[203] which is undated and

anonymous, but clearly the work of Petrus Vallensys or Pierre Valence,

French tutor to the Earl of Lincoln, and must have been written sometime

in the third decade of the century.[204] Valence is said to have taught

French after a "wonderesly compendious facile prompte and ready

waye,"[205] and Gregory Cromwell, whom he also counted among his pupils,

is reported to have made good progress under his direction. [Header:

PIERRE VALENCE, TEACHER OF FRENCH] Pierre Valence was one of the

natives of Normandy, so numerous in England at this time that the fact

was commented on by Étienne Perlin, a French priest who visited England

at the end of the reign of Edward VI. He describes them as being "du

tout tres mechans et mauditz François," worse than all the English,

which, according to him, is a very grave charge.[206] The date at which

Valence came to England is unknown, but he is said to have studied at

Cambridge in or about 1515.[207] He was in all probability a refugee for

religious reasons. He is known to have held Lutheran opinions, and,

whilst at Cambridge, caused a disturbance by defacing a copy of the

Pope's general indulgence, which had been set up over the gates of the

schools. Vigorous but ineffectual attempts were made to discover the

writer, against whom the Chancellor pronounced sentence of

excommunication. Valence is alleged finally to have acknowledged the act

as his, to have expressed contrition, and to have been absolved. There

are several points of contact between this man and his greater

contemporary, John Palsgrave: both were students at Cambridge, possibly

at the same time, though Palsgrave was the senior; both had as their

pupil the son of Mr. Secretary Cromwell--the one for French and the

other for Latin; both were protégés of the Dowager Queen of France

(sister of Henry VIII. and Palsgrave's pupil for French) and of her

husband the Duke of Suffolk. In 1535 Valence received a grant of letters

of denization,[208] and ultimately became domestic chaplain and almoner

to Dr. Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, and appears to have maintained this

position under the bishop's successor. He was still living in 1555,

since, in that year, he visited some heretics in Ely jail, and conjured

them to stand loyally by the truth of the Gospel.[209]

Among the works of "dyvers clerkes" on the French language, to which

Palsgrave refers, is probably to be reckoned a short treatise bearing

the date 1528. This work is only known by a fragment consisting of two

leaves now preserved in the library at Lambeth.[210] These pages are of

quarto size and bear the signature "B. B." The right-hand page is in

French, the left in English; the former is in Roman characters, the

latter in black letter. Although these two pages contain the date, and

the last is not full, they do not appear to be the end of the work, as

the writer refers to what is to come hereafter.[211] One gathers from

internal evidence that the author was a foreigner--no doubt a Frenchman.

He speaks, for instance, of the "gentz Englois" as though he was not one

of them; and it appears to be quite certain that the work was originally

composed in French, and translated into English rather carelessly, and

probably by another hand, for in the version it is rendered almost

unintelligible by the translation of the French illustrative examples as

well as the text itself.

The contents are of a light and entertaining character. The author holds

that many rules do but "trouble and marre" the understanding. He

counsels students rather to follow the example of good writers as likely

to be more helpful.

He treats entirely of the pronunciation, and devotes special attention

to the difficulties of the English,[212] laying emphasis on the

importance of placing the accent on the right syllable. The rules are

put in an amusing way, thus: "_a_ should be pronounced fro the botom of

the stomake and all openly, _e_ a lytell higher in the throte there

properly where the Englishman soundeth his _e_; _i_, in the roundnesse

of the lippes; _u_, in puttynge a lytell of wynde out of the mouthe."

Further uses of the vowel _a_ are thus set forth: it may be placed

before all verbs, in the infinitive mood, and before all manner of nouns

and pronouns, as "to Robert," "to May," and so on. Again, "it betokeneth

'have' when it cometh of the Latin verb _habeo_." The consonants are

next dealt with and disposed of in much the same way. Some attention is

also given to the question, then much discussed, whether the

etymological consonants in the words where they are not pronounced

should be retained or not. The author's opinion was that every letter in

a word ought to be sounded, yet he feels himself utterly unable to

struggle against custom, and falls back on the rule "go as you please":

[Header: TWO FRENCH POETS TEACH FRENCH] "Pronounce ech one as he shal

please, for to difficyl it is to correct olde errours."

