[445] Palsgrave had accompanied his French quotations with similar indications:
"Au diziesme an de mon doulant exil
Avdiziemavndemoundoulauntezil."
[446] He announces his intention of producing a book called De Natura et Arte Linguae Gallicae.
[447] Advice given by a Catholike gentleman to the Nobilitie & Commons of France, Lond., 1589; Newes sent unto the Lady Princesse of Orange, 1589; Discourses of Warre and single combat ... from the French of B. de Loque, 1591.
[448] Foster, Alumni Oxon., ad nom.
CHAPTER V
METHODS OF TEACHING FRENCH—LATIN AND FRENCH—FRENCH AND ENGLISH DICTIONARIES—STUDY OF FRENCH LITERATURE
Eliote gives some information concerning the fees charged by French teachers in the later part of the sixteenth century. He asserts that the usual charge was a shilling a week,[449] but we are left in doubt as to how many lessons this entitled the student to. He affirms, probably not seriously, that he would charge a gentleman £10 a year, and a lord from £20 to £30.
We are indebted to him also for an account, very prejudiced, no doubt, of the usual method employed by French teachers generally. This consisted, according to him, in reading a page of French and then translating it. Fortunately we are enabled, by means of the French text-books that have come down to us, to draw a fuller picture of the French lessons of the time. It has been seen that as a rule these books contained four parts—rules of pronunciation, rules of grammar, reading exercises, and a vocabulary. They are generally written throughout in French and English (in parallel columns[450]), the reason of this being the importance attached to reading and to double translation, from French into English and English into French. In the English version the idiomatic phrase is sacrificed in order to give a more literal rendering of the French, and also, possibly, because these Frenchmen were incapable of writing any other. As is to be expected, translation from French into English was the more usual exercise. Translation from English into French, however, was by no means neglected, and appears to have been recommended principally by English teachers of French, and more especially by Palsgrave and Eliote. Edward VI.'s French exercises, it will be remembered, are translations from English into French, or free composition in French.