The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England Part 5

Sir dieu vous donne bon aventure.

Sir G.o.d geve you good happe.

Sir a dieu vous commaunde.

Sir to G.o.d I you betake.

Sir dieu vous esploide.

Sir G.o.d spede you.

Sir bon aventure avez vous.

Sir good chaunce have ye.

Sir par saint Marie cy est bon servise.

Sir by saint Marie her is good ale.

Sir pernes le hanappe, vous comenceres.

Sir take the coppe, ye shal beginne.

Dame ie ne feray point devaunt vous.

Dame I wil not doo bifor you.

Sir vous ferrez verrement.

Sir ye shal sothely.

After some disconnected discourse on inquiring the time, asking the way, etc., we again return to the tavern:

Dame dieu vous donne bon jour.

Dame G.o.d geve you good daie.

Dame avez hostel pour nous trois compaignons?

Dame have ye hostel for us iij felowes?

Sir quant longement voudrez demourer?

Sir how long wol ye abide?

Dame nous ne savons point.

Dame we wote not.

Et que vouldrez donner le iour pour vostre table?

And what wil ye geve a daie for your table?

Dame que vouldrez prendr pour le iour?

Dame what wol ye take for the daie?

Sir non meynns que vj deniers le iour.

Sir noo lesse thenne vj d. the day ... etc.

Next comes the usual scene between buyers and sellers, followed by another inn scene of greater length. After attending to their horses, the travellers sup and spend the night at the inn, and set out the next morning after reckoning with their hostess. The ma.n.u.script ends abruptly in the midst of a list of salutations. The nature of the French[111]

betrays the author's nationality; he was evidently an Englishman. As to the English, the quaint turn given to many of the phrases is usually explained by the writer's desire to give a literal translation of the French; many of the inaccuracies in both versions are probably due to careless work on the part of the scribe.

Merchants thus appear to have been one of the chief cla.s.ses among which there was a demand for instruction in French. In addition to the large part a.s.signed to them in the 'Manieres de Langage,' and in the epistolaries, where letters of a commercial nature are a usual feature, there exist collections of model forms for drawing up bills, indentures, receipts and other doc.u.ments of similar import. They are usually called 'cartularies,' are accompanied by explanations in Latin, and may be looked upon as the first text-books of commercial French.[112] One author explains their origin and aim by this introductory remark:[113]

"Pour ceo qe j'estoie requis par ascunz prodeshommez de faire un chartuarie pour lour enfantz enformer de faire chartours, endenturs, obligations, defesance, acquitancez, contuaries, salutaries, en Latin et Franceys ensemblement ... fesant les chartours, escripts munimentz a de primes en Latyn et puis en Franceys."

More emphasis is laid on the demand for instruction in French among the merchant cla.s.s by the fact that the earliest printed text-books were designed chiefly for their use. The first of these may be cla.s.sed with the new development of the 'Manieres de Langage,' comprising dialogues in French and English, although it does not exactly answer to this description.[114] It was issued from the press of William Caxton in about 1483, and at least one other edition appeared at a later date.[115] In form it is a sort of narrative in French, with an English translation opposite. The aim of the work is stated clearly in an introductory pa.s.sage which informs the reader that "who this book shall learn may well enterprise merchandise from one land to another and to know many wares which to him shall be good to be bought, or sold for rich to become." Caxton thus recommends the book to the learner:

Tres bonne doctrine Rygt good lernyng Pour aprendre For to lerne Briefment fransoys et engloys. Shortly frenssh & englyssh.

Au nom du pere In the name of the fadre Et du filz And of the soone Et du sainte esperite And of the holy ghost Veul comnencier I wyll begynne Et ordonner ung livre, And ordeyne this book, Par le quel on pourra By the which men shall mowe Raysonnablement entendre Resonably understande Francoys et Anglois, Frenssh and Englissh, Du tant comme cest escript Of as moche as this writing Pourra contenir et estendre, Shall conteyne & stratche, Car il ne peut tout comprendre. For he may not all comprise.

Mais ce qu'on n'y trouvera But that which cannot be founden Declaire en cestui Declared in this Pourra on trouver ailleurs Shall be founde somwhere els En aultres livres. In other bookes.

Mais sachies pour voir But knowe for truthe Que es lignes de cest aucteur That in the lynes of this auctour Sount plus de parolles et de raysons Ben moo wordes & reasons Comprinses, et de responses Comprised, & of answers Que en moult d'aultres livres. Than in many other bookes.

Qui ceste livre vouldra aprendre Who this booke shall wylle lerne Bien pourra entreprendre May well enterprise Merchandises d'un pays a Marchandise fro one land to l'autre, anoothir, Et cognoistre maintes denrees And to know many wares Que lui seroient bon Which to him shall be good to be achetes bought Ou vendues pour riche devenir. Or sold for rich to become.

Aprendes ce livre diligement, Lerne this book diligently, Grande prouffyt y gyst vrayement. Grete prouffyt lieth therein truly.