Among the French teachers in England at this time were also two

Frenchmen of considerable literary distinction--Nicolas Bourbon, the

Latin poet and well-known scholar, friend of Rabelais and Marot; and

Nicolas Denisot, who likewise held an important place among French

humanists, and finished his literary education under Daurat, the famous

Hellenist.

Bourbon came to England under the protection of Anne Boleyn, who appears

to have taken a special interest in him;[213] she had, he tells us,

procured his liberation from imprisonment. Bourbon was for some time a

private tutor in Paris, and soon after he regained his freedom he

crossed to England, intending to continue his work there. He had a

cordial welcome, and invariably speaks of his stay and treatment in

London with gratitude. His Latin verses[214] show him to be acquainted

with the chief Englishmen who gathered round the Court, where he

occupied his leisure by writing satirical verses against the queen's

enemies, especially Sir Thomas More,[215] and in eulogizing Cromwell,

Cranmer, and the Reform Party then in power. It was on the

recommendation of the king and queen, he informs us, that he was engaged

as French tutor in several families of distinction, including the

Carews, Norrisses, and Harveys. John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was

one of his patrons, and from him Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of

Leicester, together with his brothers, learnt French as children.

Bourbon left England in 1535, on hearing of the death of his father. He

had probably been in the country at least two years, and, perhaps

happily for himself, left it a year before the fall of his patroness

Anne Boleyn.

At a somewhat later date, 1547, the elegant poet and artist Nicolas

Denisot arrived in England, driven from Paris by an unfortunate love

affair.[216] His nephew, Jacques Denisot, declares he was "fort bien

accueilliz dans la cour d'Angleterre où son estime et sa reputation

estoit deja cogneue." He mixed with the writers and politicians[217] of

the day, and attracted the notice of the Court by writing verses in

honour of the young king, Edward VI.[218] He soon found himself in the

distinguished position of French and Latin tutor to the three daughters

of the Protector Somerset,--Anne, Margaret, and Jane,--who were destined

shortly to become famous in Paris as his pupils, and to form an

important link in the literary relations of the two countries. Calvin

corresponded with one of Denisot's pupils, the Lady Anne; and in 1549 he

wrote requesting her to use her knowledge of French in transmitting to

her mother an expression of his gratitude for a ring he had received

from that lady, he being unable to do so, on account of his ignorance of

English.[219] In this same year, 1549, Denisot's engagement in the house

of Somerset came to an end rather abruptly, probably on account of some

misunderstanding with the duke. He returned to France after spending

three years in England, and thence kept up a friendly correspondence

with his former pupils. On the death of Queen Margaret of Navarre, whom,

no doubt, Denisot had taught them to admire, the sisters composed four

hundred Latin distichs in her honour, and sent them to their former

master, who welcomed them with enthusiasm, and published them in 1550.

In the following year the verses appeared again, accompanied by French,

Italian, and Greek translations, and verses from the pen of Ronsard, Du

Bellay, and other literary friends of Denisot.[220] It is a striking

fact that before the Pléiade was fully known in France, the fame of some

of its members had reached England, where a particular interest would be

taken in this development of the work of the three princesses. Ronsard,

Denisot's intimate friend, wrote one of his earliest odes in honour of

Denisot's pupils, in which he celebrates the intellectual union of

France and England: [Header: THE PLÉIADE IN ENGLAND]

Denisot se vante heuré

D'avoir oublié sa terre

Et passager demeuré

Trois ans en Angleterre.

. . . . les espritz

D'Angleterre et de la France

Bandez d'une ligue ont pris

Le fer contre l'ignorance,

Et (que) nos Roys se sont faitz

D'ennemys amys parfaitz

Tuans la guerre cruelle

Par une paix mutuelle.

Herberay des Essarts, the translator of the famous _Amadis_, wrote a

letter in praise of the princesses, which was printed at the beginning

of Margaret's "tombeau." With full justice has Denisot been called the

"ambassador" of the French Renaissance in England.

