Guy du Faur, Sieur de Pibrac, was another French writer widely read in England, and his Quatrains were frequently commended by French teachers to their scholars. They were translated into English verse by Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas, and published with the French original in 1605. Sylvester dedicated the quatrains to Prince Henry, and the copy in the British Museum contains an epigram in English in the handwriting of his brother, afterwards Charles I., and a manuscript dedication to the younger prince in that of the translator.[471] The quatrains appeared again with the subsequent editions of Sylvester's works. About this time Prince Henry made Sylvester a Groom of his Chamber, and gave him a small pension of £20 a year.[472] The story goes that the prince valued him so highly that he made him his first "poet pensioner," and it seems that Sylvester took advantage of his position to encourage his royal patron's French studies. Many other works of the kind appeared in French and in English.[473] The educational writer Charles Hoole tells us that masters frequently taught languages by using interlinearies, "not to speak of their construing the French and Spanish Bible by the help of an English one."[474] Lord Herbert of Cherbury, philosopher and gallant, ambassador in France in the time of James I., learnt French, Italian, and Spanish, on this translation method, whilst living in the University or at home. He mastered them, he assures us, without the help of a tutor, solely by means of Latin or English books translated into those languages, and of dictionaries.[475]
De la Mothe advised his advanced pupils to read difficult FRENCH AND ENGLISH DICTIONARIESFrench books with the help of a dictionary, and there was some supply of works of this kind at the disposal of Lord Herbert and other students of the language. It is true that the widespread use of books in both languages diminished the demand for such manuals, which may not have been easy to acquire. Yet there was a considerable choice of such works. Holyband had produced two French-English dictionaries, in 1580 and 1593 respectively, in which he referred to "those which broke the ice before him." There had appeared in 1571 an anonymous Dictionarie Frenche and English,[476] printed by Henry Bynneman for Lucas Harrison. This work, which does not confine itself to words only, but includes phrases as well, was no doubt known to Holyband. Its author had probably drawn largely on an earlier dictionary, already mentioned, in which a place was given to French—the Latin, English, and French Dictionary of John Veron (1552). The inclusion of French in such a work is a striking testimony to the importance of French at that time. But when a second edition of Veron's dictionary was prepared by Ralph Waddington, in 1575, he "of purpose thought good to leave out the French, both because (he) saw it was not necessary for English students of Latin, as for that Maister Barret hath five years since set forth an alvearie sufficient to instruct those which are desirous to travel in th'understanding of the French Tongue."
This "alvearie" appeared in 1573, two years after the French-English dictionary printed for Harrison. It was entitled "An alvearie or Triple Dictionarie in English, Latin and French, very profitable for all such as be desirous of any of those three languages ..." and was dedicated to Wm. Cecil, Lord Burghley, then Chancellor of Cambridge University. Baret had been teaching at Cambridge for eighteen years "pupils studious of the Latin tongue," and part of their daily task was to translate some piece of English into Latin "for the more speed and easie attayning of the same." At last, "perceiving what great trouble it was to come runnying to (him) for every word they missed,"[477] he made them collect each day a number of Latin words and phrases, together with their English equivalents. Within a year or two they had gathered together a great volume of work, to which, "for the apt similitude between the good scholers and diligent bees in gathering them wax and honey into their hive," Baret gave the title of Alvearie. At first he had no intention of publishing the work, but when he went to London he was finally persuaded to do so, and received help from many of his old pupils who were then at the Inns of Court, and from several of the best scholars in various English schools. How Baret first thought of adding French to his dictionary is not known. He owns that he did not trust his own skill in this matter, although he had formerly "travelled in divers countries beyond the seas both for languages and for learning"; but that he "used the help of M. Chaloner and M. Claudius." By 'M. Claudius,' Baret possibly meant Holyband, who was often called "Maistre Claude." M. Chaloner may have been the author of the French-English dictionary published by Harrison in 1571.
According to the custom of the time, Baret's dictionary was preceded by a number of commendatory addresses, one of which was by the head-master of Merchant Taylors' School, Richard Mulcaster. In the dictionary itself, every English word is first explained, and then its equivalent in Latin and French given. At the end are tables of the Latin and French words "placed after the order of the alphabet, whatsoever are to be found in any other dictionarie. And so as to turn them backwards againe into Englishe when they reade any Latin or French authors and doubt of any harde worde therein."
