'In two sheets at the end are added thirteen different sorts of letters, to-wit: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French,—and these latter in four sorts, which are: "cadeaulx," "forme," "bastarde," and "torneure." Then follow the Persian, Arabic, African, Turkish, and Tartar letters, which have, all five, one and the same type of alphabet. After these are the Chaldaic, the "goffes," which are otherwise called "impériales et bullatiques," the "phantastiques" letters, the utopian letters, which one may call "voluntaires," and, lastly, the floriated letters.[57] With instructions for making ciphers of letters for golden rings, for tapestries, stained-glass windows, paintings, and other things, as may seem best.'
I will say nothing here of the first book, the excellence of which has recently been pointed out by M. Génin,[58] who is much better versed in the subject than I, and who has at the same stroke exculpated the French from the charge that has been brought against them of having allowed themselves to be anticipated by foreigners in the careful study of their language. I will simply call attention to the fact that Tory wrote shortly before Rabelais, who did not hesitate to borrow from him his criticism of the 'skimmers of Latin,'[59] who were then changing the French language on the pretext of perfecting it. The harangue of the Limousin orator, which is found in the sixth chapter of the second book of 'Pantagruel,' is copied verbatim from Tory's epistle to the reader.[60] Rabelais has simply added to it some obscene reflections which did not enter our author's mind. Tory ends with a pathetic appeal to those who are interested in the mother tongue, whose excellence he is never tired of extolling. 'O ye devoted lovers of goodly letters!' he cries, 'God grant that some noble heart may give itself to the task of establishing and ordering our French tongue according to rule! By that means would many thousands of men set themselves to using often goodly words. If it is not established and ordered, we shall find that the French tongue will be in great part changed and ruined every fifty years.'[61] This patriotic prayer was soon granted. As we know, the sixteenth century did not lack great geniuses, who set the French language in order and brought it to a great degree of perfection. Indeed, some most expressive words, the disuse of which Tory deplored,[63] reappeared. For instance, 'affaissé' and 'tourbillonner,' which in his time had been replaced by periphrases, returned into use; many others deserve the same honour and perhaps will receive it some day.
The second book of 'Champ fleury' is, I apprehend, only a paradox; but that paradox is maintained by arguments so ingenious, that one lacks courage to condemn it. Tory holds that the shapes of all the roman capital letters are derived from the different parts of the human body, which he looks upon as the type of the beautiful; and he makes a most admirable use of wood engraving to explain his idea. Moreover, if Tory was mistaken, we must acknowledge that he did not fall into the error inconsiderately. Indeed, I believe that he had for confederate his friend Perreal, to whom we may attribute the greater number of the designs on wood in the second book, judging from those in the third, which are directly attributed to him by Tory, as we shall see hereafter. However that may be, Tory seems to have studied his subject for a long time, not only on ancient monuments, but on modern ones as well, and in the works of contemporary authors who had turned their attention to the shapes of letters. His judgement of these latter is as follows:—
'Frère Lucas Paciol, of Bourg Saint Sepulchre, of the order of Frères Mineurs, and a theologian, who has written in popular Italian a book called "Divina proportione,"[64] and who has essayed to represent the said antique letters, does not give a true account of them nor explain them; and I am not surprised thereat, for I have heard from certain Italians that he stole his said letters and took them from the late Messere Leonard Vince [Leonardo da Vinci], who has of late died at Amboise, and was a most excellent philosopher and admirable painter, and as it were another Archimedes. This said Frère Lucas has caused his antique letters to be printed as his own. In sooth they may well be his, for he has not drawn them in their due proportions, as I shall show when I speak of said letters. Nor does Sigismunde Fante, a noble of Ferrara, who teaches how to write many kinds of letters, speak truly thereof.[65] Nor does Messere Ludovico Vincentino.[66] I know not whether Albert Dürer writes justly thereof,[67] but none the less he goes astray in the due proportion of the figures of many letters, in his book on "Perspective."