So popular was this handbook in England that it was reprinted without much alteration, and no modernization, at the beginning of the nineteenth century: The Dialogues in six languages Latin, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English, appeared at Shrewsbury in 1808. We are informed that "this book contains common forms of speach, one being a literal translation of the other, and as near as the idiom of the language will bear, so that they correspond almost word for word, and will be found extremely useful for beginners." The second part of the work, although mentioned in the table of contents, is omitted.
A similar polyglot manual, which was probably less well known in England, was the Vocabulaire de six langues, Latin, François, Espagniol, Italien, Anglois et Aleman, printed at Venice, probably in 1540—an enlarged edition of a vocabulary in five languages (Antwerp, 1534, and Venice, 1537) in which English had no place. This handbook passed through several other editions,[693] and no doubt became fairly well known in England through the intermediary of the numerous Italian merchants who came to London, and the English traders and travellers visiting Italy; editions which appeared at Rouen in 1611 and 1625 would also be easily obtainable. The dictionary is described as a very useful vocabulary for those who wish to learn without going to school—artisans, women, and especially merchants. The first part consists of a vocabulary, arranged under fifty-five headings, dealing with the usual subjects, beginning with the heavens; the second contains a list of verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns, together with a collection of phrases and idioms. The interesting dialogue of the Flemish vocabulary is lacking.
In the second half of the sixteenth century there lived at Antwerp a language master, Gabriel Meurier, who counted many English among his pupils. Meurier was a native of Avesnes in Hainault, where he was born in about 1530. But for many years he taught languages—French, Spanish, Flemish, and Italian—at Antwerp, which had by this time supplanted Bruges as the chief trading centre of the Low Countries. His pupils were largely merchants, and his first work on the language, the Grammaire françoise contenante plusieurs belles reigles propres et necessaires pour ceulx qui desirent apprendre la dicte Langue, 1557,[694] was dedicated to "Messeigneurs et Maistres, les gouverneurs et marchans Anglois." In 1563 was issued at Antwerp another work GABRIEL MEURIERspecially for the use of the English—Familiare communications no leasse proppre then verrie proffytable to the Inglishe nation desirous and nedinge the ffrench language, dedicated to his most honoured lord, John Marsh, governor of the English nation, and intended for the use of "Marchands, Facteurs, Apprentifs, and others of the English nation." These dialogues on subjects specially useful to merchants are divided into seventeen chapters, giving familiar talk for the members of the different trades with lists of their merchandise, directions for travellers, the names of different artisans and tradesmen, instructions for collecting debts, receiving money and writing receipts. Meurier teaches his pupils the words used daily by merchants at the Exchange, and then the degrees of kinship, numbers, coins, the days and feast days, the parts of the body and clothing, food and table talk, and, finally, commercial notes and letters.[695] Another edition of the book was published at Rouen in 1641, being intended, in this case, to teach both French and English. The title given to it was A treatise for to learne to speake Frenshe and Englishe together with a form of making letters, indentures, and obligations, quittances, letters of exchange, verie necessarie for all Marchants that do occupy trade or marchandise. Meurier also composed numerous other books which have no direct bearing on the teaching of French to Englishmen. They were almost all written for the use of merchants, whom they sought to instruct in French and Flemish, and sometimes in Spanish and Italian as well. That the English were always in the author's mind is shown by the fact that he sometimes explains pronunciation by comparison with English sounds. He also did important lexicographical work. He prepared French-Flemish vocabularies in 1562 and 1566, and in 1584 his French-Flemish Dictionary was published at Anvers. This dictionary is said to have been one of the sources which helped Cotgrave to compile his famous work, and Meurier seems to have outdone the later writer in collecting rare and obsolete words.[696]
There were thus many faculties for learning French in the Netherlands. Francis Osborne wrote regarding the study of French abroad:[697] "for the place I say France, if you have a purse, else some town in the Netherlands or Flanders, that is wholesome and safe: where the French may be attained with little more difficulty then at Paris, neither are the humours of the people so very remote from your owne." Thus the Netherlanders taught French to the English both in their own country[698] and in England. The connexion was a long-standing one. Caxton had taken his French and English Dialogues from a Flemish text-book, and in later times, as has been seen, Flemish works were published in England, and had some influence on the dialogues of the English manuals of French. The debt, however, was not all on one side. Holyband's French Schoolemaister, for instance, was adapted to the use of Flemings and printed at Rotterdam in 1606,[699] and in 1647 was published at the end of the Grammaire flamende et françoise (Rouen) of Jan Louis d'Arsy. Moreover, the grammar of the seventeenth-century French teacher whose popularity equalled that of Holyband in the sixteenth century—Claude Mauger—was published in the Low Countries at the same time as in England.
Another link between the teaching of French in the Netherlands and in England is found in the book by John Wodroeph—an interesting figure among teachers of French. He spent many years in the Netherlands, and in his French text-book he adapted what he called his "court and country dialogues" from some French-Flemish ones written for the instruction of the Court of Nassau in the former language. Writing of the importance of a knowledge of French, he emphasises its usefulness to the nobility. But, he adds, it is still more profitable to merchants, for, excepting Latin, it is the most widely used language in Christendom, and, "si j'osoye dire," much more useful.
Wodroeph was a soldier, and soldiers, like merchants, gave much impetus to the study of French. In Barlement's book of dialogues, soldiers are ranked with merchants, FRENCH IN MILITARY CIRCLEStravellers, and courtiers as those to whom the knowledge of languages is most necessary: "soit que quelcun face merchandise ou qu'il hante la court, ou qu'il suive la guerre, ou qu'il aille par villes et champs." The wars raging almost incessantly in France and the Low Countries attracted numbers of Englishmen. The army was an opening for younger sons, and so "Some to the wars to try their fortunes there." Judging from the epigrams and satires of the time, the swaggering gallant home from the wars was a familiar figure in London. This sworded and martial beau is
He that salutes each gallant he doth meete
With "farewell sweet captaine fond heart adieu";
one who
hath served long in France,
And is returned filthy full of French,
and who, at night when leaving the inn, "thinking still he had been sentinell of warlike Brill, crys out que va la? Zounds que? and stabs the drawer with his Syringe straw."[700]