The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England Part 7

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 selle et appointe pour chevaucher?

Ye syr, all redy.

Ouy sire, tout prest.

Now fare well and gramercy.

Or adiu et grandmercy.

Here the 'maniere 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 G.o.d.

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 G.o.d I shalle do suche dylygence that I shall gete your hertes desyre. No more wryte I to you at this tyme but G.o.d have you in hys protectyon. Wryten hastely the XIX daye of this moneth.

Tres honnore sire, ie me recommande a vous tant comme je puis, et plaise vous savoir que ie suis en tres bonne sante 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 parle avec l'advocat du roy le quel m'a dit quil me fault aller au roy et advertir sa royalle maieste 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 ma.n.u.script. 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sume, would probably be of the cla.s.s of the boy, "John, enfant beal et sage," who appears in the 'maniere' 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 ma.n.u.script, 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 p.r.o.nunciation, "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 'maniere 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'a une vache de porter une selle, a cause que sa langue n'est pas bien afilee, et pour cela n'entremette il pas a 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 pa.s.sing into oblivion.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, ii., 1868, pp. 16 _sqq._, 28 _sqq._

[76] _Maniere de Langage_, 1396; cp. _infra_, p. 35.

[77] "Doulz francois qu'est la plus bel et la plus gracious language et plus n.o.ble parler, apres latin d'escole, qui soit au monde."

[78] Jehan Barton, _Donait Francois_, _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 Francois, 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 Francois."

[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 Gallic.u.m prout infra patebit."

[83] P. Meyer, _Romania_, x.x.xii. pp. 43 _et seq._

[84] The English spelling, very corrupt in the original, is here modernized.

[85] These MSS. have been described and cla.s.sified by J. Sturzinger, _Altfranzosische 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 p.r.o.nunciation in the Brit. Mus. MS. Harl. 4971: _Modus p.r.o.nunciandi 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 p.r.o.nouns 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.