The 'doctrine' itself opens with a list of salutations with the appropriate answers. A house and all its contents come next, then its inhabitants, which introduces the subject of degrees of kins.h.i.+p:

Or entendes petys et grands, Je vous dirai maintenant Dune autre matere La quele ie commence.

Se vous estes maries Et vous avez femme Et vous ayez marye, Se vous maintiens paisiblement Que vos voisins ne disent De vous fors que bien: Ce seroit vergoigne.

Se vous aves pere et mere, Si les honnoures tousiours; Faictes leur honneur;...

Si vous aves enfans, Si les instrues De bonnes meurs; Le temps qu'ilz soient josnes Les envoyes a l'escole Aprendre lire et escripre... .

At the end of the category come the servants and their occupations, which affords an opportunity of bringing in the different shops to which they are sent and of specifying the meat and drink they purchase there.

We then pa.s.s to buying, selling, and bargaining in general, and to merchandise of all kinds, with a list of coins, popular fairs, and fete-days.

After an enumeration of the great persons of the earth comes the main chapter of the work, giving a fairly complete list of crafts and trades.

This takes the form of an alphabetical list of Christian names, each of which is made to represent one of the trades, beginning with Adam the ostler: "For this that many words shall fall or may fall which be not plainly heretofore written, so shall I write you from henceforth divers matters of all things, first of one thing, then of another, in which chapter I will conclude the names of men and women after the order of a, b, c." The baker may be selected as a fair example:

Ferin le boulengier Fierin the baker Vend blanc pain et brun. Selleth whit brede and brown.

Il a sour son grenier gisant He hath upon his garner lieng Cent quartiers de bled. One hundred quarters of corn.

Il achete a temps et a heure, He byeth in tyme and at hour, Si qu'il n'a point So that he hath not Du chier marchiet. Of the dere chepe (high buying prices).

At last the author, "all weary of so many names to name, of so many crafts, so many offices, so many services," finds relief in certain considerations of a religious order: "G.o.d hath made us unto the likeness of himself, he will reward those who do well and punish those who do not repent of their sins, and attend the holy services: If ye owe any pilgrimages, so pay them hastily; when you be moved for to go your journey, and ye know not the waye, so axe it thus." The usual directions for inquiring the way follow with the description of the arrival at an inn, and the customary gossip. The reckoning and departure on the following morning afford an opportunity of including a further list of Flemish and English coins together with the numerals; and Caxton concludes his work by commending it to the reader with a prayer that those who study it may persevere sufficiently to profit by it:

Cy fine ceste doctrine, Here endeth this doctrine,

A Westmestre les Loundres At Westmestre by London En formes impressee, In fourmes enprinted, En le quelle ung chaucun In the whiche one everish Pourra briefment aprendre May shortly lerne Francois et Engloys. French and English.

La grace de sainct esperit The grace of the holy ghosst Veul enluminer les cures Wylle enlyghte the hertes De ceulx qui le aprendront, Of them that shall lerne it, Et nous doinst perseverance And us gyve perseverans En bonnes operacions, In good werkes, Et apres cest vie transitorie And after lyf transitorie La pardurable ioye et glorie! The everlasting ioye and glorie!

The short introduction and epilogue were most probably the composition of Caxton himself. The rest of the book is drawn from a set of dialogues in French and Flemish, first written at the beginning of the fourteenth century, called _Le Livre des Mestiers_ in reference to its main chapter.[116] This would possibly be known to merchants trading with Bruges and other centres of the Low Countries; and when we notice the numerous points of resemblance between it and the English manuals of conversation, the first of which did not appear before the end of the same century, it seems very probable that the Flemish original had some influence on the works produced in England. Caxton was a silk mercer of London, and his business took him to the towns of the Low Countries, especially Bruges, where the English merchants had a large commercial connexion. There, no doubt, he became acquainted with the _Livre des Mestiers_, and probably improved his knowledge of French by its help, for he studied and read the language a good deal during his long sojourn abroad. There also he probably added an English column to his copy of the French-Flemish phrase-book, as a sort of exercise rather than with any serious intention of publication; and when he had set up his press at Westminster, remembering the need he had felt for French, in his own commercial experience, and the little book which had a.s.sisted him, he would decide to print it. Caxton's copy of the _Livre des Mestiers_ belonged, no doubt, to a later date than the one extant to-day,[117]

probably to the beginning of the fifteenth century. It must have been fuller, and have had different names attached to the characters, so that, as the names are still arranged in alphabetical order, it is difficult, at a glance, to distinguish the ident.i.ty of the two texts.

Caxton's rendering of the French is often inaccurate, owing perhaps to the influence of the Flemish version from which he seems to have made his translation.[117] Moreover, at the early date at which Caxton, probably, added the English column to the _Livre des Mestiers_, his knowledge of French had not yet reached that state of thoroughness which was to enable him to translate such a remarkable number of French works into English. He himself tells us in the prologue to the _Recuyell of the Histories of Troy_ of Raoul le Fevre (Bruges, 1475)--the first of his translations from the French, and, indeed, the first book to be printed in English--that his knowledge of French was not by any means perfect. With the exception of the introductory and closing sentences, Caxton made few additions to his original. He did indeed supply the names of English towns, coins, bishoprics, and so on; but, on the whole, the setting of the work is foreign; Bruges, not London, is the centre of the action, and no doubt the place where the original was composed.

