The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England Part 34

What was this book newly come from Antwerp? Probably an edition of a very popular collection of phrases and conversations, written originally in French and Flemish in the early years of the sixteenth century, by a schoolmaster of Antwerp, Noel de Barlement or Barlaiment.[689] By the middle of the century the work had appeared in four languages. In 1556 it was printed at Louvain in Flemish, French, Latin, and Spanish, and in 1565 it appeared at Antwerp in Flemish, French, Italian, and Spanish. In 1557 a London printer, Edward Sutton, received licence to print "a boke int.i.tuled Italian, Frynshe, Englesshe and Laten,"[690] and in 1568 a "boke int.i.tuled Frynsche, Englysshe and d.u.c.h.e" was licensed to John Alde.[691] Both of these volumes, we may safely conclude, were adaptations of the Flemish handbook, and either may have been the "book from Anvers" reviled by Holyband. Another English edition of the work was issued in 1578, a few years after Holyband's attack, by George Bishop, who received licence to print a _Dictionarie colloques ou dialogues en quattre langues, Fflamen, Ffrancoys, Espaignol et Italien_, "with the Englishe to be added thereto."[692]

This vocabulary of Barlement probably enjoyed considerable popularity in England in its foreign editions also. It was widely used by English merchants and travellers after it had been adapted to their use by the addition of English to its columns; and they would, no doubt, bring copies back with them from the Netherlands. The earliest edition in which English has a place was probably that of 1576, ent.i.tled _Colloques or Dialogues avec un Dictionaire en six langues, Flamen, Anglois, Alleman, Francois, Espagnol et Italien. Tres util a tous Marchands ou autres de quelque estat qu'ils soyent, le tout avec grande diligence et labeur corrige et mis ensemble. A Anvers 1576_. By the end of the century a seventh and finally an eighth language were added. There are copies of two further editions of the work issued in England in the first half of the seventeenth century. The first included four languages and appeared in 1637, under the t.i.tle of _The {English French}{Latine Dutch} Scholemaster or an introduction to teach young Gentlemen and Merchants to travell or trade. Being the only helpe to attaine to those languages_. It was printed for Michael Sparke, who issued another edition in eight languages in 1639 as _New Dialogues or colloquies or a little Dictionary of eight languages. A Booke very necessary for all those that study these tongues either at home or abroad, now perfected and made fit for travellers, young merchants and seamen, especially those that desire to attain to the use of the Tongues._ Michael Sparke recommends the convenience of this portable little volume: "And if parents use to send their children beyond the sea to learne the language and to gaine the learning of forraine nations, judge what may be said of the benefit of this booke (I had almost said of the necessity of it) which being read doth by daily experience furnish the Reader with a full and perfect knowledge of divers tongues." He also tells you "in your eare" that "since the worke has been published in England and the Netherlands," not so perfect an edition has appeared.

Turning to the contents of the little handbook, we are at once struck by the close resemblance between its dialogues and those of the French text-books produced in England--still further evidence of the use of the book in our country. [Header: THE DIALOGUES OF BARLEMENT] Its contents, which in all the varied forms in which it appeared are fundamentally the same, are divided into two parts. The first consists of four chapters, and opens with table talk very similar to that of the English-French dialogues, especially those of Du Ploich. There is a pa.s.sage, for example, in which the schoolboy speaks of his school, found in varying form in several of the early manuals produced in England:

Peter is that your son? Pierre est cela vostre filz?

Ye it is my sonne. Ouy c'est mon filz.

It is a goodly child. C'est un bel enfant.

G.o.d let him alwayes Dieu le laisse tousiours prosper in vertue. prosperer en bien.

I thanke you cousen. Je vous remercie cousin.

Doth he not goe to schoole? Ne va-il point a l'escole?

Yes, he learneth to speake French. Ouy, il apprend a parler Francois.

Doth he? Fait-il?

It is very well done. C'est tres bien fait.

John can you Jean scavez vous bien speake good French? parler francois?

Not very well, cousen, Ne point fort bien, mon cousin, but I learne. mais ie l'apprends.

Where go you to schoole? Ou allez vous a l'escole?

In the Lombarde Street. En la rue de Lombarts.

