The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England during Tudor and Stuart Times, by Kathleen Lambley

In accordance with this programme the parts of the human body, which almost invariably forms the central theme in this type of manual, are enumerated. Special care is taken to distinguish the genders and cases, to teach the children "Kaunt deivunt dire moun et ma, soun et sa, le et la, moy et jo . . .," and to explain how the meaning of words of similar sound often depends on their gender:

Throughout Bibbesworth seizes every opportunity to point out distinctions of gender of this kind, regardless, it appears, of the difference between the definite and indefinite articles. When the pupil can describe his body, the teacher proceeds to give him an account of "all that concerns it both inside and out" ("kaunt ke il apent dedens et deores"), that is of its clothing and food:

—a passage which illustrates the practical nature of the treatise, Bibbesworth's aim being to teach children to know the properties of the things they see ("les propretez des choses ke veyunt").

When the child is clothed, Bibbesworth next feeds him, giving a full account of the meals and the food which is provided, and, by way of variety, at the end of the dinner, he teaches his pupil the names given to groups of different animals, and of the verbs used to describe their various cries. ("Homme parle, cheval hennist," etc.). By this time the child is ready to observe Nature, and to learn the terms of husbandry,[38] and the processes by which his food is produced. From the fields he passes to the woods and the river, where he learns to hunt and to fish, subjects which naturally lead to the introduction of the French names of the seasons, and of the beasts and birds that are supposed to present themselves to his view.

During the whole of this long category the verse form is maintained, and the intention of avoiding a vocabulary pure and simple is manifest. How superior this method was to the more modern lists of words separated from the context is also evident. Besides giving a description of all the objects with which the child comes in contact, and of all the actions he has to perform, as well as examples for the distinctions of genders and of moy and jo—difficulties for which he makes no attempts to draw up rules—Bibbesworth claims for his work that it provides gentlemen with adequate instruction for conversational purposes ("tot le ordre en parler e respoundre ke checun gentyshomme covent saver"). And as he did not wish to neglect any of the items of daily life, he finally gives a description of the building of a house and various domestic arrangements, ending with a description of an old English feast with its familiar dish, the boar's head:

As time went on a conscious effort was made to retain the use of the French language in England. Higden, writing at about the middle of the fourteenth century,[39] informs us that English was then neglected for two reasons: "One is bycause that children than gon to schole lerne to speke first Englysshe and then ben compelled constrewe ther lessons in Frenssh"; "Also gentilmens children ben lerned and taught from theyr yougthe to speke frenssh.[40] And uplandish men will counterfete and likene them self to gentilmen and arn besy to speke frensshe for to be more sette by. Wherefor it is sayd by a common proverbe Jack wold be a gentilmen if he coude speke frensshe."

At the University of Oxford, likewise, the Grammar masters were enjoined to teach the boys to construe in English and in French, "so that the latter language be not forgotten."[41] The same university gave some slight encouragement to the study of French. There were special teachers who, although not enjoying the privileges of those lecturing in the usual academic subjects, were none the less recognised by the University. They had to observe the Statutes, and to promise not to give their lessons at times which would interfere with the ordinary lectures in arts. The French teachers were under the superintendence of the masters of grammar, and had to pay thirteen shillings a year to the Masters in Arts to compensate them for any disadvantage they might suffer from any loss of pupils; if there was only one teacher of French he had to pay the whole amount himself. As for those learning "to write, to compose, and speak French," they had to attend lectures in rhetoric and grammar—the courses most akin to their studies [42]—and to contribute to the maintenance of the lecturers in these subjects, there being no ordinary lectures in French.

In the meantime, more treatises for teaching French appeared; Bibbesworth's book soon found imitators, and early in the new century an anonymous author, clearly an Englishman, made free use of Bibbesworth in a treatise called The Nominale sive Verbale in Gallicis cum expositione ejusdem in Anglicis.[43] This anonymous writer [44] however, thought it necessary to make the interlinear English gloss much fuller than Bibbesworth had done, which shows that French had become more of a foreign language in the interval between the two works. He also placed the English rendering after the French, instead of above it. The later work differs further from the earlier in the order of the subject headings, as well as by the introduction of a few new topics. Enumerating the parts of the body,[45] as Bibbesworth had done, the author proceeds to make his most considerable addition to the subjects introduced by Bibbesworth in describing "la noyse et des faitz que homme naturalment fait":

and so on for about 350 lines. Other additions are of little importance, and, for the rest, the author treats subjects first introduced by Bibbesworth, though the wording often differs to a certain extent.[46]