[68]... I see no man who makes them or understands them better than Maistre Simon Hayeneufve, otherwise called Maistre Simon du Mans. He makes them so well and in proper proportions, that he satisfies the eye as well and better than any Italian master on this side or the other of the mountains. He is most excellent in the restoration of ancient architecture, as one may see in a thousand excellent designs and portraits that he has made in the noble city of Mans and in many a foreign city. He is worthy to be held in honoured memory, as well for his upright life as for his noble learning. And to this end, let us not fail to consecrate and dedicate his name to immortality, naming him a second Vitruvius, a holy man and good Christian. I write this with good will because of the virtues and great praise "which I have heard said of him" by many great and humble good men and true lovers of all goodly and honest things.'[69]
The eulogistic tone in which Tory speaks here and elsewhere[70] of Simon Haieneuve leads M. Renouvier to think[71] that our artist may have learned the art of drawing letters from the Mans architect; but it is a mistaken supposition; the phrase in quotation marks proves that they had never met. Moreover Tory, a little further on, claims most reasonably the honour of having been his own master in this matter: 'I know no Greek, Latin nor French author who gives the explanation of such letters as I have described, wherefore I may hold it for my own, saying that I have excogitated and found it rather by divine inspiration than by anything written or heard. If there be any one who has seen it written, let him say so, and he will give me pleasure.'[72]
We see that Tory does not beat about the bush concerning his theory, which, although it was different from those of his predecessors, was not on that account better than theirs.[73] However, let his opinion concerning the original design of the roman letters be what it may, it is, in my judgement, simply a sort of preface which we may pass over without inconvenience. The real substance of his work is in the third book. But he does not leave the second without returning once more to the charge in favour of his mother tongue.
'I know,' he says, 'that there are many goodly minds who would willingly write many excellent things if they thought they could write them well in Greek or Latin; and yet they abstain for fear of making solecisms or some other fault that they dread; or they choose not to write in French, thinking the French tongue not good nor elegant enough. With all respect to them, it is one of the most beauteous and graceful of all human tongues, as I have shown in the first book by the authority of noble and ancient authors, poets and orators, as well Latin as Greek.'[74]
To be accurate, I will say that this idea of the 'preëxcellence of the French tongue,' which, a little later, was the subject of another special work on the part of another famous printer, the second Henri Estienne, was neither new nor original with Tory. No less than three hundred years before, it had been set forth in honest French by an author who cannot be taxed with patriotic illusions, for he was an Italian. This is what Brunetto Latini wrote at the beginning of a sort of encyclopædia which he prepared in the thirteenth century, under the name of 'Trésor':—
'Et se aucuns demandoit por quoi cist livres est escriz en romans selonc le langage des François, puisque nos somes Ytaliens, je diroie que ce est por deux raisons: lune, car nos somes en France, et lautre, porce que la parleure est plus delitable et plus commune a toutes gens.'[75]
As I have said, the third book is the important part of Tory's work. Laying theory aside, he there gives us the exact design of the letters of the alphabet and the method of executing them. He does not overlook, moreover, this essential fact—that the designer of letters and the printer ought before all else to be grammarians in the ancient meaning of the word[76]; and at the same time that he gives us the shape of a letter, he instructs us as to its value and pronunciation. It is at this point that Tory's book becomes especially interesting to us: he passes in review the pronunciation in vogue in each of the French provinces, or nations, as they were called then. One after another they appear before us, with their special idioms, which have become mere myths to-day,—Flemings, Burgundians, Lyonnaises, Forésiens, Manseaux, Berrichons, Normans, Bretons, Lorrainers, Gascons, Picards, and even Italians, Germans, English, Scotch, etc. His observations do not stop at the somewhat mixed idioms of the men,[77] but extend to the more individual language of the women. For instance, he informs us that 'the ladies of Lyon often gracefully pronounce A for E, as when they say, "Choma vous choma chat effeta,"[78] and a thousand other like expressions'; whereas, on the contrary, 'the ladies of Paris very often pronounce E instead of A, as when they say: "Mon mery est a la porte de Peris, ou il se faict peier"; instead of saying, "Mon mary est a la porte de Paris, ou il se faict paier."'[79]