Have you gone Avez vous longuement long to schoole? alle a l'escole?

About halfe a yeare. Environ un demy an.

Learn you also to write? Apprenez vous aussi a escrire?

Yea, cousen. Ouy, mon cousin.

That is well done, C'est bien fait, learne alwayes well. apprenez tousiours.

Well cousen, if it please G.o.d. Bien mon cousin, s'il plait a Dieu.

The second chapter deals with buying and selling; the third with counting, demanding payment of debts, and so on; and the fourth gives specimens of commercial letters and doc.u.ments. The second part contains an alphabetical vocabulary of common words, followed by directions for reading and speaking French, in the guise of a slight grammar. A few rules for p.r.o.nunciation and the different parts of speech are accompanied by advice to seek fuller information in other French grammars. Then come a few rules for the other languages--Italian, Spanish, and Flemish.

So popular was this handbook in England that it was reprinted without much alteration, and no modernization, at the beginning of the nineteenth century: _The Dialogues in six languages Latin, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English_, appeared at Shrewsbury in 1808.

We are informed that "this book contains common forms of speach, one being a literal translation of the other, and as near as the idiom of the language will bear, so that they correspond almost word for word, and will be found extremely useful for beginners." The second part of the work, although mentioned in the table of contents, is omitted.

A similar polyglot manual, which was probably less well known in England, was the _Vocabulaire de six langues, Latin, Francois, Espagniol, Italien, Anglois et Aleman_, printed at Venice, probably in 1540--an enlarged edition of a vocabulary in five languages (Antwerp, 1534, and Venice, 1537) in which English had no place. This handbook pa.s.sed through several other editions,[693] and no doubt became fairly well known in England through the intermediary of the numerous Italian merchants who came to London, and the English traders and travellers visiting Italy; editions which appeared at Rouen in 1611 and 1625 would also be easily obtainable. The dictionary is described as a very useful vocabulary for those who wish to learn without going to school--artisans, women, and especially merchants. The first part consists of a vocabulary, arranged under fifty-five headings, dealing with the usual subjects, beginning with the heavens; the second contains a list of verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and p.r.o.nouns, together with a collection of phrases and idioms. The interesting dialogue of the Flemish vocabulary is lacking.

In the second half of the sixteenth century there lived at Antwerp a language master, Gabriel Meurier, who counted many English among his pupils. Meurier was a native of Avesnes in Hainault, where he was born in about 1530. But for many years he taught languages--French, Spanish, Flemish, and Italian--at Antwerp, which had by this time supplanted Bruges as the chief trading centre of the Low Countries. His pupils were largely merchants, and his first work on the language, the _Grammaire francoise contenante plusieurs belles reigles propres et necessaires pour ceulx qui desirent apprendre la dicte Langue_, 1557,[694] was dedicated to "Messeigneurs et Maistres, les gouverneurs et marchans Anglois." [Header: GABRIEL MEURIER] In 1563 was issued at Antwerp another work specially for the use of the English--_Familiare communications no lea.s.se proppre then verrie proffytable to the Inglishe nation desirous and nedinge the ffrench language_, dedicated to his most honoured lord, John Marsh, governor of the English nation, and intended for the use of "Marchands, Facteurs, Apprentifs, and others of the English nation." These dialogues on subjects specially useful to merchants are divided into seventeen chapters, giving familiar talk for the members of the different trades with lists of their merchandise, directions for travellers, the names of different artisans and tradesmen, instructions for collecting debts, receiving money and writing receipts. Meurier teaches his pupils the words used daily by merchants at the Exchange, and then the degrees of kins.h.i.+p, numbers, coins, the days and feast days, the parts of the body and clothing, food and table talk, and, finally, commercial notes and letters.[695] Another edition of the book was published at Rouen in 1641, being intended, in this case, to teach both French and English. The t.i.tle given to it was _A treatise for to learne to speake Frenshe and Englishe together with a form of making letters, indentures, and obligations, quittances, letters of exchange, verie necessarie for all Marchants that do occupy trade or marchandise_. Meurier also composed numerous other books which have no direct bearing on the teaching of French to Englishmen. They were almost all written for the use of merchants, whom they sought to instruct in French and Flemish, and sometimes in Spanish and Italian as well. That the English were always in the author's mind is shown by the fact that he sometimes explains p.r.o.nunciation by comparison with English sounds.