When, towards the end of the thirteenth century, French began to be used in correspondence, need for instruction in French epistolary art arose; and early in the fourteenth century guides to letter-writing in French, in the form of epistolaries or collections of model letters, were produced.[47] The letters themselves are given in French, but the accompanying rules and instructions for composing them are in Latin. French and Latin have changed rôles; in earlier times Latin had been explained to school children by means of French. Forms for addressing members of the different grades of society are supplied, from epistles to the king and high state and ecclesiastical dignitaries down to commercial letters for merchants, and familiar ones for private individuals. Women, too, were not forgotten; we find similar examples covering the same range—from the queen and the ladies of the nobility to her more humble subjects. Each letter is almost invariably followed by its answer, likewise in French. Some contain interesting references to the great men or events of the day, but those of a more private nature possess a greater attraction, and throw light on the family life of the age. A letter from a mother to her son at school may be quoted:[48]

From about the middle of the fourteenth century a feeling of discontent with the prerogative of the French language in England becomes prominent. The loss of the greater part of the French possessions, and the continued state of hostilities with France during the reign of Edward III. brought home forcibly to the English mind the fact that the French were a distinct nation, and French a foreign tongue. This tardy recovery is sufficient proof of the strong resistance which had to be overcome. Chaucer is the greatest representative of the new movement. "Let Frenchmen endite their quaint terms in French," he exclaims, "for it is kindly to their mouths, but let us show our fantaisies in suche words as we learned from our dames' tongues." His contemporary, Gower, was less quick to discern the signs of the times. Of the four volumes of his works, two are in Latin, one in French, and one in English; but the order in which he uses these languages is instructive—first French, then Latin, and lastly English. Some writers made a compromise by employing a mixture of French and English.[49] French, however, continued to hold an important place in prose writings until the middle of the fifteenth century; but such works are of little literary value. The reign of French as the literary language of England, as Chaucer had been quick to discern, was approaching its end.

The same period is marked by a growing disrespect for Anglo-French as compared with the French of France. The French of England, cut off from the living source, had developed apart, and often with more rapidity than the other French dialects on the Continent. What is more, the language brought by the invaders was not a pure form of the Norman dialect; men from various parts of France had joined in William's expedition. The invaders, always called 'French' by their contemporaries, brought in a strong Picard element; and in the twelfth century there was a similar Angevin influence. Moreover, during Norman and Angevin times, craftsmen and others immigrated to England, each bringing with him the dialectal peculiarities of his own province.[50] Thus no regular development of Anglo-French was possible, and it can hardly be regarded as an ordinary dialect, notwithstanding its literary importance.[51] This disparity in the quality of Anglo-French is illustrated in a remarkable way by the literature of the period. Those who had received special educational advantages, or had travelled on the Continent, spoke and wrote French correctly; others used forms which contrasted pitiably with continental French. Moreover, the fourteenth century saw the triumph of the Île de France dialect in France; the other dialects ceased, as a rule, to be used in literature,[52] and this change was not without effect on Anglo-French, which shared their degradation. Chaucer lets us know the poor opinion he had of the French of England; his Prioress speaks French "full fayre and fetisly," but

William Langland admits that he knew "no frenche in feith, but of the ferthest ende of Norfolke."[53] As early as the thirteenth century English writers had felt bound to apologize as Englishmen for their French. Nor were their excuses superfluous in many cases; William of Wadington, the author of the Manuel des Pechiez, for example, wrote:[54]

Such apologies became all the more necessary as time went on. Even Gower, whose French was comparatively pure,[55] owing no doubt to travel in France in early life, deemed it advisable to explain that he wrote in French for "tout le monde en general," and to ask pardon if he has not "de François la faconde":

At about the same time the anonymous author of the Testament of Love finds fault with the English for their persistence in writing in bad French, "of which speech the Frenchmen have as good a fantasy as we have in hearing of Frenchmen's English."[56]

