[496] A French and English Dictionary composed by Mr. Randle Cotgrave, with another in English and French. Whereunto are added sundry animadversions with supplements of many hundreds of words never before printed; with accurate castigations throughout the whole work, and distinctions of the obsolete words from those that are now in use. Together with a dialogue consisting of all gallicisms, with additions of the most useful and significant proverbs, with other refinements according to cardinall Richelieu's late Academy. For the furtherance of the young learners, and the advantage of all others that endeavour to arrive to the most exact knowledge of the French this work is exposed to publick.... Printed by Wm. Hunt in Pye Corner.
[497] Title same as in 1660. "Printed for Anthony Dolle, and are to be sold by Th. Williams at the Golden Ball in Hosier Lane."
[498] Many important literary productions in different languages came into England through the medium of a French version—for instance, Plutarch, Amadis, the Politics of Aristotle. Cp. Upham, French Influence in English Literature, p. 13. The influence of Senecan tragedy reached England through the intermediary of the "French Seneca," Robert Garnier (Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, ii. pp. 5 sqq. and p. 512). In 1612 licence was granted N. Bulter to print an English translation from French of so popular a work as Ovid's Metamorphoses (Stationers' Register, iii. 489).
[499] The Histoire tragi-comique de nostre temps sous les noms de Lysandre et de Caliste (1615) was the work of d'Audigier.
[500] Thus the Préau des Fleurs meslées, contenant plusieurs et differentz discours of François Voilleret, sieur de Florizel, was printed in London in 1600 (?), and dedicated to the Prince of Wales. In 1620 it was licensed to be printed in French and English, provided the English translation be approved. In 1619 a French translation of Bacon's Essays was published at London, and in 1623 Field received a licence to print a French translation of Camden's Annals (originally in Latin) by J. Bellequent, avocat au Parlement de Paris (Stationers' Register, iv. 106).
[501] As did Shakespeare (cp. Schmidt, Shakespeare Lexicon, Berlin, 1902, vol. ii.) and several of the lesser poets. French refrains were also sometimes used, as in Greene's Never too Late (Infida's song):
"Wilt thou let thy Venus di,
N'oseres vous mon bel amy?
Adon were unkinde say I,
Je vous en prie, pitie me:
N'oseres vous mon bel, mon bel,
N'oseres vous, mon bel amy?"
See S. Lee, French Renaissance in England, Oxford, 1910, p. 243. Sylvester even ventured to write poems in French.
[502] Lives of Ed. and John Philips, nephews of Milton (1694), reprinted by William Godwin, 1815, pp. 362-3.
[503] Letters, Camden Soc., 1854, p. 13, and passim.