He also did important lexicographical work. He prepared French-Flemish vocabularies in 1562 and 1566, and in 1584 his French-Flemish Dictionary was published at Anvers. This dictionary is said to have been one of the sources which helped Cotgrave to compile his famous work, and Meurier seems to have outdone the later writer in collecting rare and obsolete words.[696]

There were thus many faculties for learning French in the Netherlands.

Francis...o...b..rne wrote regarding the study of French abroad:[697] "for the place I say France, if you have a purse, else some town in the Netherlands or Flanders, that is wholesome and safe: where the French may be attained with little more difficulty then at Paris, neither are the humours of the people so very remote from your owne." Thus the Netherlanders taught French to the English both in their own country[698] and in England. The connexion was a long-standing one.

Caxton had taken his French and English Dialogues from a Flemish text-book, and in later times, as has been seen, Flemish works were published in England, and had some influence on the dialogues of the English manuals of French. The debt, however, was not all on one side.

Holyband's _French Schoolemaister_, for instance, was adapted to the use of Flemings and printed at Rotterdam in 1606,[699] and in 1647 was published at the end of the _Grammaire flamende et francoise_ (Rouen) of Jan Louis d'Arsy. Moreover, the grammar of the seventeenth-century French teacher whose popularity equalled that of Holyband in the sixteenth century--Claude Mauger--was published in the Low Countries at the same time as in England.

Another link between the teaching of French in the Netherlands and in England is found in the book by John Wodroeph--an interesting figure among teachers of French. He spent many years in the Netherlands, and in his French text-book he adapted what he called his "court and country dialogues" from some French-Flemish ones written for the instruction of the Court of Na.s.sau in the former language. Writing of the importance of a knowledge of French, he emphasises its usefulness to the n.o.bility.

But, he adds, it is still more profitable to merchants, for, excepting Latin, it is the most widely used language in Christendom, and, "si j'osoye dire," much more useful.

Wodroeph was a soldier, and soldiers, like merchants, gave much impetus to the study of French. [Header: FRENCH IN MILITARY CIRCLES] In Barlement's book of dialogues, soldiers are ranked with merchants, travellers, and courtiers as those to whom the knowledge of languages is most necessary: "soit que quelcun face merchandise ou qu'il hante la court, ou qu'il suive la guerre, ou qu'il aille par villes et champs."

The wars raging almost incessantly in France and the Low Countries attracted numbers of Englishmen. The army was an opening for younger sons, and so "Some to the wars to try their fortunes there." Judging from the epigrams and satires of the time, the swaggering gallant home from the wars was a familiar figure in London. This sworded and martial _beau_ is

He that salutes each gallant he doth meete With "farewell sweet captaine fond heart _adieu_";

one who

hath served long in France, And is returned filthy full of French,

and who, at night when leaving the inn, "thinking still he had been sentinell of warlike Brill, crys out _que va la? Zounds que?_ and stabs the drawer with his Syringe straw."[700]

Those who were moved by the spirit of adventure and liked the picturesque crowded to the camp of Henry IV. of France who counted many admirers in this country. One of these, Dudley Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, writes from the king's camp in 1596 that he is busy studying French, though "Mars leaves little room for Mercury." Later he perfected his knowledge by studying at Paris, and wrote thence to John Chamberlain, the letter writer, to tell him how one Sir John Brooke, with Coppinger, a Kentish gentleman, "lately come to learn the language," are the "logs in our French school."[701] Unfortunately we have no more details of this little group of Englishmen studying French at Paris. One of the Englishmen who served in Normandy in 1591 with the troops sent by Queen Elizabeth to help Henry IV. against the League kept a daily journal from the 13th of August till the 24th of December following.[702] This soldier, Sir Thomas Coningsby, a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, acted as muster master to the English detachment, and was in frequent intercourse with Henry before Rouen.