The notoriety of the French of Englishmen reached France. Indeed this was a time when the English were more generally known in France than they were to be for several hundreds of years afterwards—until the eighteenth century. Englishmen filled positions in their possessions in France, and during the long wars between the two countries in the reign of Edward III., many of the English nobility resided in that country with their families. Montaigne refers to traces of the English in Guyenne, which still remained in the sixteenth century: "Il est une nation," he writes in one of his Essays, "a laquelle ceux de mon quartier ont eu autrefois si privée accointance qu'il reste encore en ma maison aucune trace de leur ancien cousinage."[57] The opinions formed by the French of the English were naturally anything but flattering. We find them expressed in songs of the time.[58] But the recriminations were mutual, and the English had already hit upon the epithet which for centuries they applied to Frenchmen, and most other foreigners indiscriminately:

Even in the Roman de Renart we come across traces of familiarity with English ways, and also of the English language.[60]

It is not surprising, then, that Anglo-French was a subject of remark in France, especially when we remember that already in the thirteenth century the provincial accents of the different parts of France herself had been the object of some considerable amount of raillery.[61] The English, says Froissart, a good judge, for he spent many years in England, "disoient bien que le françois que ils avoient apris chies eulx d'enfance n'estoit pas de telle nature et condition que celluy de France estoit."[62] And this 'condition' was soon recognized as a plentiful store for facetious remarks and parodies of all kinds. In the Roman de Jehan et Blonde, the young Frenchman's rival, the Duke of Gloucester, is made to appear ridiculous by speaking bad French; and one of the tricks played by Renart on Ysengrin, in the Roman de Renart, is to pretend he is an Englishman:[63]

A fabliau of the fourteenth century [64] pictures the dilemma of two Englishmen trying to make their French understood in France; one of them is ill and would have some lamb:

His friend sets out to try to get the 'anel' or 'lamb'; but no one understands him, and he becomes the laughing-stock of the villagers. At last some one gives him a 'small donkey' instead of the desired 'agnel,' and out of this he makes a dish for the invalid who finds the bones rather large. In the face of a reputation such as this it is no wonder that the English found additional encouragement to abandon the foreign language and cultivate their own tongue.

English was also beginning to make its way into official documents.[65] In 1362 the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament was pronounced in English, and in the following year it was directed that all pleas in the courts of justice should be pleaded and judged in English, because French was "trope desconue en ledit realme." Despite that, the act was very tardily obeyed, and English progressed but slowly, French continuing to be written long after it ceased to be spoken in the Law Courts. There were a few public documents issued in English at the end of the century, but the Acts and Records of Parliament continued to be written in French for many years subsequently. English first made its way into the operative parts of the Statutes, and till 1503 the formal parts were still written in French and Latin. Protests were made to Henry VIII. against the continued use of French, "as thereby ys testyfied our subjectyon to the Normannys"; yet it was not before the eighteenth century that English was exclusively used in the Law Courts, and for many years French, in its corrupt form, remained the literary language of the English law. Till the seventeenth century works on jurisprudence and reports on cases were mainly written in French. Les Cases de Gray's Inn shows French in accounts of discussions on difficult legal cases as late as 1680.[66] Sir John Fortescue (1394?-1476), Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, in his De Laudibus Legum Angliae, suggests that this Law French is more correct at bottom than ordinary spoken French, which, he contends, is much "altered by common use, whereas Law French is more often writ than spoken." In later times no such illusions prevailed. Swift thus estimates the value of the three languages of the English Law:[67]

At about the same time as Swift wrote, the 'frenchified' Lady, then in fashion, who prided herself on her knowledge of the "language à la mode" is described as being able to "keep the field against a whole army of Lawyers, and that in their own language, French gibberish."[68] And long after French ceased to be used in the Law many law terms and legal and official phrases remained, and are still in use to-day.[69] Anglo-French also lingered in some of the religious houses after it had fallen into discredit elsewhere, and continued to do so in some cases till the time of their dissolution. The rules and accounts of the nunneries were more often in French than not.[70] And John ap Rhys, visitor of monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII., wrote to Cromwell regarding the monastery of Laycock in Wiltshire, that he had observed one thing "worthy th'advertisement; the ladies have their Rule, th'institutes of their Religion and the ceremonies of the same written in the Frenche tongue, which they understand well and are very perfyt in the same, albeit that it varieth from vulgar Frenche that is now used, and is moche like the Frenche that the common Lawe is written in."[71]

During this same period English began to be used occasionally in correspondence; but here again its progress was slow. Some idea of the extent to which French was utilized for that purpose may be gathered from the fact that three extant letters of William de Wykeham, addressed to Englishmen, are all in that tongue. Not till the second and third decades of the fifteenth century were English and French employed in correspondence to an almost equal extent, and during the following years, especially in the reign of Henry VI., English gradually became predominant.[72] French remained in use longer in correspondence of a public and official nature, but became more and more restricted to foreign diplomacy.

