Читать книгу The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England during Tudor and Stuart Times - K. Rebillon Lambley - Страница 45

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[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 v^re 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 Vandœuvre, 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 Παιδαγωγειον, 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 sœurs, 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.