An interesting example of how the army and service abroad offered opportunities for the study of French is found in the memoirs of the Verney family. The three younger sons of Sir Edmund Verney (1590-1642) all became soldiers. Tom took service in the army of France, while Edmund (1616-1649), after studying at Oxford, joined the army of the States in Flanders (1640). When in winter quarters at Utrecht, he "made up for his former idleness," and studied for seven or eight hours a day for many months to improve his knowledge of French and Latin. His Frenchman, he writes to tell his father, is the same that was Sir Humphry Sidenham's; he "warrants I shall speak it perfectly before we draw into the field, and truly, I am confident I shall."[703] He was reading Plutarch's _Lives_ in French. Edmund was soon after killed in the Civil War. His younger brother, Harry, was intended from his youth for a soldier, and early sent to Paris to study French. There he seems to have spoilt his English without making any very rapid progress in French, for French grammar had a powerful rival in horses and dogs--his chief interest in life. "Pleade for me in my behalfe to my father," he implores his eldest brother, "if I have not write in french so well as he expects, but howsoever, I presume a line to testifie some little knowledge in the same, and hope in time to expresse myselfe more radier, as the old proverbe is ... _il fault du temps pour apprendre_." Harry Verney later took part in the Thirty Years' War, and was present at the recapture of Breda by the Prince of Orange in 1637.[704]

It was during the Thirty Years' War also that John Wodroeph served in the Netherlands. He tells us in 1623 that he had been "following the uncertaine warres" for "these seven years past." During this period of service, "by the spared dayes and houres of (his) watch and guarde," he composed a book for teaching French, to which he gave the t.i.tle of _The Spared Houres of a Souldier in his travells or The true Marrowe of the French tongue_. It was printed at Dort, near Rotterdam, in 1623, and dedicated to the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I. Wodroeph was a "gentleman," and we gather from the interest he shows in Scotland that he hailed from that country. [Header: JOHN WODROEPH] At both the beginning and the end of his book are several poems of all sorts dedicated to courtiers who had followed James from Scotland to England--the Duke of Lennox, Earl Ramsey, James, Lord of Hay, and others. He also addresses the Elector Palatine and his queen, Elizabeth, James I.'s daughter. Many other poems, some in French and some in English, are written in honour of the Lords of the States-General and of sundry Flemish gentlemen. All these give this work, written in the midst of the British army abroad, a strong local colour. In addition, Wodroeph wrote poems to celebrate the virtues and learning of numerous Scottish and English officers--Colonel William Brog, Colonel Robert Henderson, Captain Roger Orme, Captain Edwards, Captain Drummond, and John Monteith, his very kind captain. To many of these and other "sons of gentlemen" Wodroeph had taught French, when his military duties permitted, and he mentions Captain Drummond as being among his most enthusiastic pupils. He also addresses lines to his very good friend John Cameron, the Scotch theologian and the minister of the French Church at Bordeaux, one of the many Scotchmen who held important scholastic positions in France. These verses must have been written between 1608 and 1617, the period when Cameron was at Bordeaux. Later Cameron became professor of divinity at Saumur and Montauban. He spoke French with unusual purity, and also wrote some of his theological treatises in French.[705]

Apart from its martial atmosphere, this curious volume has also a strong Calvinistic flavour, another indication of Wodroeph's Scottish sympathies. He wrote many "G.o.dly songs" in French, to be sung to various psalm tunes, and even introduced the spirit into his grammar itself. His verbs are "truly formed and constructed after the order of Geneva, which retaineth alwaies entirely the true marrow, method and rules of verbs, or any other part of speech, both in their Bibles, Psalms, and other G.o.dly books: forsaking all new corruptions, of poets, and other vaine toyes, threatening to deface the old authority of the Orthographie."

Moreover, a G.o.dly gentleman, "maister John Douglas, minister of the Word of G.o.d to the English and Scotch troopers within Utrecht," persuaded him to undertake the translation into French of Sir William Alexander's _Doomesday_, which at this date embraced four books or "houres,"

subsequently extended to twelve. _Doomesday_, thought Wodroeph, would be greatly "liked of in France, yea, even as well as a second Du Bartas."