Towards the middle of the fourteenth century, at the beginning of the long wars with France, French lost ground in England in yet another direction. Edward III. is said to have found it necessary to proclaim that all lords, barons, knights, burgesses, should see that their children learn French for political and military reasons;[73] and when Trevisa translated Higden's Polychronicon, he wrote in correction of the earlier chronicler's description of the teaching of French in the grammar schools of England:[74] "This maner was moche used before the grete deth (1349). But syth it is somdele chaunged. Now (i.e. 1387) they leave all Frensch in scholes, and use all construction in Englisch. Wherin they have advantage on way that they lerne the soner ther gramer. And in another disadvantage. For nowe they lerne no Frenssh ne can none, whiche is hurte for them that shall passe the see," and thus children of the grammar schools know "no more French than knows their lefte heele."

Thus the custom of translating Latin into French passed out of use early in the second half of the fourteenth century. No doubt there had been signs of the approaching change in the preceding period, and it is of interest here to notice that while Neckham's Latin vocabulary, which dates from the second half of the twelfth century, is glossed in French alone, that of Garlande, which belongs approximately to the third decade of the following century, is accompanied by translations in both French and English. In the universities, however, where French had been slower in gaining a foothold, it remained longer; in the fifteenth century teachers of French were still allowed to lecture there as they had done previously, but it is to be noticed that in all the colleges founded after the Black Death (1349), from which the change in the grammar schools is dated, the regulations encouraging the speaking of French in Hall are absent. The change appears also to have affected the higher classes, who did not usually frequent the grammar schools and universities, but depended on more private methods of instruction. Trevisa here again adds a correction to the earlier chronicle, and informs us that "gentylmen haveth now myche lefte for to teach their children Frensch."

We thus witness the gradual disappearance of the effects of the Norman Conquest in the history of the use of the French language in England. The Conquest had made Norman-French the language of the Court, and to some extent, of the Church; it had brought with it a French literature which nearly smothered the national literature and replaced it temporarily; it had led to the system of translating Latin into French as well as into English in the schools. In the later fourteenth century French was no longer the chief language of the Court, and the king spoke English and was addressed in the same tongue. In the Church the employment of French had been restricted and transitory, though, as has been mentioned, it lingered in some of the monasteries until the sixteenth century; yet Latin never found in it a serious rival in this sphere, and the ecclesiastical department of the law never followed the civil in the adoption of the use of French. How French lost ground in the other spheres has already been traced: in all these cases its employment may be regarded as a direct result of the Conquest.

This great event had also indirect results. French became the official language of England, and the favourite medium of correspondence in the thirteenth century, when the fusion between the two races was complete. But it is highly improbable that French would have spread in these directions if the Conquest had not in the first place made French the vernacular of a considerable portion of Englishmen, and that the most influential. With its use in official documents and in correspondence, may be classed the slight encouragement French received at Oxford. In all these spheres it remained longer than it had done where its status had been a more direct result of the Conquest.

Meanwhile the desire to cultivate and imitate the French of France had been growing stronger and stronger; and when, towards the end of the fourteenth century, the older influences were getting feebler, and in some cases had passed away, the influence of the continental French, especially the French of Paris, now supreme over the other dialects, became more and more marked. And it is this language which henceforth Englishmen strove to learn, gradually relinquishing the corrupt idiom with which for so long their name had been associated.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This was the opinion of Ames: "This seems to be the first grammar of the French language in our own country, if not in Europe." Dibdin, Herbert Ames's Typographical Antiquities, 1819, iii. p. 365.

[2] The grammar of Jacques Sylvius or Dubois appeared in 1531, a year after Palsgrave's. No attempt at a theoretical treatment of the French language appeared in France in the Middle Ages. There are, however, two Provençal ones extant. (F. Brunot, "Le Français à l'étranger," in L. Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française, ii. p. 528.)

