| Apprenez-vous encore le françois? | Do you learn French still? |
| Ouy, je n'y suis pas encore parfait. | Yes, I am not yet perfect in it. |
| Et moi je continue aussi. | And I continue also. |
| Je commence à l'entendre. | I begin to understand it. |
| J'entens tout ce que je lis. | I understand all I read. |
| Avez vous un valet de pié françois? | Have you a French foot boy? |
| Ouy, monsieur. | Yes, Sir. |
| L'entendez-vous bien? | Do you understand him well? |
| Fort bien. | Very well. |
| Quel Autheur lisez vous? | What author do you read? |
| Je lis l'Histoire de France. | I read the French History. |
| L'avez-vous leüe? | Have you read it? |
| Je l'ay leüe en Anglois. | I have read it in English. |
| Je l'acheteray. | I will buy it. |
| Ou la pourray-je trouver? | Where shall I find it? |
| Partout. | Everywhere. |
| Avez-vous leüe l' Illustre Parisienne? | Have you read the Illustrious Parisien? |
| Allez-vous au sermon? | Do you go to sermon? |
| Ouy, Monsieur. | Yes, Sir. |
| Qui est-ce qui prêche? | Who preaches? |
| C'est un habile homme. | 'Tis an able man. |
| Avez-vous le Dictionnaire de Miège?[818] | Have you Miège's Dictionary? |
| Ouy, je l'ay. | Yes, I have it. |
| Voulez-vous me le prêter? | Will you lend it me? |
| Il est à votre service. | It is at your service. |
| Je vous remercie. | I thank you. |
| La langue françoise n'est-elle pas belle? | Is not the French tongue fine? |
| Je l'aime fort. | I love it extreamly. |
| Elle est fort à la mode. | 'Tis very modish. |
"My dialogues," writes Mauger, "are so useful and so fit to learn to speak, that one may easily attain the French tongue by the assistance of a Master, if he will take a little pains on his side." He also advises his pupils to read the lengthy heroical romances so popular at the time—L'Astrée, and the enormous folios of De Gomberville, La Calprenède, Mlle. de Scudéry, and other romances of the same type—as well as the works of Corneille, Balzac, and Le Grand. With Antoine le Grand, Mauger claims personal acquaintance, and recommends his works with special emphasis, giving his pupils notice of a book newly published by him: "There is a French book newly printed at Paris called L'Epicure spirituel, written in good French by M. Antony le Grand, Author of L'Homme sans passions. You may have it at Mr. Martyn's shop [Mauger's publisher] at the sign of the Bell in St. Paul's Churchyard." He also advocates, for purposes of translation, the reading of the Bible and Common Prayers in French, books specially suitable owing to the ease with which English renderings could be found; and adds further that "at Mr. Bentley's shop, in Russel St. in Covent Garden, you may be furnished with French Bibles, French Common Prayers, French Testaments, and French Psalms." These would be of special use to his own students, as he encouraged them to frequent the French Church for the benefit of hearing the language. As for Mauger himself, although he appears to have professed the Protestant religion and to have come first to England as a refugee for the sake of his principles, he does not seem to have given much attention to religious matters. Neither does he manifest any particular interest in the French Church,[819] other than as an excellent place for his pupils to accustom themselves to the sounds of the French language.
After he had spent some thirty years in England we find him moving to Paris, where he was constantly with "some of the ablest gentlemen of Port Royal," who assured him that his French Grammar and his Letters in French and English were in their library. This break in Mauger's long teaching career in England occurred some time about 1680, after the appearance of the eighth edition of his grammar in 1679. He now took up his residence in the fashionable quarter of Paris, usually frequented by foreigners, the Faubourg St. Germain, where he taught French to English travellers, and English to any one wishing to learn it. This change of abode modified his exclusive attitude towards the Blois accent. At an earlier date he had acknowledged that "after Blois the best pronunciation is got at Orleans, Saumur, Tours, and the Court," and in 1676 he writes, "Je suys exactement le plus beau stile de la Cour," and tells us that he had daily intercourse with French courtiers "tant ambassadeurs qu'autres grands seigneurs, à qui j'ay aussi l'honneur de monstrer la langue angloise." He also read all the latest books, and carried on a correspondence with learned men in Paris, among others Antoine le Grand. But in the same year that he was praising the French of Paris, he wrote, encouraging a noble Englishman to take up the study of French in England: MAUGER IN PARIS"Si vos affaires ne vous permettent pas d'aller à Paris, pour vous y adonner, de quoy vous souciez-vous si vous avez Blois dans Londres qui est la source? En effet sa prononciation ne change jamais: de plus à cause du commerce qu'il y a entre les deux cours, l'une communique à l'autre sa pureté. Et je dy assurément qu'il y a icy quantité de personnes qui parlent aussi bien à la mode qu'au Faubourg Saint Germain. Et comme les fonteines font couler leurs eaux bien loin par de bons canaux sans se corrompre, vous trouverez des Maîtres en cette ville qui vous enseigneront aussi purement que sur les lieux." However, when he had himself spent two years in Paris, he gave up praising the merits of Blois, and always describes himself as "late professor of languages at Paris," which he now called "the centre of the purity of the French Tongue, where the true French phrase is to be found." From this time on his grammar claims to contain everything that can be desired in order to learn French as spoken at the Court of France, and "all the improvements of that Famous Language as it is now flourishing at the Court of France."