He was, however, unable to complete his task, "finding the style so excellent and so high, and also somewhat harsh, to agree with French verse, because that our English tongue (and chiefly by this extraordinary poet) can affoorde more sense and matter with ten of its syllables than ever I have been able to construe with twelve or thirteen of the French. Therefore I was constrained to leave it off, partly for want of tyme and commoditie, and partly that it was so constrained." The one 'Houre' he completed was included in his book, with an apology and the expression of the hope that "any kind French poet would end out the rest, and also help these few rude lines which are translated in haste out of his week and shallow braine."

Wodroeph wrote French, both verse and prose, with remarkable ease. In addition to the poems already mentioned, there are many others scattered through his works. One of these, "Chanson Spirituelle de la vie des vertueux hommes," is written to the tune of Desportes' song, "O nuit, jalouse nuit, contre moy conjuree." He tells us that whenever possible he used French in correspondence in preference to English. He spoke the language with equal fluency, and a.s.sures us that he did so with greater facility than English. He had not acquired this mastery of the language without much study, but by "many cold winter nights sitting at it," and by much practice. He appears to have been fairly widely read in French literature, and shared the admiration felt by many of his countrymen for Du Bartas and the _Quatrains_ of Pibrac.

Thus Wodroeph was perfectly conscious of the many difficulties offered by the French language, and censured in strong terms those who pretend to teach it in a short s.p.a.ce of time. "I have shamefully heard say a teacher (in my tyme) that he could give rules, that any might read and write and understand the French language in six weeks. O what a weake ground should hee build therein! Yea not in sixteene months, hee and his gentle teaching! Unlesse he dazell his eyes much, and straine his memory out of her limits." [Header: METHOD OF STUDY] At an earlier date, Holyband had deplored the existence of the many "thornie and inepte bookes" claiming to give a knowledge of the language, and Wodroeph, in his turn, shows the small esteem in which he held the many "small wares"

by which it is impossible to prove a good speaker. He had seen very many treatises on verbs, "confused (for want of s.p.a.ce), confusing those who read them," and so many pamphlets and books making believe "by wordes rather than by effects that the French tongue can be truly learned by the same." No doubt most of these little pamphlets are among the many school-books of which all trace has been lost. There is, however, mention of one, _A shorte method for the Declyning of Ffrench Verbes_, by J. S., licensed in 1623 to the printer, Richard Field.[706]

Wodroeph, therefore, earnestly begs the student of French not to fancy he can "spare the marrow of his famous braines" and pick French up by ear alone, as many seek to do. He must, on the contrary, be prepared "to storm the citadel of grammar, and do as the valiant captaine, that is to say, besiege the strongest houldes which commande over the lesser and weaker sort." "Loving Reader," he writes, "if I could persuade thee to believe what profit the diligent and serious Man doth reape learning the true methode of French Tongue and what advantage he gaineth above him who thinketh to obtaine the said Tongue by the eare only: truly thou wouldest use thine earnest diligence and celeritie perusing these rules." Otherwise learners will speak "scurvily, harshly and painfully, that they make the Frenches take their sport at them, even as the English do at the Welshes ... taking sometyme the male for the female, and the hand for the foote; applying to the woman that which should apply to the man: and to the leg which ought apply to the arme: as _la garcon_, _le femme_, _ma sieur_, and _mon dame_: ... O what language this is in the eares of the Frenches! I think truely it should make Pere Coton him selfe to laugh at it, who said in a sermon (the King and Queen present), that hee had neither sinned nor laughed in fiftene yeares tyme, yea and any man else." Verbs are a special difficulty, and there "be many that can never speake true French for lack of knowing their methode. For where it ought to be spoken thus: _Il y eut_ or _il y avait un homme la_, some will say _il fut_, _il estoit un homme la_. Fine French! And so will the ignorant speake through all the moodes and tenses, whereat the Frenches take often their sport." Thus those who have learnt no grammar "go wallowing in the painefull and muddy mire of confused and backward broyles, doubting and fearing (without any a.s.surance) what words to speak first in framing their phrases."