[3] One of the chief effects of the Conquest in the schools is said to have been the substitution of Norman for English schoolmasters (Leach, Schools of Mediaeval England, 1915, p. 103).

[4] The majority of early Latin vocabularies extant, however, are accompanied by English translations (cp. T. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, 2 vols., 1857), as was also the comparatively well-known Promptorium Parvulorum (c. 1440), Camden Soc., 1865.

[5] The text is given in L. E. Menger's Anglo-Norman Dialect, Columbia University Press, 1904, p. 14. The psalms, together with Cato, Ovid, or possibly Virgil, formed the usual reading material in the Grammar Schools. Cp. Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1895, ii. p. 603.

[6] Adam du Petit Pont (d. 1150) wrote an epistle in Latin, many words of which were glossed in French. But there is no evidence that it was used in England. It was published by E. Scheler in his Trois traités de lexicographie latine du 12^e et 13^e siècles, Leipzig, 1867.

[7] Ed. T. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, i. 96, and Scheler, op. cit. Both editions are deemed unsatisfactory by Paul Meyer (Romania, xxxvi. 482).

[8] It has been published five times: (1) At Caen by Vincent Correr in 1508 (Romania, ut supra); (2) H. Géraud, in Documents inédits sur l'histoire de France: "Paris sous Philippe le Bel d'après les documents originaux," 1837; (3) Kervyn de Lettenhove, 1851; (4) T. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, i. pp. 120 sqq.; (5) Scheler, Trois traités de lexicographie latine.

[9] Wright, op. cit. pp. 139-141.

[10] Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford, 3 vols., Oxford and London, 1853; A. Clark, Colleges of Oxford, 1891, p. 140; H. C. Maxwell Lyte, History of the University of Oxford, 1880, pp. 140-151.

[11] Documents relating to the Universities and Colleges of Cambridge, 1852, ii. p. 33; J. Bass Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, 1873; G. Peacock, Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge, 1841, p. 4.

[12] J. Heywood, Early Cambridge University and College Statutes, 1885, ii. p. 182.

[13] C. H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, Cambridge, 1852, i. p. 40.

[14] Rashdall, op. cit. ii. p. 519 n.

[15] Rashdall, op. cit. i. pp. 319 et seq. Later the English nation was known as the German; it included all students from the north and east of Europe. On the English in the University of Paris see Ch. Thurot, De l'organisation de l'enseignement dans l'Université de Paris, Paris, 1850; and J. E. Sandys, "English Scholars of Paris, and Franciscans of Oxford," in The Cambridge History of English Literature, i., 1908, chap. x. pp. 183 et seq.

[16] Quoted, E. J. B. Rathery, Les Relations sociales et intellectuelles entre la France et l'Angleterre, Paris, 1856, p. 11.

[17] A writer of about 1180 says it was impossible to tell who were Normans and who English ("Dialogus de Scaccario": Stubbs, Select Charters, 4th ed., 1881, p. 168).

[18] "Discours sur l'état des lettres au 13^e siècle," in the Histoire littéraire de la France, xvi. p. 168.

[19] D. Behrens, in H. Paul's Grundiss der germanischen Philologie, Strassbourg, 1901, pp. 953-55; Freeman, Norman Conquest, v. 1876, pp. 528 sqq.; Maitland, "Anglo-French Law Language," in the Cambridge History of English Literature, i. pp. 407 sqq., History of English Law, 1895, pp. 58 sqq., and Collected Papers, 1911, ii. p. 436. At the universities, where Latin was the usual language of correspondence, letters and petitions were often drawn up in French (Oxford Hist. Soc., Collectanea, 1st series, 1885, pp. 8 sqq.).

[20] Bateson, Mediaeval England, 1903, p. 319.

[21] Maitland, Collected Papers, 1911, ii. p. 437.

[22] Such are Bozon's Contes moralisés (c. 1320), ed. P. Meyer, in the Anciens Textes Français, 1889. In his Introduction Meyer lays stress on the widespread use of French in England at this time, and its chance of becoming the national language of England, an eventuality which, he thinks, might have been a benefit to humanity.

[23] MS. at Trinity Col. Cambridge (R. 3. 56).

[24] Paul Meyer calls it the work of a true grammarian (Romania, xxxii. p. 65).