FOOTNOTES:

[132] It was, however, an English scholar, Richard Mulcaster, Headmaster

of Merchant Taylors' School (1561) and of St. Paul's School (1596), who

boldly urged that the English language was a subject worthy of study by

Englishmen, though this was not till 1582, when his _Elementarie_ was

published.

[133] _The Second Book of the Travels of Nicander Nucius_, 1545, Camden

Society, London, 1841, p. 13.

[134] W. B. Rye, _England as seen by Foreigners_, London, 1865,

_passim_.

[135] Translation of Sallust's _Bellum Jugurthinum_: Dedication to the

Duke of Norfolk.

[136] _Remains_, Parker Society, p. 470. Quoted by J. J. Jusserand,

_Histoire littéraire du peuple anglais_, Paris, 1904, p. 86, n. 3.

[137] _The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet_, ed.

W. A. Bradly, Boston, 1912, pp. 41 and 112.

[138] _Sidney Papers_, ed. A. Collins, in _Letters and Memorials of

State_, 2 vols., London, 1746, vol. i. pp. 283-5.

[139] _Letters of Descartes_, quoted by E. J. B. Rathery, _Les Relations

sociales et intellectuelles entre la France et l'Angleterre . . ._

Paris, 1856.

[140] Which provided the material for that "bonnie bouncing book," as

Ben Jonson called it--Coryat's _Crudities: Hastily gobled up in Five

Months' Travells in France_, etc. 1611.

[141] Rye, _op. cit._ pp. xxxv-xxxvii.

[142] L. Einstein, _The Italian Renaissance in England_, New York, 1907.

[143] The Tudor group of distinguished linguists includes the names of

many women. The chronicler Harrison remarks that it is a rare thing to

hear of a courtier that has but his own language, and to tell how many

ladies are skilled in French, Spanish, and Italian is beyond his power

(_Holinshed's Chronicle_, 1586, i. p. 196). Nicholas Udal writes in the

same strain in his dedication to Queen Katherine Parr of his translation

of Erasmus's _Paraphrase of the Gospels_; we are told that a great

number of noble women at that time in England were given to the study of

human sciences and of strange tongues; and that it was a common thing to

see "young virgins so nouzled and trained in the study of letters that

thei willingly set all other vain pastymes at nought for learnynge's

sake." Amongst the most accomplished of such "Queens and Ladies of high

estate and progeny" were Queen Katherine Parr and Lady Jane Grey.

Mulcaster in his _Positions_ (1581) praises English ladies for their

fondness of serious study, and so does the Italian teacher Torriano in

his _Italian reviv'd_ (1673), p. 99. Many examples of fluent linguists

are found in Ballard's _Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain_, 2nd

ed., 1775.

[144] Elizabeth's command of foreign languages was constantly a subject

of remark. Dr. William Turner in the dedication of his _Herbal_ (1568)

to the queen, addresses her thus: "As to your knowledge of Latin and

Greek, French, Italian, and others also, not only your own faythful

subiectes, beynge far from all suspicion of flattery, bear witness, but

also strangers, men of great learninge, in their books set out in Latin

tonge, give honourable testimonye." Best known of these learned

observers was Scaliger (_Scaligeriana_, Cologne, 1695, p. 134). Similar

eulogies in verse were left by French poets: Ronsard, _Elegies,

Mascarades et Bergeries_ (1561), reproduced in _Le Bocage royal_ (1567);

Jacques Grévin, _Chant du cygne_; Du Bartas, _Second Week_; and Agrippa

d'Aubigné; also by John Florio, _First Frutes_, 1578, ch. xiii.

[145] _First Frutes_, 1578, ch. i.

[146] John Eliote, _Ortho-Epia Gallica_, 1596.

[147] _Merchant of Venice_, Act I. Scene 2.

[148] Cp. Brunot, _Histoire de la langue française_, ii. pp. 2 _sqq._

Dallington in his _View of France_ remarks on the same neglect. In _The

Abbot and the Learned Woman_, Erasmus praises the latter for studying

the classics and not, as was usual, confining herself to French

(_Colloquia_, Leiden, 1519).

[149] _Copy Book of Sir Amias Poulet's Letters_, Roxburghe Club, 1866,

p. 129.

