Читать книгу The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England during Tudor and Stuart Times - K. Rebillon Lambley - Страница 33

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.