[25] There are four MSS. extant. These have been collated and published by J. Sturzinger in the Altfranzösische Bibliothek, vol. viii., Heilbronn, 1884; cp. Romania, xiv. p. 60. The earliest MS. is in the Record Office, and was published by T. Wright in Haupt and Hoffman's Altdeutsche Blaetter (ii. p. 193). Diez quoted from this edition in his Grammaire des langues romanes, 3rd ed. i. pp. 415, 418 sqq. The three other MSS. are in the Brit. Mus., Camb. Univ. Libr. and Magdalen Col. Oxon., and belong to the three succeeding centuries. Portions of the Magdalen Col. MS. are quoted by A. J. Ellis, in his Early English Pronunciation, pp. 836-839, and by F. Génin, in his preface to the French Government reprint of Palsgrave's Grammar, 1852. It is the British Museum copy, made in the reign of Edward III., which contains the French commentary.

[26] Early English writers on the French tongue were fond of drawing attention to the opportunities for punning afforded by the language.

[27] Edited by Miss M. K. Pope in the Modern Language Review (vol. v., 1910, pt. ii. pp. 188 sqq.), from the Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 17716, ff. 88-91; it also exists at All Souls, Oxford (MS. 182 f. 340), and at Trinity Col. Cambridge (MS. B 14. 39, 40); in the last MS. the introduction of the two preceding ones is lacking (cp. Meyer, Romania, xxxii. p. 59).

[28] For instance, we are told that a is sounded almost like e as in savez vous faire un chauncoun . . .; that the phrases a, en a, i a which mean one and the same thing when they come from the Latin habet, should be written without d; that aura, en array should be written without e in the middle, and sounded without u, as aray, en array, though the English include the e.

[29] Published by Stengel, in the Zeitschrift für neufranzösische Sprache und Literatur, 1879, pp. 16-22.

[30] Miss Pope, ut supra.

[31] His name has provoked some discussion as to its correct form. It is frequently written as Biblesworth, and one MS. gives it the form of Bithesway; the correct form, however, is Bibbesworth, the name of a manor in the parish of Kempton (Herts), of which Walter was the owner (P. Meyer, Romania, xv. p. 312, and xxx. p. 44 n.; W. Aldis Wright, Notes and Queries, 1877, 4th Series, viii. p. 64).

[32] Printed from the MS. in the Bodleian, in Wright and Halliwell's Reliquiae Antiquae, i. p. 134.

[33] Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1247-58, pp. 58, 103, 187. He received exemption from being put on assizes or juries in 1249.

[34] Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1301-1307, p. 39.

[35] She died in 1304; her father was one of the leaders on the king's side at the battle of Lewes (1264).

[36] There are many MSS. in the British Museum; others at Oxford and Cambridge, and one in the Library of Sir Th. Phillips at Cheltenham. The best-known edition of the vocabulary is that of T. Wright, Volume of Vocabularies, i. pp. 142-174, which is the one here quoted, and which reproduces Arundel MS. 220, collated with Sloane MS. 809. P. Meyer has given a critical edition of the first eighty-six lines in his Recueil d'anciens textes—partie française, No. 367 (cp. Romania, xiii. p. 500).

[37] In the vocabularies written in imitation of Bibbesworth at later dates, the English gloss is fuller, and in the latest one complete, as French became more and more a foreign language.

[38] "Pus to le frauncoys com il en court en age de husbonderie, com pur arer, rebiner, waretter, semer, sarcher, syer, faucher, carier, batre, moudre, pestrer, briser," etc.

[39] Polychronicon, lib. 1, cap. 59 (ed. Babington and Lumly, Rolls Publications, 41, 1865-66, vol. ii. pp. 159 sqq.).

[40] Cp. the thirteenth-century romance in which Jehan de Dammartin teaches French to Blonde of Oxford (ed. Le Roux de Lincy, Camden Soc., 1858).

[41] F. Anstey, Monumenta Academica, 1868, p. 438.

[42] Anstey, op. cit., 1868, p. 302.

[43] Published from a MS. in Cambridge University Library (Ee 4, 20), by Skeat, in the Transactions of the Philological Society (1903-1906).

[44] The MS. in which the work is preserved dates from about 1340, but is probably copied from an earlier one.