[150] _The Second Book of the Travels of Nicander Nucius_, Camden Soc.,

1841, p. 14.

[151] _Dialogue de l'ortografe et pronunciacion françoese departi en

deus livres_, Lyon, 1558.

[152] Peiresc wrote in French to the scholars Selden and Camden, who

answered in Latin. Other French scholars who maintained a correspondence

with Englishmen are de Thou, Jérôme Bignon, Duchesne, du Plessis Mornay,

H. Estienne, Hubert Languet, Pibrac, and the Sainte-Marthe brothers.

[153] _Lettres missives de Henri IV_, 9 tom., Paris, 1843. For an

example of Elizabeth's French in her intercourse with her neighbours,

see Rathery, _Les Relations sociales et intellectuelles entre la France

et l'Angleterre_, Paris, 1856, p. 31 n.; _Unton Correspondence_,

Roxburghe Club, 1847, _passim_.

[154] See the _Calendars of State Papers_ for the period.

[155] _Calendar of State Papers_, Domestic, 1595-97, p. 328.

[156] _Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._, vol xiii. pt. i.

No. 977.

[157] Henry VII.'s mother, the Countess of Richmond, was also an

accomplished French scholar; she translated several works from the

French, and encouraged others to follow her example.

[158] J. P. Collier, _Annals of the English Stage_, 1831, vol. i. pp.

48, 51, 53.

[159] Cp. Rye, _op. cit._ pp. 76, 79.

[160] _Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._, ed. Brewer, vol.

ii. No. 411; Rawdon Brown, _Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII._,

1854, vol. i. pp. 76-79 and 86.

[161] _Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._, vol. i. p.

xxiii.

[162] _Songs, Ballads, and Instrumental Pieces composed by King Henry

VIII._, Oxford, 1912. Barclay says in his _Eclogues_ that French

minstrels and singers were highly favoured at Court. Jamieson, _Life and

Writings of Barclay_, 1874, p. 44.

[163] "Je serai à [vous] toujours et tant que je vivrai autre n'aimerai

que vous."

[164] _Henry VIII._, Act I. Scene 4.

[165] Wolsey spoke Latin well. Like Charles II. he considered it

diplomatic to affect ignorance of French at times. Such is his advice to

those who accompanied him on his embassy to France: "The nature of the

Frenchmen is such that at their first meeting they will be as familiar

with you as if they had knowne you by long acquaintance, and will

commune with you in their French Tongue as if you knew every word.

Therefore use them in a kind manner, and bee as familiar with them as

they are with you: if they speake to you in their natural tongue, speake

to them in English, for if you understand not them, no more shall they

you." Puttenham, in his _Arte of English Poesie_, advises ambassadors

and messengers not to use foreign languages of which they have not

perfect command, lest they commit blunders similar to that of the

courtier who said of a French lady, "Elle chevauche bien,"--blunders

which might have serious results in diplomatic transactions.

[166] _The Negociations of Th. Wolsey, The Great Cardinal of England,

containing his Life and Death. Composed by one of his own servants,

being his gentleman usher_ (G. Cavendish?), London, 1641.

[167] _Negociations of Th. Wolsey_, _ut supra_.

[168] M. E. A. Green, _Lives of the Princesses of England_, 1849-1855,

v. p. 20.

[169] Green's _Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies_, 1846. See also

Ellis, _Original Letters_, 1st series, vol. i. p. 115.

[170] _Life of Anne Boleyn_, in Strickland's _Lives of the Queens of

England_, London, 1884, ii. pp. 179, 181.

[171] Ellis, _Orig. Letters_, 2nd series, vol. ii. p. 11. Anne's French

spelling is curious and suggests that, like Henry VIII., she learnt

French mainly by ear: "Mons. Je antandue par vre lettre que aves envy

que tout onnete feme quan je vindre à la courte et ma vertisses que Rene

prendra la pein de devisser a vecc moy, de quoy me regoy bien fort de

pensser parler a vecc ung personne tante sage et onnete, cela me ferra a

voyr plus grante anvy de continuer a parler bene franssais."

