Those who were moved by the spirit of adventure and liked the picturesque crowded to the camp of Henry IV. of France who counted many admirers in this country. One of these, Dudley Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, writes from the king's camp in 1596 that he is busy studying French, though "Mars leaves little room for Mercury." Later he perfected his knowledge by studying at Paris, and wrote thence to John Chamberlain, the letter writer, to tell him how one Sir John Brooke, with Coppinger, a Kentish gentleman, "lately come to learn the language," are the "logs in our French school."[701] Unfortunately we have no more details of this little group of Englishmen studying French at Paris. One of the Englishmen who served in Normandy in 1591 with the troops sent by Queen Elizabeth to help Henry IV. against the League kept a daily journal from the 13th of August till the 24th of December following.[702] This soldier, Sir Thomas Coningsby, a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, acted as muster master to the English detachment, and was in frequent intercourse with Henry before Rouen.
An interesting example of how the army and service abroad offered opportunities for the study of French is found in the memoirs of the Verney family. The three younger sons of Sir Edmund Verney (1590-1642) all became soldiers. Tom took service in the army of France, while Edmund (1616-1649), after studying at Oxford, joined the army of the States in Flanders (1640). When in winter quarters at Utrecht, he "made up for his former idleness," and studied for seven or eight hours a day for many months to improve his knowledge of French and Latin. His Frenchman, he writes to tell his father, is the same that was Sir Humphry Sidenham's; he "warrants I shall speak it perfectly before we draw into the field, and truly, I am confident I shall."[703] He was reading Plutarch's Lives in French. Edmund was soon after killed in the Civil War. His younger brother, Harry, was intended from his youth for a soldier, and early sent to Paris to study French. There he seems to have spoilt his English without making any very rapid progress in French, for French grammar had a powerful rival in horses and dogs—his chief interest in life. "Pleade for me in my behalfe to my father," he implores his eldest brother, "if I have not write in french so well as he expects, but howsoever, I presume a line to testifie some little knowledge in the same, and hope in time to expresse myselfe more radier, as the old proverbe is ... il fault du temps pour apprendre." Harry Verney later took part in the Thirty Years' War, and was present at the recapture of Breda by the Prince of Orange in 1637.[704]
It was during the Thirty Years' War also that John Wodroeph served in the Netherlands. He tells us in 1623 that he had been "following the uncertaine warres" for "these seven years past." During this period of service, "by the spared dayes and houres of (his) watch and guarde," he composed a book for teaching French, to which he gave the title of The Spared Houres of a Souldier in his travells or The true Marrowe of the French tongue. It was printed at Dort, near Rotterdam, in 1623, and dedicated to the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I. Wodroeph was a "gentleman," and we gather from the interest he shows in Scotland that he hailed from that country. At both the beginning and the end of his book JOHN WODROEPHare several poems of all sorts dedicated to courtiers who had followed James from Scotland to England—the Duke of Lennox, Earl Ramsey, James, Lord of Hay, and others. He also addresses the Elector Palatine and his queen, Elizabeth, James I.'s daughter. Many other poems, some in French and some in English, are written in honour of the Lords of the States-General and of sundry Flemish gentlemen. All these give this work, written in the midst of the British army abroad, a strong local colour. In addition, Wodroeph wrote poems to celebrate the virtues and learning of numerous Scottish and English officers—Colonel William Brog, Colonel Robert Henderson, Captain Roger Orme, Captain Edwards, Captain Drummond, and John Monteith, his very kind captain. To many of these and other "sons of gentlemen" Wodroeph had taught French, when his military duties permitted, and he mentions Captain Drummond as being among his most enthusiastic pupils. He also addresses lines to his very good friend John Cameron, the Scotch theologian and the minister of the French Church at Bordeaux, one of the many Scotchmen who held important scholastic positions in France. These verses must have been written between 1608 and 1617, the period when Cameron was at Bordeaux. Later Cameron became professor of divinity at Saumur and Montauban. He spoke French with unusual purity, and also wrote some of his theological treatises in French.[705]
Apart from its martial atmosphere, this curious volume has also a strong Calvinistic flavour, another indication of Wodroeph's Scottish sympathies. He wrote many "godly songs" in French, to be sung to various psalm tunes, and even introduced the spirit into his grammar itself. His verbs are "truly formed and constructed after the order of Geneva, which retaineth alwaies entirely the true marrow, method and rules of verbs, or any other part of speech, both in their Bibles, Psalms, and other godly books: forsaking all new corruptions, of poets, and other vaine toyes, threatening to deface the old authority of the Orthographie." Moreover, a godly gentleman, "maister John Douglas, minister of the Word of God to the English and Scotch troopers within Utrecht," persuaded him to undertake the translation into French of Sir William Alexander's Doomesday, which at this date embraced four books or "houres," subsequently extended to twelve. Doomesday, thought Wodroeph, would be greatly "liked of in France, yea, even as well as a second Du Bartas." He was, however, unable to complete his task, "finding the style so excellent and so high, and also somewhat harsh, to agree with French verse, because that our English tongue (and chiefly by this extraordinary poet) can affoorde more sense and matter with ten of its syllables than ever I have been able to construe with twelve or thirteen of the French. Therefore I was constrained to leave it off, partly for want of tyme and commoditie, and partly that it was so constrained." The one 'Houre' he completed was included in his book, with an apology and the expression of the hope that "any kind French poet would end out the rest, and also help these few rude lines which are translated in haste out of his week and shallow braine."