[45]

"Corps teste et hanapel

Body heuede and heuedepanne

Et peil cresceant sur la peal.

And here growende on the skyn," etc.

[46] How close the resemblance is between the two works may be judged by the following quotations:

Par le gel nous avons glas,
Et de glas vient verglas. (Nominale.)
Pur le gel vous avomus glas,
Et pluvye e gele fount vereglas. (Bibbesworth.)

And it is in words almost identical with those of Bibbesworth that the author describes the difference in the meaning of some words according to their gender:

La levere deit clore les dentz.

The lippe.

Le levere en boys se tient de deynz.

The hare.

La livre sert a marchauntz.

The pounde.

Le livere aprent nous enfauntz.

The boke.

[47] The earliest of these MSS. dates from the second decade of the fourteenth century. These epistolaries are found in the following MSS.: Harleian 4971 and 3988, Addit. 17716, in the Brit. Mus.; Ee 4, 20 in Cantab. Univ. Library; B 14. 39, 40 in Trinity Col. Camb.; 182 at All Souls, Oxford, and 188 Magdalen Col. Oxford (cp. Stürzinger, Altfranzösiche Bibliothek), viii. pp. xvii-xix. The Introductions to these letters were edited in a Griefswald Dissertation (1898), by W. Uerkvitz.

[48] Stengel, op. cit. pp. 8-10.

[49] Romania, iv. p. 381, xxxii. p, 22.

[50] W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Cambridge, 1896, pp. 635 sqq.

[51] L. Menger, Anglo-Norman Dialect; Behrens, art. cit. pp. 960 sqq.; Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, i. pp. 319 sqq., 369.

[52] Brunot, op. cit. i. p. 331.

[53] Jusserand, Histoire littéraire du peuple anglais, 1896. p. 240 n.

[54] Brunot, op. cit. i. p. 369.

[55] P. Meyer commends Gower's French (Romania, xxxii. p. 43).

[56] T. R. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, London, 1892, p. 458.

[57] Livre ii. ch. xii.

[58] As in those of Olivier Basselin.

[59] Eustache Deschamps, Œuvres, ed. Crapelet, p. 91, quoted by Rathery, op. cit. p. 181 (cp. also English Political Songs, ed. T. Wright. Camden Soc., 1839).

[60] Jusserand, op. cit. p. 153 n. The fourteenth branch of the Roman is specially mentioned: cp. Brunot, op. cit. i. p. 369, n. 4.

[61] Brunot, op. cit. i. 330. It is not rare to find English pronunciation of French ridiculed in France, and Englishmen represented as talking a sort of gibberish; cp. Romania, xiv. pp. 99, 279, and Brunot, op. cit. p. 369 n.

[62] Behrens, op. cit. p. 957.

[63] Ed. E. Martin, 1882, l. 2351 sqq.

[64] Recueil général et complet des fabliaux, ed. Montaiglon et Raynaud, ii. p. 178.

[65] Maitland, Collected Papers, 1911, ii. p. 436; Freeman, op. cit. p. 536; Brunot, op. cit. i. p. 373.

[66] F. Watson, Religious Refugees and English Education, London, 1911, p. 6. There are numerous entries of such works in the Stationers' Register.

[67] Answer to Dr. Lindsey's epigram, Works, ed. 1841, i. p. 634.

[68] [H. Dell], The Frenchified Lady never in Paris, London, 1757.

[69] Pepys in his Diary notes the use of French in such phrases, and the Abbé Le Blanc (Lettres d'un Français sur les Anglais, à la Haye, 1745) was also struck by the custom.

[70] Bateson, Mediaeval England, p. 342; Warton, History of English Poetry, p. 10 n.

[71] Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd series, 1846, i. p. xi.

[72] M. A. E. Green (née Wood), Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, London, 1846; The Paston Letters, new edition by J. Gairdner, 3 vols., London, 1872-75; H. Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd series, London, 1846; J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Letters of the Kings of England, London, 1846; C. L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, Oxford, 1893, pp. 193 et seq.; Hallam, Literature of Europe, 6th ed., London, 1860, i. p. 54.

[73] "Que tout seigneur, baron, chevalier et honestes hommes de bonnes villes mesissent cure et dilligence de estruire et apprendre leurs enfans le langhe françoise, par quoy il en fuissent plus avec et plus costumier ens leurs gherres" (Froissart, quoted by Behrens, op. cit. p. 957 n.).

