The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England Part 28

A second edition appeared in 1652, enlarged with "necessary rules for the p.r.o.nunciation of the French tongue, very profitable unto them that are desirous of it," giving a pseudo-English equivalent of the sound of each French letter, and followed by a few general rules for reading French and a table of the auxiliary and regular verbs. This little book, which has more in common with the productions of the London teachers than with the Oxford manuals, enjoyed a greater popularity than those of Du Gres's rivals. In 1660 a third edition appeared, without the additions found in the second.

He was also the author of an interesting little work in English on the Duke of Richelieu,[545] printed in London in 1643. Probably Du Gres had removed to London at that date; in the second edition of his grammar, printed, like the first, by Leonard Lichfield at Oxford, he describes himself as "late teacher of the same in Oxford."

In his dialogues Du Gres gives some account of his ideas on the teaching of French:[546]

Commencons a l'abece.

Escusez moy.

Entendez moy, oyez moy, p.r.o.noncer les lettres. Remarquez bien comment je p.r.o.nonce les voyelles, et princ.i.p.alement _u_, car il est bien malaise a p.r.o.noncer a vous autres mm. les Anglois, comme aussi _e_ entre les consonnes. p.r.o.noncez apres moy.

Voila qui va bien.

p.r.o.nonce-je bien?

Fort bien. Essayez encore une fois.

Ce mechant _u_ me donne bien de la peine.

Il ne sauroit tant vous en donner que votre _th_ ou _ch_ nous en donne.

Il est malaise d'avoir la propriete de votre langue.

L'exercice et la lecture des bons autheurs vous apprendront avec le temps, etc.

He agreed with most of the French teachers of the day in attaching much importance to conversational practice and reading. He also recommended a certain amount of memorising and the study of grammar; general rules and rules of syntax he considered indispensable; but for p.r.o.nunciation he thought practice of more avail than rules. It is possible, he admits, to learn French by rote, without any grammar rules. But it is not the best way in his opinion. Without grammar rules the student cannot distinguish good French from bad, nor can he translate, write letters, or read; and reading, thought Du Gres, was an essential condition if the cultivation of French in England was to be maintained. [Header: FRENCH AT CAMBRIDGE] Those who learn by ear are at a loss as soon as they no longer hear French spoken daily. As for those who promise to teach French in a short time, they are nothing but mountebanks. Du Gres held that a man of moderate intellect could, with hard work, learn to understand an ordinary French author in three or four months. He had had, he declares, some pupils at Cambridge who learnt to read and speak fairly well in four months and others who learnt practically nothing in a whole year.

At the end of the seventeenth century the status of French at the universities had undergone no marked change. At the time of the Restoration, a certain Philemon Fabri pet.i.tioned Williamson for an appointment as Professor of French eloquence at Oxford, "he having held a similar situation at Strasburg"; he supported his request by an address to the king in French verses, ent.i.tled _Le Pater Noster des Anglais au Roi_. Apparently Fabri did not receive the desired position.[547] At Cambridge we find still less encouragement given to the study of French than at Oxford. During the Commonwealth, Guy Le Moyne, formerly French tutor to Charles I., lived at Cambridge, and no doubt continued to teach French there, as he had done in London and at Court.[548] At the Restoration he pet.i.tioned Charles II. to let him have the Fellowship at Pembroke Hall reserved for Frenchmen.[549] Le Moyne was then seventy-two years old, and wished, he said, to end his days at Cambridge.[550] At Cambridge, as at Oxford, there were also French tutors in charge of particular pupils. Many of these were French Protestants. Thus the famous Pierre Du Moulin, arriving in England as a dest.i.tute refugee in 1588, was received into the service of the Countess of Rutland, who sent him to Cambridge as tutor to her son. There he remained until 1592, continuing his own studies as well as attending to those of his young charge. He thoroughly disliked his position, and seized the first opportunity of leaving it.[551] We also hear of Herbert Palmer, President of Queen's College (1644-47), who had learnt French almost as soon as he could speak, and could preach in French as well as in English.[552] He won considerable distinction as a college tutor, but whether he placed his knowledge of French at the service of students, as Sanford and Leighton did at Oxford, is not specified.

Yet, even at Oxford, the efforts of this band of French teachers were not on a large enough scale to have any very noticeable effect. Some gentlemen who, like Sanford's pupil, William Grey, had gone to the University to make themselves "fit for honourable imployments hereafter," took advantage of such opportunities as there were of studying French. Thus Henry Smith, while acting as tutor to Mr.

Clifford, learnt French himself, and wrote to Williamson in that language.[553] And no doubt the French tutors found enough pupils among those who were drawn more towards the fashionable than the scholastic world. But the inability of the young Oxford student to speak French when in polite London circles was a subject of comment in the seventeenth century as the language became more and more widely cultivated. To speak French was even considered incompatible with a university education, to judge from this pa.s.sage in one of Farquhar's comedies:[554]

_Sir H. Wildair._ Canst thou danse, child?

_Bantu._ Oui, monsieur.

_Lady Lurewell._ Heyday! French too! Why, sure, sir, you could never be bred at Oxford!