Baret had "gone to God in Heavenlie seates" before the close of 1580, when there appeared a posthumous second edition of the Alvearie. In this final form Greek has a place by the side of the other languages, and the title runs, An Alvearie or quadruple Dictionarie containing four sundrie tongues, namely, English, Latine, Greeke, and Frenche, newlie enriched with varietie of wordes, phrases, proverbs, and divers lightsome observations of grammar. But there is no table of the Greek words, as for the Latin and French. Such was the third dictionary of French words which appeared before Holyband's.[478]
FRENCH IN LATIN DICTIONARIES The place given to French in these early Latin dictionaries is worthy of notice. No doubt French first entered the schools in this indirect way. Both Veron's and Baret's works were used in schools; and Baret's dictionary is included in the list of books mentioned by Charles Hoole as being specially useful to schoolboys.[479] There are at least two other school vocabularies in which French was introduced, both due to the poet and compiler John Higgins, who is said to have been "well read in classick authors, and withall very well skilled in French."[480] The first of his lexicographical works was a new and revised edition of Huloet's Dictionarie,[481] which occupied him two years. It appeared in 1572,[482] a year before Baret's work. Higgins calls himself "late student in Oxforde," and dedicates the volume to Sir John Peckham. This edition by Higgins is so much altered that it is almost a new work. One of the chief changes was the addition of a French version to the Latin and English, "by whiche you may finde the Latin or French of anye Englishe woorde you will." For the French, Higgins seems to have drawn chiefly on the Latin-French dictionary of Robert Estienne, which had already been published in French, English, and Latin by Jean Veron, in 1552. Higgins also acknowledges his debt to Thierry, whose French-Latin dictionary appeared twelve years later in 1564. There was a close relationship between French-Latin and French-English dictionaries. French is first found side by side with English, in one of these French-Latin dictionaries—that of Veron; and in subsequent years the French-English dictionaries are mostly based on one or other of the French-Latin lexicons. Those due to Robert Éstienne and to Thierry were probably the sources from which the author of the French-English dictionary of 1571 drew his material; while Holyband based his Treasurie (1580), and his Dictionary (1593), respectively, on the augmented editions of Thierry's work due to Nicot, which appeared in 1573 and 1584.[483]
The second lexicographical work of Higgins, published in 1585, was a translation, entitled Nomenclator or Remembrancer of Adrianus Junius, Physician, divided into two tomes. It professed to supply the appropriate names and apt terms for all things under their convenient titles, in Latin, Greek, French, and English.[484] The English column was added by Higgins.
Thus by the end of the sixteenth century there had appeared in England three French-English dictionaries, and several others in which French found a place by the side of the classical languages. And we may add to these the French-Latin dictionaries on which they were usually based, for it seems extremely likely that those students of French who knew Latin—and practically all of them would know this chief and first of school subjects—used the French-Latin lexicons as well, in their study of French, when other means were not available.
Early in the seventeenth century, in 1611, Holyband's French dictionary of 1593 was succeeded by the celebrated French-English dictionary of Randle Cotgrave,[485] which occupies in the seventeenth century the place that Palsgrave's Esclarcissement does in the sixteenth among the works on the French language produced in England. Although Cotgrave's work is on a much larger scale than Holyband's, and much superior to it,[486] there is a close connexion between the two. In the Stationers' Register Cotgrave's is entered as a dictionary in French and English first collected by Holyband, and since augmented and altered by Cotgrave.[487] But the work which no doubt was of most help to Cotgrave was another French-Latin dictionary, Aimar de Ranconnet's Tresor de la Langue Françoise, revised by Nicot (1606).[488] He had, moreover, read all sorts of books, old and new, in all dialects, where he found words not heard of for hundreds of years, which he included in his book, to be used or left as the reader thought fit. J. L'Oiseau de Tourval,[489] a Parisian, and friend of Cotgrave, who wrote in French an epistle prefixed to the dictionary, thought it advisable to assure the reader that none of these words were of Cotgrave's invention, COTGRAVE'S DICTIONARYobserving at the same time that it would be well to revive some of these obsolete and provincial terms. He also adds that Cotgrave had sent to France in his eager search for words. M. Beaulieu, secretary to the British ambassador at Paris, was no doubt Cotgrave's collaborator in this quest, as Cotgrave tells us elsewhere[490] that he had received valuable help from M. Beaulieu, as well as from a certain Mr. Limery.
Cotgrave dedicated his dictionary to Wm. Cecil, Lord Burghley, "his very good Lord and Maister," whose secretary he was. He declares that he would have produced a more substantial work to offer to his patron had not his eyes failed him and forced him "to spend much of their vigour on this bundle of words." He also offered a copy to the eldest son of James I., Prince Henry, and received from him a gift of £10.[491] The price of the dictionary seems to have been 11s. Cotgrave sent two copies to M. Beaulieu at Paris, and wrote requesting payment of 22s., which they cost him; for, he says, "I have not been provident enough to reserve any of them and therefore am forced to be beholden for them to a base and mechanicall generation, that suffers no respect to weigh down a private gain."[492]