[74] Higden, ut supra.

CHAPTER II

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

These great changes which took place in the status of French in England did not, however, affect fundamentally the popularity of the language: they had to do with Anglo-French alone. French, as distinct from this and as a foreign language, received more attention than ever before, especially from the higher classes, and from travellers and merchants. It was the language of politeness and refinement in the eyes of Englishmen, not only as a result of the Conquest, but for its inherent qualities; and so it retained this position when it gave way to English or Latin in other spheres where its predominance had been due, either directly or indirectly, to the Conquest. French had enjoyed a social reputation in England before the arrival of the invaders,[75] and had already made some progress towards becoming the language which the English loved and cultivated above all modern foreign tongues, and to which they devoted for a great many years more care than they did to their own. "Doulz françois," writes an Englishman at the end of the fourteenth century in a treatise for teaching the language,[76] is the most beautiful and gracious language in the world, after the Latin of the schools,[77] "et de tous gens mieulx prisée et amée que nul autre; quar Dieu le fist se doulce et amiable principalement a l'oneur et loenge de luy mesmes. Et pour ce il peut bien comparer au parler des angels du ciel, pour la grant doulceur et biaultée d'icel"—a more eloquent tribute even than the more famous lines of Brunetto Latini. Another writer of the same period informs us that "les bones gens du Roiaume d'Engleterre sont embrasez a scavoir lire et escrire, entendre et parler droit François," and that he himself thinks it is very necessary for the English to know the "droict nature de François," for many reasons.[78] For instance, that they may enjoy intercourse with their neighbours, the good folk of the kingdom of France; that they may better understand the laws of England, of which a great many are still written in French; and also because "beaucoup de bones choses sont misez en François," and the lords and ladies of England are very fond of writing to each other in the same tongue.[79]

As a result of the altered circumstances which were modifying the attitude of the English, there is a corresponding change in the standard of the French which the manuals for teaching that language sought to attain. All the best text-books of the end of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries endeavour with few exceptions to impart a knowledge of the French of Paris, "doux françois de Paris" or "la droite language de Paris," as it was called, in contrast with the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe and other parts of England. Those authors of treatises for teaching French of whose lives we have any details, had studied French in France, at Paris, Orleans, or some other University town. The fact that many of their productions still contain numbers of words belonging to the Norman and other dialects does not diminish the importance and significance of their more ambitious aims. These pioneer works on the French language, written in England by Englishmen without the guidance of any similar work produced in France, were bound to contain archaisms as well as anglicisms.[80]

Fluency in speaking French was the chief need of the classes of society in which the demand for instruction was greatest. Correctness in detail was only of secondary importance, and grammar, though desirable, was not considered indispensable. The importance of speaking French naturally brought the subject of pronunciation to the fore. No doubt most of the early teachers shared the opinions of their successors, that rules and theoretical information were of little avail in teaching the sounds of the language, compared with the practice of imitation and repetition; nevertheless, many of them attempted to supply some information on the subject. When, in the second decade of the fifteenth century, another writer based a new treatise for teaching French on the vocabulary of Bibbesworth, which had then been current for well over a century, the chief point in which it differed from its original was precisely in the provision of guidance to facilitate pronunciation.

This new treatise was styled Femina,[81] because just as the mother teaches her young child to speak his native tongue, so does this work teach children to speak French naturally.[82] It covers almost exactly the same ground as the vocabulary of Bibbesworth, but, as in the case of the earlier imitation of the same work, the Nominale, the order of arrangement varies, and the whole is permeated with a lively humour which makes it at least equal in interest to the work on which it is based. The French lines are octosyllabic and arranged in distichs, each pair being followed by an English translation, which is given in full, contrary to the practice in the earlier works of the same kind. The author endeavours to teach the French of France [83] as distinguished from that of England, and, although he lavishes provincialisms from the local dialects of France—Norman, Picard, Walloon—in the main they are French provincialisms, and many of them may be due to errors on the part of the scribe. To assist pronunciation notes are provided at the bottom of the page, giving pseudo-English equivalents of the sounds of words written otherwise in the text.

The treatise opens with an exhortation to the child to learn French that he may speak fairly before wise men, for "heavy is he that is not taught":