To the same intent Pepys relates[555] how an Oxford scholar, "in a Doctor of Lawe's gowne," whom he met at dinner at the Spanish amba.s.sador's, sat like a fool for want of French, "though a gentle sort of scholar"; nor could he speak the amba.s.sador's language, but only Latin, which he spoke like an Englishman. Pepys, on the other hand, was very pleased at the display he was able to make of his own French on this occasion. The famous diarist was a competent judge, and spoke and wrote the language with ease. Unfortunately we know nothing of how he acquired this knowledge, beyond the fact that he had not been to France.[556] [Header: ONE-SIDEDNESS OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION] He often criticizes the French of those he meets, and a certain Dr. Pepys, according to him, "spoke the worst French he had ever heard from one who had been beyond sea." Pepys's brother spoke French, "very plain and good," and Mrs. Pepys, the daughter of a refugee Huguenot, was as familiar with that language as with English.[557]

Thus the universities, like the schools, failed to keep in touch with practical life by their neglect of the broader education necessary to persons of quality and fashion. At the Inns of Court, where gentlemen usually spent some time on leaving the university,[558] or where they sometimes went instead of to the university,[559] the state of things was somewhat better. Some knowledge of French was indispensable to those studying the law, and the position of the Inns, almost all of them within the boundaries of the ward of Farringdon Without, the favourite abode of the French teachers, was such as to offer exceptional facilities for the study of the language. When Robert Ashley was at the Inner Temple he studied Spanish, Italian, and Dutch, as well as French.

We are told[560] that in earlier times "knights, barons, and the greatest n.o.bility of the kingdom often placed their children in those Inns of Court, not so much to make the laws their study, much less to live by the profession ... but to form their manners and to preserve them from contagion of vice." There, could be found "a sort of gymnasium or academy fit for persons of their station, where they learn singing and all kinds of music, dancing, and other such accomplishments and Diversions ... as are suitable to their quality and such as are usually practiced at Court." French was, without doubt, one of these accomplishments. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the Inns of Court were still much in favour, and gentlemen's sons could enjoy there good company and the innocent recreations of the town, as well as improve themselves in the "exercises." Clarendon calls the Inns of Court the suburbs of the Court itself.

None the less, the gentleman with a university education, even when it was followed by residence at one of the Inns of Court, was felt to be inadequately equipped. Almost invariably he sought on the Continent the polite accomplishments and knowledge of languages, which were necessary qualifications for high employment at Court, in the army, and elsewhere.

Travel came to be regarded as "an especial part"[561] of the education of a gentleman, and as such occupies an important place in the educational treatises of the time. The usual course advised for the sons of gentlemen was an early study of Greek and Latin, followed by residence at one of the Universities and at the Inns of Court, and, finally, "travel beyond seas for language and experience" and the study of such arts as could not be easily acquired in England.

In some cases gentlemen were educated quite independently of the English schools and universities[562]--at home with private tutors, and in France. Lady Brilliana Harley, for instance, feared that her son would not find much good company at Oxford. "I believe," she wrote, "that theare are but feawe n.o.bellmens sonne in Oxford, for now, for the most part, they send theaire sonnes into France when they are very yonge, theaire to be breed."[563]

FOOTNOTES:

[515] J. Heywood, _Cambridge Statutes_ (sixteenth century), London, 1840, p. 267.

[516] Cooper, _Annals of Cambridge_, 1852, iii. p. 429; Mullinger, _History of the University of Cambridge_, iii. p. 368.

[517] Printed in Peac.o.c.k's _Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge_, 1841 (Appendix).

[518] Cp. C. Wordsworth, _Scholae Academicae_, 1877, pp. 209 _sqq._

[519] _Letter Book of Gabriel Harvey_ (1573-1580), Camden Soc., 1884, pp. 78-9. The tutor of John Hall, author of the _Horae Vacivae_ (1646), testified to his pupil's attainments in French, Spanish, and Italian literature. Mullinger, _History of the University of Cambridge_, ii. p.

351.

[520] One, Jean Verneuil, became underlibrarian of the Bodleian in 1625.

Cp. Schickler, _Les eglises du Refuge_, i. p. 424; Foster Watson, _Religious Refugees and English Education_, Hug. Soc. Proceedings, 1911; Agnew, _Protestant Exiles_, i. ch. v. and pp. 137, 147, 148, 156, 163; ii. pp. 260, 274, 388; Smiles, _The Huguenots_, ch. xiv.

[521] There were also numerous French Protestant students at the University of Edinburgh; cp. Schickler, _op. cit._ i. p. 366.

[522] Schickler, _op. cit._ i. p. 244.

[523] Wood, _Fasti Oxonienses_ (Bliss), ii. 195.

[524] Wood, _Athenae Oxon._ (Bliss), ii. 380.

[525] Oxford Historical Society: _Collectanea_, i., 1885, pp. 73 _sqq._

[526] 8vo, pp. 92.

[527] E. Stengel, _Chronologisches Verzeichnis franzosischer Grammatiken_, Oppeln, 1890.

[528] F. Madan, _Oxford Books, 1468-1640_, 1895-1912, i. p. 22; ii. p.

24. Another Spanish Grammar, by d'Oyly, had appeared at Oxford in 1590.

[529] 4to, 21 leaves.

[530] Printed by Joseph Barnes, 4to, 8 leaves.

[531] He visited Spain, and wrote _An Entrance to the Spanish Tongue_ (1611). While at Oxford he had composed _An Introduction to the Italian Tongue_ (1605). Cp. Wood, _Athenae Oxon._ (Bliss), ii. 471; C. Plummer, _Elizabethan Oxford_, Ox. Hist. Soc., 1887, p. xxviii; _Dict. Nat.

Biog._, ad nom.

[532] Wood, _Athen. Oxon._ (Bliss), ii. 676; Foster, _Alumni Oxon._, ad nom.

[533] Wood, _Fasti Oxon._ (Bliss), ii. 29, 30; _Dict. Nat. Biog._, ad nom.

[534] 12, pp. 31.

[535] In the copy in the Cambridge Univ. Library these are accompanied by a MS. translation into Latin. Some additional rules in Latin are written on the last blank leaf.

[536] _Athenae Oxon._ (Bliss), ii. 277.