'Quam nunc gallica iste noster tradit.
'Est doctus, facilis, brevisque quantum
'Res permittit, et inde nos ovamus,
'Campo quod toties, Gefride docte,
'In florente tuo cupisti, habentes.'
Remarks on the foregoing lines.
The numerous errors of all sorts which disfigure Palsgrave's book (a very interesting book, none the less)—errors of which the foregoing lines afford several specimens—should have humbled to some extent the national vanity of the author, who cries out incessantly, throughout his bulky volume, against the ignorance of French printers. He should, in any event, have remembered that English typography was the very humble daughter of French typography, which latter not only trained the first English artist (Caxton), but also gave him his two most illustrious successors,—Wynkyn de Worde and Pinson,—the last named of whom did in fact print a part of Palsgrave's book.
A modern Englishman, David Baker, has gone even farther than Palsgrave; he says, speaking of Palsgrave's work: 'the French nation, so proud to-day of the universality of its language, seems to owe it to England.' To which M. Génin retorts: 'Baker reasons backward. The French language did not come into universal use because it pleased Palsgrave to write a grammar; on the contrary, Palsgrave composed his grammar because the French language was already universal. This universality was a fact, admitted before Palsgrave's birth,[509] and others before him had tried to draw up rules to facilitate the study of French by foreigners. Palsgrave names three to whom he acknowledges that his work is greatly indebted.
'Leonard Coxe exults more modestly and with more propriety than David Baker, for he seems to attribute to Geofroy Tory the honour of having called forth Palsgrave's grammar. To be sure, a comparison of dates seems to leave little likelihood to that conjecture, for the Frenchman's work and the Englishman's are only about a year apart; but I must notice here one curious fact which has not been noticed by the bibliographers. On the title-page of the English book we find the date 1530, and on the last leaf, "Printing completed July 18, 1530." But the king's licence to print, at the beginning of the volume, is dated, "At our Castle of Ampthill, the second of September, in the year of our reign the XXII." Now, as Henry VIII succeeded to the throne in 1509, after Easter, the twenty-second year of his reign was the year 1531,[510] and "Champ fleury" appeared early in 1529. So that this gives us an interval of three years.[511] In this view Leonard Coxe's words have genuine force, and the point of concurrence which Palsgrave congratulates himself upon finding in "Champ fleury" and "Lesclaircissement" may not be so fortuitous as he chooses to state.'
However, as M. Génin goes on to say, 'this honour, claimed by the English, of having been the first to write upon the French language, is, all things considered, simply an act of homage to France; for if our neighbours had awaited from a foreign nation the first book on the English language, perhaps they would be awaiting it still.'