And when his French fails him, as it soon does, he coins words for himself which he utters with "widely gaping mouth, and sound acute, thinking to make the accent French":
With accent French he speaks the Latin Tongue,
With accent French the tongue of Lombardy,
To Spanish words he gives an accent French,
German he speaks with the same accent French,
All but the French itself. The French he speaks
With accent British.
Thus the beau cannot be ranked among the genuine students of French.
Would you believe when you this monsieur see
That his whole body should speak French, not he?
asks Ben Jonson.[670] "FRENCH-ITALIANATE" GENTLEMENWe have a picture, in Glapthorne's The Ladies' Privilege, of a travelled gallant who undertakes to teach French to a young gentleman desiring thereby to be "for ever engallanted." They confer on rudiments; "your French," says the gallant, "is a thing easily gotten, and when you have it, as hard to shake off, runnes in your blood, as 'twere your mother language." Until you have enough of the language to sprinkle your English with it, answer with a shrug, or a nod, or any foreign grimace.[671] The author of the Treatyse of a galaunt bemoans the fact that "Englysshe men sholde be so blynde" as to adopt the "marde gere" of the French.[672] Many were the outbursts of patriotic indignation roused by the affectation of the newly returned travellers, who "brought home a few smattering terms, flattering garbes, apish cringes, foppish fancies, foolish guises and disguises and vanities of neighbour nations."[673] In the sixteenth century France was not exclusively responsible for the fopperies of the English beau, who might often be described as "French Italianate."[674] He spoke his own language with shame and lisping.[675] Nothing "will down but French, Italian and Spanish."[676] "Farewell, Monsieur Traveller," says Rosalind to Jacques, "look you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are."[677] The affected beau will "wring his face round about as a man would stirre up a mustard pot and talke English through the teeth."[678] He sprinkles his talk with overseas scraps. "He that cometh lately out of France will talke French-English, and never blush at the matter, and another chops in with English Italianated."[679] And what profit has he from the journey on which he has gathered such evil fruit? Nothing but words, and in this he exceeds his mother's parrot at home, in that he can speak more and understands what he says.[680] And this is often no more than to be able to call the king his lord "with two or three French, Italian, Spanish or such like terms."[681] His attire, like his tongue, speaks French and Italian.[682] He censures England's language and fashions "by countenances and shrugs," and will choke rather than confess beer a good drink. In time the beau forgot what little he had learnt of Italian, and in the seventeenth century was generally known as the English monsieur, or the gentleman à la mode.
There were two very different attitudes towards the journey to France, as there were two types of traveller, the serious and the flippant. The prejudiced and insular-minded asked with Nash:[683] "What is there in France to be learned more than in England, but falsehood in fellowship, perfect slovenry, to love no man but for my pleasure, to swear Ah par la mort Dieu when a man's hands are scabbed. But for the idle traveller (I mean not for the soldier), I have known some that have continued there by the space of half a dozen years, and when they come home, they have hid a little weerish lean face under a broad hat, kept a terrible coil in the dust in the street in their long cloaks of gray paper, and spoke English strangely. Nought else have they profited by their travel, save learned to distinguish the true Bordeaux grape and know a cup of neat Gascoigne wine from wine of Orleans." The opposite view is expressed in the message George Herbert sent to his brother at Paris:[684] "You live in a brave nation, where except you wink, you cannot but see many brave examples. Bee covetous then of all good which you see in Frenchmen whether it be in knowledge or in fashion, or in words; play the good marchant in transporting French commodities to your own country."
FOOTNOTES:
[564] Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII. vol. xvi. No. 238.
[565] Sir Rt. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, 1824, p. 69.
[566] Cal. State Papers, Dom.: Add., 1580-1625, p. 99.