Wodroeph wrote French, both verse and prose, with remarkable ease. In addition to the poems already mentioned, there are many others scattered through his works. One of these, "Chanson Spirituelle de la vie des vertueux hommes," is written to the tune of Desportes' song, "O nuit, jalouse nuit, contre moy conjurée." He tells us that whenever possible he used French in correspondence in preference to English. He spoke the language with equal fluency, and assures us that he did so with greater facility than English. He had not acquired this mastery of the language without much study, but by "many cold winter nights sitting at it," and by much practice. He appears to have been fairly widely read in French literature, and shared the admiration felt by many of his countrymen for Du Bartas and the Quatrains of Pibrac.
Thus Wodroeph was perfectly conscious of the many difficulties offered by the French language, and censured in strong terms those who pretend to teach it in a short space of time. "I have shamefully heard say a teacher (in my tyme) that he could give rules, that any might read and write and understand the French language in six weeks. O what a weake ground should hee build therein! Yea not in sixteene months, hee and his gentle teaching! Unlesse he dazell his eyes much, and straine his memory out of her limits." At an earlier date, Holyband had deplored the existence of the many METHOD OF STUDY"thornie and inepte bookes" claiming to give a knowledge of the language, and Wodroeph, in his turn, shows the small esteem in which he held the many "small wares" by which it is impossible to prove a good speaker. He had seen very many treatises on verbs, "confused (for want of space), confusing those who read them," and so many pamphlets and books making believe "by wordes rather than by effects that the French tongue can be truly learned by the same." No doubt most of these little pamphlets are among the many school-books of which all trace has been lost. There is, however, mention of one, A shorte method for the Declyning of Ffrench Verbes, by J. S., licensed in 1623 to the printer, Richard Field.[706]
Wodroeph, therefore, earnestly begs the student of French not to fancy he can "spare the marrow of his famous braines" and pick French up by ear alone, as many seek to do. He must, on the contrary, be prepared "to storm the citadel of grammar, and do as the valiant captaine, that is to say, besiege the strongest houldes which commande over the lesser and weaker sort." "Loving Reader," he writes, "if I could persuade thee to believe what profit the diligent and serious Man doth reape learning the true methode of French Tongue and what advantage he gaineth above him who thinketh to obtaine the said Tongue by the eare only: truly thou wouldest use thine earnest diligence and celeritie perusing these rules." Otherwise learners will speak "scurvily, harshly and painfully, that they make the Frenches take their sport at them, even as the English do at the Welshes ... taking sometyme the male for the female, and the hand for the foote; applying to the woman that which should apply to the man: and to the leg which ought apply to the arme: as la garçon, le femme, ma sieur, and mon dame: ... O what language this is in the eares of the Frenches! I think truely it should make Père Coton him selfe to laugh at it, who said in a sermon (the King and Queen present), that hee had neither sinned nor laughed in fiftene yeares tyme, yea and any man else." Verbs are a special difficulty, and there "be many that can never speake true French for lack of knowing their methode. For where it ought to be spoken thus: Il y eut or il y avait un homme là, some will say il fut, il estoit un homme là. Fine French! And so will the ignorant speake through all the moodes and tenses, whereat the Frenches take often their sport." Thus those who have learnt no grammar "go wallowing in the painefull and muddy mire of confused and backward broyles, doubting and fearing (without any assurance) what words to speak first in framing their phrases."