But Wodroeph, in spite of the great emphasis he laid on the study of rules, fully recognizes the importance and value of practice. "I do not meene (for all this)," he writes, "to condemne common practice of the tongue by the eare, but do praise both wayes; esteeming (nevertheless) the method of the rules for the better and surer way, as I have certainlie found (and many others), by myne owne experience practicing them bothe." "Certes il vous faut parler tousiours," he says, "soit-il ou en bien ou en mal." To make progress "il vous faut frequenter, hanter, accoynter, accoster, discourir, babiller, caquetter, baiser, lecher, parler hardiment et discretement, aymer, rire, gausser, jouer, vous rejouir, et jouir de leurs bonnes faveurs et graces: et princ.i.p.alement es compagnies honestes: ascavoir, parmi les seigneurs et Dames, Damoiselles honestes, pudiques matrones, femmes et filles de vertu et d'honneur; captaines et dignes chefs de guerre, la ou il y a tousiours quelque chose a esplucher, si c'est de leurs prouesses, entreprises, ou de leurs faicts heroiques et memorables ... sans vous esbahir pour le bruit non plus que fait le bon cheval de trompette."

Wodroeph doubtless based his advice on his own experience. Moreover, a bold and enterprising spirit has much to do with the successful study of French: "si vous n'estes hardi prompt, diligent, et vigilent, vous n'apprendrez pas la langue francoise par songe ... mais cela vient par grande peine, diligence et priere a Dieu. Certes, ... si un homme estoit marie a une femme francoise ... il me semble qu'il apprendroit pl.u.s.tost en disant, Mme, ou m'amie, permettez moy que ie vous recerche en tout honeur et mariage ... a celle fin de vous faire ma chere moitie, et fidele espouse: que par ce moyen, ie puisse et avoir vostre alliance et apprendre vostre language, autrement, madame, il me cousteroit beaucoup plus de temps, de peine et de mes moyens."

Wodroeph's book for teaching French is one of the most comprehensive. He a.s.sures the student that it lacks "nothing to make him a perfect Frenchman but the birth and delygence though he never read any other."

It fills more than five hundred folio pages. [Header: "THE SPARED HOURES OF A SOULDIER"] Putting his theories into practice, he begins with rules of p.r.o.nunciation and grammar, "set downe by G.o.d's helpe as I have practiced in my time and by the tracke of best Authours, which have professed this tongue heretofore." His debt to Holyband makes it evident that he ranked the popular sixteenth-century teacher among these. He would have the student pay special attention to three things: first the p.r.o.nunciation, which, as was usual, he bases on comparison with English sounds; then the genders, learning every noun with its article "to lead to the same in right gender"; and, finally, and most important of all, the verbs, which should be committed to memory. In his grammar he follows the usual order, treating each part of speech in turn. He endeavours to avoid all superfluous rules, fearing the "loathsomeness of the unlearned."

The rules occupy about a hundred pages. Then follows a most comprehensive collection of practical exercises, intended for all sorts and conditions--courtiers, merchants, and the middle cla.s.ses, "the learned and the unlearned." The dialogues are accompanied by a verbatim English translation. In the introductory ones the reader is referred to the margin for the p.r.o.nunciation of the most difficult words, where it is given in English spelling. The "true English phrase" is added in the footnote where necessary. Wodroeph was strongly in favour of sacrificing if need be the purity of the English for the sake of rendering the meaning of the French clearer. He did not pretend, he says, to teach his countrymen their "own ornate English." "Verbatim, therefore, sometimes must be had, because it is requisite that it should not always be closed up in a phrase, but showed bare, as it fals very often: then (nil thou wilt thou) thou must have a coat to cover it, that is to say his true signification, or else thou must leave it, and run to the Dictionarie, and dazle thy eyes there awhile, and be even so wise as thou wast before; for sometymes they are not to be found at all in it, and sometymes it will fall in some tense of some mood which no Dictionarie can yield: yea even thousands."

The first section of the dialogues, that accompanied by the guides to p.r.o.nunciation, deals with familiar subjects, more useful than elegant and more profitable for the middle cla.s.ses and merchants than for the "loathsome courtier." "Thou hast in this Booke all household stuffe and other pretty necessary words meete for thy dailie use in this tongue.