[172] A French poem of the time, preserved in MS. and quoted by Rathery,

_op. cit._ p. 21, celebrates Anne's French accomplishments--_Traité pour

feue dame Anne de Boulant, jadis royne d'Angleterre, l'an 1533_:

"La tellement ses graces amenda

Que ne l'eussiez oncques jugée Angloise

En ses fachons, ains naïve Françhoise.

Elle sçavoit bien danser et chanter,

Et ses propos sagement agencer,

Sonner du luth et d'autres instrumens

Pour divertir les tristes pensemens."

[173] Pub., with English translation, in the _Harleian Miscellany_, vol.

iii., 1745, pp. 52-62.

[174] _Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._, xv. 179, and

xvi. 12.

[175] Ellis, _Orig. letters_, series 1, vol. ii. p. 122.

[176] Strickland, _Lives of the Queens_, 1884, ii. p. 299.

[177] This is the testimony of Girolamo Cordano, a physician and

astrologer of Milan who was called upon to exercise his art on the young

king of England in 1552. Rye, _England as seen by Foreigners_, pp.

lxviii _sqq._

[178] Strickland, _op. cit._ ii. pp. 477-8.

[179] _Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII._, xvi. No. 1253.

[180] Ellis, _Original Letters_, 3rd series, ii. p. 236.

[181] One of Elizabeth's Italian masters was Baptista Castiglione, a

religious refugee in 1557. Elizabeth, however, had acquired some

knowledge of Italian before 1544; in that year she addressed a letter in

Italian to Queen Katharine Parr (printed in G. Howard's _Lady Jane Grey

and her Times_, 1822). Other Italian letters of the queen are published

in Green's _Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies_, 1846.

[182] Account of the Venetian ambassador at the Court of Mary--Michel

Giovanni. Rye, _op. cit._ p. 266.

[183] _Memoirs of his own Life, 1549-93_, Bannatyne Club, 1827, p. 125.

Elizabeth's Dutch he pronounces "not gud," and later says that neither

the King of France nor the Queen of England could speak Dutch (p. 341).

[184] _Memoirs of his own Life, 1549-93_, Bannatyne Club, 1827, p. 117.

[185] J. Nichols, _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_, 1788-1821, i. p. x.

[186] Rye, _op. cit._ p. 12.

[187] Rye, _op. cit._ p. 104.

[188] The MS. was reproduced in facsimile in 1893. The prayers in French

begin thus: "Mon Dieu et mon pere puis qu'il t'a pleu desployer les

tresors de ta grande misericorde envers moy ta tres humble servante,

m'ayant de bon matin retirée des profonds abismes de l'ignorance

naturelle et des superstitions damnables pour me faire iouir de ce grand

soleil de justice . . . etc."

[189] _Lettres_, Amsterdam, 1723, liv. i. p. 5.

[190] An account of the little that is known of André's life is given in

Gairdner's _Memorials of Henry VII._, pp. viii _et seq._

[191] Of foreign countries, the Netherlands seem to have come next to

England in zeal for the study of French, and Germany takes the next

place. Countries in which sister Romance tongues were spoken, Italy and

Spain, were apparently entirely dependent on practice for learning

French.

[192] The printing was completed by Robert Coplande on the 22nd March

1521. The book consists of sixteen leaves of the folio size of the time,

in black letter, with signatures A-B in sixes and C in fours. There is a

unique copy in the Bodleian.

[193] Bale, _Scriptorum Britanniae Summarium_, 1548, p. 723, and Pits,

_Relationes Historicae de rebus Anglicis_, 1619, p. 745, attribute to

Barclay a work called _De pronuntiatione linguae gallicae_. This

suggests that possibly the _Introductory_ was first written in Latin.

[194] Time after time he mentions the usages of different parts of the

country, as _piecha_ for _pieça_ in certain districts; _jeo_ and _ceo_

for _je_ and _ce_ in Picard and Gascon; the writing of the names of

dignitaries and officers in the plural instead of the singular, as _luy

papes de Rome_.

[195] _L'Esclarcissement de la langue françoyse_, bk. i. ch. xxxv.

[196] "There is a boke which goeth about in this realme, intitled _The

Introductory to write and pronounce French_, compyled by Alexander

Barclay. I suppose it is sufficient to warne the lerner that I have red

over that boke at length, and what my opinion is therein it shall well

apeare in my boke's self, though I make thereof no further expresse

mencion."