But Wodroeph, in spite of the great emphasis he laid on the study of rules, fully recognizes the importance and value of practice. "I do not meene (for all this)," he writes, "to condemne common practice of the tongue by the eare, but do praise both wayes; esteeming (nevertheless) the method of the rules for the better and surer way, as I have certainlie found (and many others), by myne owne experience practicing them bothe." "Certes il vous faut parler tousiours," he says, "soit-il ou en bien ou en mal." To make progress "il vous faut frequenter, hanter, accoynter, accoster, discourir, babiller, caquetter, baiser, lecher, parler hardiment et discretement, aymer, rire, gausser, jouer, vous rejouir, et jouir de leurs bonnes faveurs et graces: et principalement ès compagnies honestes: asçavoir, parmi les seigneurs et Dames, Damoiselles honestes, pudiques matrones, femmes et filles de vertu et d'honneur; captaines et dignes chefs de guerre, là où il y a tousiours quelque chose a esplucher, si c'est de leurs prouesses, entreprises, ou de leurs faicts heroiques et memorables . . . sans vous esbahir pour le bruit non plus que fait le bon cheval de trompette." Wodroeph doubtless based his advice on his own experience. Moreover, a bold and enterprising spirit has much to do with the successful study of French: "si vous n'estes hardi prompt, diligent, et vigilent, vous n'apprendrez pas la langue françoise par songe . . . mais cela vient par grande peine, diligence et priere a Dieu. Certes, . . . si un homme estoit marié a une femme françoise . . . il me semble qu'il apprendroit plustost en disant, Mme, ou m'amie, permettez moy que ie vous recerche en tout honeur et mariage . . . a celle fin de vous faire ma chere moitié, et fidele espouse: que par ce moyen, ie puisse et avoir vostre alliance et apprendre vostre language, autrement, madame, il me cousteroit beaucoup plus de temps, de peine et de mes moyens."
Wodroeph's book for teaching French is one of the most comprehensive. He assures the student that it lacks "nothing to make him a perfect Frenchman but the birth and delygence though he never read any other." It fills more than five hundred folio pages. Putting his theories into practice, he "THE SPARED HOURES OF A SOULDIER"begins with rules of pronunciation and grammar, "set downe by God's helpe as I have practiced in my time and by the tracke of best Authours, which have professed this tongue heretofore." His debt to Holyband makes it evident that he ranked the popular sixteenth-century teacher among these. He would have the student pay special attention to three things: first the pronunciation, which, as was usual, he bases on comparison with English sounds; then the genders, learning every noun with its article "to lead to the same in right gender"; and, finally, and most important of all, the verbs, which should be committed to memory. In his grammar he follows the usual order, treating each part of speech in turn. He endeavours to avoid all superfluous rules, fearing the "loathsomeness of the unlearned."
The rules occupy about a hundred pages. Then follows a most comprehensive collection of practical exercises, intended for all sorts and conditions—courtiers, merchants, and the middle classes, "the learned and the unlearned." The dialogues are accompanied by a verbatim English translation. In the introductory ones the reader is referred to the margin for the pronunciation of the most difficult words, where it is given in English spelling. The "true English phrase" is added in the footnote where necessary. Wodroeph was strongly in favour of sacrificing if need be the purity of the English for the sake of rendering the meaning of the French clearer. He did not pretend, he says, to teach his countrymen their "own ornate English." "Verbatim, therefore, sometimes must be had, because it is requisite that it should not always be closed up in a phrase, but showed bare, as it fals very often: then (nil thou wilt thou) thou must have a coat to cover it, that is to say his true signification, or else thou must leave it, and run to the Dictionarie, and dazle thy eyes there awhile, and be even so wise as thou wast before; for sometymes they are not to be found at all in it, and sometymes it will fall in some tense of some mood which no Dictionarie can yield: yea even thousands."