The portion which yields this matter comprises all the incidents of a long
journey, the arrival at the inn, the call for refreshment, the baiting and
putting up of the horse, the retirement to rest, and the breakfast before
departure in the morning.
The sixth section, on buying and selling, exhibits no remarkable examples,
or rather nothing that I can, with so large a choice, afford to cite, and
the grammatical part follows the usual lines. The present treatise came
to a new edition in 1578, but it does not seem to have been very
successful.
In point of fact, the taste and demand for such a class of hand-books or
primers had not fully set in. With the reign of Elizabeth the habit of
foreign travel and the consequent value of a conversance with languages,
especially French and Italian, imparted the first marked stimulus and
development to this class of literary enterprise.
II. Claude Desainliens, who transformed himself into _Claudius Holy-Band_
or _Hollyband_, and who seems in his earlier days to have had quarters
over or adjoining the sign of the Lucrece in St. Paul's Churchyard, became
a voluminous producer of the dictionaries, grammars, and phrase-books so
popular in early times, and included in his range the Italian as well as
the French series. Long after his death his works continued to be in
demand, and were edited with improvements by others. Desainliens began, so
far as I know, with his _French Littleton_ in 1566, and his French
Dictionary was not printed till 1593. In 1581 he had moved from the
Lucrece to the Golden Ball, just by.
Perhaps of all his multifarious performances his _French_ and _Italian
Schoolmasters_ were the two which met with the greatest favour; and the
longer career of the former may perhaps be ascribed to the more general
cultivation of the French language in England. The _Italian Schoolmaster_
originally appeared in 1575 as an annex to a version of the story of
_Arnalte and Lucenda_; but in the subsequent impressions of 1597 and 1608
the philological portion occupies the place of honour, and the story is
made to follow. In the former the rules for pronunciation and such matter
as fell within his knowledge as an Italian may be passed as representing
what was the correct practice and view at the period; it is with the
English illustrations and equivalents that one is apt to be surprised and
amused; and one, moreover, figures the occasional bewilderment even of an
English pupil at the strange unidiomatic forms which Desainliens has
adopted. In other words, instead of translating English into Italian, he
has translated Italian into broken English; as, for instance, where in a
dialogue a man is inquiring the way to London, we find at the conclusion
such pure _Italicisms_ as _Have me recommended_: _I am yours_: _Remaine
with God_. Then, again, terms are misapplied, of course, as thus: "Tell me
deere fellowe, is it yet farre to the citie?" And when he has entered his
inn, he calls to the host: "Bring me for to wash my hands and face." At
the same time the pages of this and similar volumes abound with fruitful
illustrations of all kinds, which we should have been very sorry indeed to
lose; and it is to be recollected that the English gloss was secondary,
and that the bizarre style and texture of this class of book arose from
the aim at enabling the learner to be prepared for all sorts of occasions
and every variety of conversational topic. The author consequently leads
him through the different occupations and incidents of life, and imagines
successive interviews and dialogues with such persons as he would be
likely to encounter. In the parley with a farrier, it comes out that the
charge for shoeing a horse was fivepence a foot; and in the section _Per
maritarsi = To be married_, Hollyband starts by rendering _O bella
giovane_ "Ho fair maiden." He urges her to be prompt in her decision by
citing the proverb, "Ladie, whilest the iron is hote, it must be wrought."
Much of the matter introduced by Desainliens is highly curious and even
important. I shall transcribe a section or two, as they are brief, for the
sake of the English suggestions:--
"_To sing and daunce._
"O fellowes, I wish that wee shoulde sing a song, and I will take the
lute.
Let vs sing and daunce, when you will.
Mystres, will it please you to daunce a galliard with me? pray you
therefore.
I cannot daunce after the Italian fashion.
We shall daunce after the high Dutch.
Go to, play a galliard vpon the violl.
I would rather vpon the virginals....
_Of the Booke binder._
Shew me an Italian, and English bookes and of the best print.
I have none bound at this present.
Bind me this with silke and claspes....
Reach me royall paper to write.
Neede you any ynke and bombash?
No, but wast paper, & of that which wee call drinking paper....
_Of the Shoemaker._
I would you shoulde make mee a paire of bootes, a ierkin, and a paire of
shoes, pantofles, mules, and buskins.
We will make the sir, & of good leather.
See this faire shooing.
Put on those pompes...."
After all, possibly, such publications as that before me are chiefly
valuable for a purpose for which they were not designed--for the bounteous
light which they shed on our old English customs and notions; and I do not
think that they have been hitherto fully brought into employment. It is
obviously impossible for me, however, in the present case to remedy this
shortcoming, more particularly as the quotations suffer by curtailment or
paraphrase.