Not long after the publication of Caxton's doctrine another work of like character and purpose appeared. It claims to be "a good book to learn to speak French for those who wish to do merchandise in France, and elsewhere in other lands where the folk speak French." The atmosphere is entirely English, and consequently its contents bear a closer resemblance to its English predecessors. In the arrangement of the dialogue it is identical with the Cambridge conversation book, except that the English lines come before the French, and not the French before the English.[118] The four subjects round which the dialogue turns, namely, salutations, buying and selling, inquiring the way, and conversation at the inn, were all favourites in the early "Manieres de Langage." For the rest it follows in the steps of its English predecessors in confining itself to dialogue pure and simple, while Caxton's 'doctrine' adopted the narrative form. In one point, however, the work differs from the latest development of the old "Maniere de Langage," as preserved in the Cambridge Dialogues in French and English; the dialogues are followed by a vocabulary, then a reprint of one of the old books on courtesy and demeanour for children, with a French version added, and finally commercial letters in French and English. The work is thus made much more comprehensive than any of its type which had as yet appeared, and includes samples, so to speak, of all the practical treatises for teaching French which had appeared in the Middle Ages.

It was printed separately by the two chief printers of the time, both foreigners: Richard Pynson, a native of Normandy and student of Paris, who came to England and began printing on his own account about 1590-1591; and Wynkyn de Worde, a native of Alsace, and apprentice to Caxton, with whom he probably came to England from Bruges in 1476, and to whose business he succeeded in 1491.[119] Although neither of the printers dated their work, it seems probable that the earliest edition was issued by Pynson. There is a unique copy of his edition in the British Museum; it is without t.i.tle-page, pagination, or catch-words, and the colophon reads simply "Per me Ricardum Pynson." The colophon of Wynkyn's work, of which there is a complete copy in the Grenville Library (British Museum),[120] and a fragment of two leaves in the Bodleian, is slightly more instructive and runs as follows: "Here endeth a lytyll treatyse for to lern Englyshe and Frensshe. Emprynted at Westmynster by my Wynken de Worde." Now as Wynkyn moved from Westminster in 1500 to set up his shop in the centre of the trade in Fleet Street, opposite to that of his rival Pynson, his edition of the work must have appeared before that date, because it was issued from what had been Caxton's house in Westminster. On the other hand, the type used by Pynson is archaic,[121] and the work is evidently one of the earliest issued from his press. It is inferior to Wynkyn's edition from the technical point of view. A headline is all there is by way of t.i.tle; while in Wynkyn's copy we find a separate t.i.tle-page, containing the words, "Here begynneth a lytell treatyse for to lern Englishe and Frensshe," and a woodcut of a schoolmaster seated in a large chair, with a large birch-rod in his left hand, and, on a stool at his feet, three small boys holding open books. This particular woodcut was a favourite in school-books of the period;[122] it appears, for instance, in a little treatise ent.i.tled _Pervula_, giving instructions for turning English into Latin, which Wynkyn de Worde printed about 1495.[123]

Moreover, each page of Wynkyn's edition has a descriptive headline, "Englysshe and Frensshe," which is not found in Pynson's. The text also is in many places more accurate than that of the Norman printer, and gives the impression of having been corrected here and there. It is therefore probable that Pynson first printed the treatise shortly after 1490,[124] and that another edition was issued by Wynkyn de Worde during the period intervening between the date of the issue of Pynson's edition and the end of the century. A remnant, consisting of one page of yet another edition, is preserved in the British Museum, and shows some variations in spelling from the two other texts.

This little book, then, seems to have enjoyed considerable popularity during its short life. On the whole it is more elementary in character than the 'doctrine' of Caxton. The first things taught are the numbers and a list of ordinary mercantile phrases. The opening pa.s.sage is very much like that written by Caxton for his work:

Here is a good boke to lerne to speke Frenshe.

Vecy ung bon livre apprendre parler francoys.

In the name of the fader and the sone En nom du pere et du filz And of the holy goost, I wyll begynne Et du saint esperit, je vueil commencer To lerne to speke Frensshe, A apprendre a parler francoys, Soo that I maye doo my marchandise Affin que je puisse faire ma marchandise In Fraunce & elles where in other londes, En France et ailieurs en aultre pays, There as the folk speke Frensshe.

La ou les gens parlent francoys.

And fyrst I wylle lerne to reken by lettre.

Et premierement je veux aprendre a compter par lettre... .

Next come the cardinal numbers and a vocabulary of words "goode for suche as use marchaundyse":

Of gold & sylver.

D'or et d'argent.

Of cloth of golde.

De drap d'or.

Of perles & precyous stones.