[197] Thus the vowel _a_ is sometimes a letter, sometimes a word. In the

former case it is often sounded like English _a_; when it is a word _d_

should not be added. This section of the work is reprinted in A. J.

Ellis's _Early English Pronunciation_, Early Engl. Text Soc., 1869,

etc., pt. iii. pp. 804 _sqq._

[198] On the back of folio 5.

[199] "Howsoever the singular number end, the plural number must end in

_s_ or _z_." Such is the rule for the formation of the plural. As for

the genders, he gives a few isolated examples and converts them into

rules.

[200] On folio 8vº.

[201] Folios 9-14. The vocabulary begins with the letter M, and after

proceeding to the end of the alphabet, resumes at the beginning--an

arrangement probably due to some blunder on the part of the printer.

[202] Both deal with agricultural subjects; the first gives the life of

a grain of wheat, and the second may explain itself:

"Dieu sauve la charue,

God save the ploughe,

Et celui qui la mane.

And he the whiche it ledeth.

Primierement hairois la terre,

Firste ere the grounde,

Apres semer le blé ou l'orge.

After sow the whete or barley.

Les herces doivent venir apres,

The harrowes must come after,

Le chaclir oster l'ordure.

The hoke to take away wedes,

En Aoust le foyer ou faucher,

In August reap it or mowe it,

D'une faucille ou d'une faux."

There is no English rendering of the last line.

[203] In the Library of the Marquis of Bath.

[204] The Earl was born in 1516.

[205] Ellis, _Orig. Letters_, 1st series, i. pp. 341-43.

[206] _Description des royaulmes d'Angleterre et d'Escosse_, Paris,

1558.

[207] C. H. and T. Cooper, _Athenae Cantabrigienses_, vol. i., 1858, p.

155.

[208] _List of Denizations, 1509-1603_, Huguenot Society Publications

VIII.

[209] _Athenae Cantab._ _ut supra_.

[210] S. R. Maitland, _List of some of the early printed books in the

Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth_, 1843, pp. 290 _et seq._

[211] "'_a_' also betokeneth 'have' or 'has,' when it cometh of this

verbe in Latin, _habeo_, as hereafter ye may see."

[212] "Sur toultes choses doibuit noter gentz Englois que leur fault

accustomer de pronuncer la derniere lettre du mot françois quelque mot

que ce soit (rime exceptée) ce que la langue engleshe ne permet, car la

ou l'anglois dit 'goode breade,' le françois diroit 'goode' iii sillebes

et 'breade' iii sillebes."

[213] J. A. Jacquot, _Notice sur Nicolas Bourbon de Vandoeuvre_, Troyes

et Paris, 1857. Bourbon was born in 1503, and died in 1550. He went to

Paris in 1531, leaving behind him in his native town a reputation won by

his Latin verses. On his return from England, Queen Margaret of Navarre

entrusted to him the education of her daughter, Jeanne, who was the

mother of Henry IV.

[214] _Nicolai Borbonii vandoperani Lingonenis_ [Greek: Paidagôgeion],

Lugduni, 1536.

[215] J. H. Marsden, _Philomorus_, 2nd ed., 1878, p. 261.

[216] Clement Jugé, _Nicolas Denisot du Mans, 1515-1559_, Paris and Le

Mans, 1907.

[217] He also began his work as a secret agent in the service of France,

and it is said that Calais was recovered by the French in 1558, from a

plan which Denisot submitted to the Duc de Guise.

[218] There was a MS. copy of Latin poems by Denisot in the Library of

Edward VI. (Nichols, _Literary Remains_, 1857.)

[219] J. Bonnet, _Récits du seizième siècle_, 1864, p. 348.

[220] _Le Tombeau de Marguerite de Navarre faict premierement en

Distiques latins par les trois soeurs, Princesses en Angleterre: Depuis

Traduits, en Grec, Italien et François par plusieurs des excellentz

Poetes de la France. Avecques plusieurs Odes, Hymnes, Cantiques,

Epitaphes sur le mesme subiect._ Paris, 1551.