The _Arnalte and Lucenda_ takes up the major part of the volume, and must
be said to be freer from grammatical inaccuracies than that division of
the book devoted to grammar. Nor could a man live in London without
catching some of the colloquialisms current among its residents. In his
_Italian Phrases_ we meet on the English side of the page with: "Hee
looketh rather like a cutter or fencer then," and "He goeth accompanied
with Roisters and cutters."
The French Dictionary of Desainliens was entirely superseded by that of
Randle Cotgrave in 1611. The latter spared no pains to make his book a
really valuable performance; he invited help from others, and modelled his
labours on a fairly intelligible plan, and it remains to this day in the
enlarged edition by Howell a standard and indispensable work of reference.
It was the only one available for the school-boy and student for a
considerable length of time.
III. Delamothe and Erondelle were contemporary with Desainliens, and may
have been equally eminent and successful as teachers; but they did not
display the same degree of literary activity. The former indeed produced
nothing but a _French Alphabet_ (1595). Pierre Erondelle was a native of
Normandy; and besides new and improved editions of his predecessor
Desainliens, he brought out in 1605 a quaint book of lessons for the
acquisition of French, which he called _The French Garden for English
Ladies and Gentlemen to walk in; Or A Summer day's Labour_. The volume
mainly consists of thirteen dialogues in French and English, embracing the
various occupations of the day, from the first rising in the morning till
bedtime. Some of the conversations are remarkable for their archaic
_naiveté_ so far as English ideas of decorum in speech are concerned; but
they are nothing more than the plainness of phrase which was once
recognised both here and on the Continent, and the banishment of which
has, at all events, not of itself added to our morality. Sterne, in his
_Sentimental Journey_, signalises as a French trait the incident of the
lady of quality with whom he drove in her carriage; but he must have been
aware that the tone in the same circles at home was equally pronounced;
and editors of the earlier Georgian literature have to exercise a pruning
hand in dealing with MSS. to be presented now-a-days to public view.
Another of these foreign professors was Jacques Bellot, who published
several educational works for the instruction of the English in the French
grammar and language. Among these _Le Jardin de Vertu et Bonnes Moeurs_,
1581, where the English and French are given, as usual, in parallel
columns, is the most remarkable. There is a Table of _Errata_ for both
languages; but that for the English might, from a native point of view, be
indefinitely extended, as Bellot proves himself as incapable of
comprehending our idiom as the rest of his countrymen. He renders "La
memoire du prodigue est nulle" by "Of the prodigall ther is no memory,"
and "La seulle vertu est la vraye noblesse" by "The only vertue, is the
true nobilitie."
The writer trips, as may be conjectured, just in those nice points in
which even an Englishman is not always at home.
New and improved systems were continually submitted to the public, or
rather, in the language of those days, to the Nobility and Gentry. In
1634, the Grammar of Charles Maupas of Blois, an esteemed and experienced
teacher, who during a career of thirty years numbered among his pupils
many of the young men of family in Holland as well as in England, was
adapted by William Aufield for the use of his countrymen. The original is
still regarded as a standard work, though discarded by the schools. Both
the French and English are of the antique cast, of course, and many of
the examples and much of the phraseology are obsolete; but the book was
written for Frenchmen and translated for Englishmen, to both of whom the
speech of these days would have seemed at least equally strange, and
proved not less embarrassing.
The pages of Maupas, as he is presented to us in his English dress,
acquire an oddity and an almost humorous side, which are absent from the
French text itself; as, for instance:--
"Of making Stop.
"Holà, ho there, prou well, well, so so; assez enough, enough;
demeure, arreste, stay, stay, budge not."
"Of feeling Pain.
"Aou, haou, aouf, ah, of, alas. The same words will serve in English."
"Of Joy.
"Gay, deliait, alaigrement, heighday, as a man woud wish, merrily
then."
Claudius Mauger and Paul Festeau were two other professors at a somewhat
later date, who endeavoured to secure patronage for their methods and
books by throwing special temptations in the way of customers. The former,
who seems to have been resident in London, introduced into his pages as
an attractive novelty a series of Dialogues illustrative of English
exploits by land and sea, as well as of contemporary French history, while
Festeau baited his hook with the two scarcely reconcilable assurances that
his plan was the exactest possible for attaining the purity and eloquence
of the French tongue, as it was spoken about 1660 in the Court of France,
and that Blois, his native place, was the city "where the true tone of the
French tongue was found by the unanimous consent of all Frenchmen."