Also an Introduction to frame all common and ordinarie phrases pertaining to a house: as of victuals, dressing, voyaging through the land. Also the partes and cloathing of a Man, his body, all in remarkable phrases; whereof I will shew thee vively, yea every Member, from the crowne of the Head unto the Foot." Though Wodroeph's dialogues are on a much larger scale than usual in French manuals, they treat of much the same topics. He advises the student to read this first set of dialogues several times, as much to get a good foundation of common talk, as to learn the p.r.o.nunciation by means of the guides provided.

They are followed by lists of common phrases to be learnt by heart, "every day one or two, for ordinarie use," and to facilitate an early use of French in conversation, and also by French idioms "very necessary for Translations of this tongue into any other."

After about sixty pages of this introductory matter we pa.s.s to what Wodroeph calls "The first booke of familie Dialogues, wherein is treated of all kinds of common necessary phrases as well for the use of the fields, labourage and contries, as for all sortes of home affaires for a house"--all accompanied by a verbatim English translation. These dialogues comprise conversations between members of most ranks of society, from a king and queen, ladies and gentlemen, to family scenes, and discussions between various tradesmen and peasants, not forgetting the schoolmaster and his pupil and the military officer and his subordinates; for, whenever occasion arises, Wodroeph introduces military talk. This section of the work closes with a list of the proper terms in which to address the higher and lower cla.s.ses.

Next come the dialogues taken from _Le verger des Colloques recreatifs_, offered by a Walloon to Prince Henry of Na.s.sau, for his furtherance in the same tongue in his younger years. Wodroeph claims to have purified this book, written in "scurvie Wallons language." It had already been adapted to the instruction of the English in the Italian language, by John Florio in his _Second Frutes_. These dialogues are naturally more of the courtly type, and are concerned with the daily occurrences of the life of a gentleman.

They are followed by _The Springwell of Honour and Vertue_, a collection of moral sayings and counsels, "composed both by ancient and moderne philosophers not only for the benefit of the corrupted youth, but also for all folkes, of all qualities, and chiefly for the yong gentilitie."

[Header: END OF WODROEPH'S CAREER] Wodroeph explains how this collection came to have a place in his book: "being once invited to supper of a worthy and virtuous gentleman (one who had showed me much favour for clearing his eldest sone of some doubts of the French tongue), I saw that hee (his owne selfe) did copie some Theames out of this same Worke ... for to instruct one of his children being (for that present) at the French schoole; I entreated him to lend it me for a Tyme, who did it willingly until I had viewed it, and corrected the French and read it all out." The _Springwell_ is divided into three bookes: the first deals with the "means of acquiring Honour and Vertue"; the second with the old subject of the six or, as Shakespeare has it, seven ages of man; and the third with the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d and our duty to our neighbours.

After sundry poems, addressed to English, Scottish, and Flemish gentlemen, and the translation of Sir William Alexander's _First Hour_, given in both French and English, come directions for writing letters, with thirty-six epistles in French and English, and themes gathered out of French authors for the use of some of his pupils, "before I made them frame any letters: very profitable to begin with and out of the best and purest French." Finally we have the usual proverbs, so much in favour at this period, "picked" from those of the learned Mathurin Cordier, and "sundry other Authours and writers." The work closes with "a Thankesgiving (of the Authour) unto G.o.d for his helpe in the finis.h.i.+ng of this worke," and the quotation of Wodroeph's device--"Vers Dieu c'est le meilleur."

In 1625 a second edition of this curious volume appeared in London, under the t.i.tle of _The Marrow of the French Tongue_. This edition is said to be "revised and purged of much gross English" which had made its way into the former edition, printed abroad. It is considerably abridged, and lacks the living interest of the Dort edition. The actual instructions for the French tongue remain intact, but all the little chatty autobiographical sc.r.a.ps, and observations to the "Loving Reader,"

as well as the addresses to officers, which gave such a characteristic personal touch to the earlier edition, are here omitted, and the work is about one hundred and seventy pages shorter. The dedication to Charles Stuart, now newly crowned Charles I., still stands. Wodroeph had no doubt returned to England, where he was known to several of the prominent men of the time. In 1623 he had mentioned favours received from James, Lord of Hay, at Hampton Court, sixteen years before. We may presume that he continued to teach French among the higher cla.s.ses of society after his return, though there does not appear to be any further trace of him.

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