Tout le monde le dit.
Vostre langue est fort difficile.
Je voudrois parler aussi bien que vous.
There is only one dialogue on a subject usually contained in French manuals—phrases for buying and selling. The vocabulary, which closes the book, is of a more usual kind. It is arranged under headings, beginning with the Godhead and ending with a list of things necessary in a house.
This book of Mauger's enjoyed a greater and longer-lived popularity than any that had yet appeared. Edition followed edition until the end of the first decade of the eighteenth century, and it continued to be plagiarised for another fifty years. Its success can hardly have been due to the scholastic value of its rules, which are few and confused, but rather to its practical nature and lively dialogues. Mauger constantly revised his grammar; of the earliest editions, no two are identical. In each case he wrote new dedications, new addresses to the reader, new dialogues, and varied the form of the grammar rules. The second edition is much more typical than the first. Mauger had been ill in 1653, and had not been able to correct the proofs himself. This task he entrusted to a friend (perhaps Festeau), who "betrayed his expectation, and corrected it not exactly." He was likewise unable to add the English column to the dialogues, a task which was undertaken by the corrector of the press. In the case of the second edition, however, he attended "three times a day at the Presse," that he might correct it according "to the expectation of those who will honour it with their reading." He called it Mr. Mauger's French Grammar, and this was the title under which it continued to be published.
Mauger dedicated the second edition to Colonel Bullar, mentioning the many favours heaped upon him by that officer. He again addresses French verses to numerous English ladies, his pupils. The grammar rules are much the same; the chief change in this part is the addition of a Latin translation to the English, "for to render it generally useful to strangers" visiting London, "which is this day accounted one of the most glorious cities of the world." That Mauger provided for the teaching of French to foreign visitors to England shows how important a place the study of the language held in our country, and we know that he numbered a few foreigners among his many students of the language. In this second edition he attempted, as Holyband had done before him, to adapt the orthography to the pronunciation, but without success. "I had thought," he writes, "for your greater advantage, to have fitted the MAUGER'S FRENCH GRAMMARwriting to the pronunciation, but having found that I could not do so, without an absolute totall subverting of the foundations of the language, I had rather teach you to read and speak together than to show you how to speak without being able to read, or to read without knowing how to speak. They might say nevertheless that it would prevent many difficultyes if we did write as we speak." Mauger decided to follow the rules of the French Academy, instead of his own caprichio which would "teach you to speak French without being able to read any other book than that I should present you with": for "our language," he said, "which is so highly esteemed by all strangers for its noble etymologies of Greeke and Latine, will not suffer itself to be so dismembered by the ignorance of those which profess it, not having one letter which doth not distinguish one word from another, the singular number from the plurall, the masculine gender from the foeminine, or which makes not a syllable long or short."
The dialogues are new, but very similar to those of the first edition, the chief change being the introduction of a long and "exact account of the state of France, ecclesiastical, civil, and military as it flourisheth at present under King Louis XIV.," which was brought up to date in each subsequent edition.
In following years the dialogues become more numerous; they number eighty in the sixth edition (1670). Each new issue promises additions, "of the last concern to the reader." A new feature in the sixth and seventh editions is a versified rendering of the grammar rules, entitled Le Parterre de la langue françoise. The verses were written at the request of the Duke of Mecklenburg, his former pupil, and arranged in the form of a dialogue between Mauger and the Duke, who first addresses his master:
Le Langage françois est si plein de merveilles
Que ses charmans appas, ravissans nos oreilles,
Nous jettent sur vos bords pour gouster ses douceurs,
Et pour en admirer les beautéz et les fleurs.
Mais, pour nous l'acquérir il faut tant d'artifice,
Qu'en ses difficultés il estreint nos delices,
Estouffe nos desseins, traverse le plaisir
Qui flatoit nostre espoir d'y pouvoir réussir.
Les articles de la, de, du, sont difficiles.
Si vous ne les monstrez par vos reigles utiles,
Ils nous font bégayer presques à tous momens,
Et ternissent l'éclat de nos raisonnemens.
And Mauger answers him with an invitation to take what he will from the "parterre."