During his stay at Paris, which extended from about 1680 to 1688, the popularity of his grammar in England did not diminish. Four editions were printed in London after having been corrected by himself at Paris—the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth. The last was dedicated to the young Earl of Salisbury, who had studied French with Mauger when on the usual continental tour.
Three motives, he states, induced him to return to England, "after having gathered the finest flowers of the French tongue at Paris to enrich my workes withall for the better satisfaction of those that learn it: The first the extream love which I bear to this generous country,[820] that has obliged me so much as to approve so generally of my books, that for her sake they are received very well beyond Sea, and especially in France. The second, to correct the thirteenth edition my self exactly, many faults of printing having crept into the four last editions which were Printed here in my absence though I corrected them at Paris. The third to see my relations and friends."
After his return to England, he composed his Book of Curious stories of the Times in French and English for the use of his pupils. The new editions of his grammar, however, are identical with the thirteenth, which itself bears very great resemblance to the twelfth issued while Mauger was still at Paris. How many years he continued to superintend the new issues of his grammar is not certain; the nineteenth edition of 1702 is the last described as "corrected and enlarged by the Author."
Again and again he refers to the popularity of his book in England, and the "unexpressible courtesies" he received at the hands of his English patrons. "This grammar sells so well," he wrote in the sixth edition (1670), "as you may see, being printed so often, and many thousands every time, that I cannot but acknowledge the kindness of this generous nation towards me in raising its credit both at home and abroad, in so much that other Nations, following the general approbation concerning it of so wise a people, use it as commonly everywhere beyond the Sea, as they do here in London, and in all the dominions of his majesty of Great Britain." It was also looked on with much favour in France. In 1689 a French edition, called the thirteenth, was printed at Bordeaux. But it was in the Netherlands that the grammar received almost as warm a welcome as in England. The book thus forms another link between the study of French in England and the Low Countries. In 1693 this Dutch edition of the grammar was issued for the thirteenth time, and in 1707 for the fifteenth, both at the Hague. It was usually published with an English grammar of more importance than the short one added by Mauger to the English editions—that of Festeau, Mauger's friend and fellow-townsman. Their combined work was known as the Nouvelle double grammaire Françoise-Angloise et Angloise-Françoise par messieurs Claude Mauger et Paul Festeau, Professeurs de Langues à Paris et à Londres. The two grammars are followed by Mauger's dialogues and a collection of twenty-one "plaisantes et facetieuses Histoires pour rire," in French and English, entitled l'Ecole pour rire. The growing popularity of English from the beginning of the reign of William of Orange, the editor tells us in 1693, induced him to add the English grammar to the French grammar of Mauger, and he chose Festeau's because it was in as high favour for learning English as Mauger's was for learning French.
Paul Festeau was the author of a French as well as an English grammar,[821] PAUL FESTEAUand, like Mauger, he taught English to foreign visitors in London, as well as French to English people. Indeed his career bears a close resemblance to that of Mauger, of whom he seems to have been a sort of protégé. Like Mauger he had taught at Blois, and the two teachers probably came to England together; at any rate they arrived at much the same time. He enjoyed a greater popularity than Mauger as a teacher of English, and was also looked upon with respect as a teacher of French.[822]
Festeau's French Grammar, first published in 1667, occupies an important second place among the French text-books produced in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. It was dedicated to Colonel Russel, of the King's Guard, who had learnt French under Festeau's guidance. As a grammar it is fuller and more clearly arranged than Mauger's, and, in main outline, there is much similarity between the two. The rules, which occupy the first two hundred pages, are written in English and provide information on pronunciation and on each part of speech in turn. Each is accompanied by a considerable number of illustrative examples, which, Festeau thought, were of great help in impressing the rule on the memory, and of more use than dialogues. He also included dialogues in his work, and was attacked on account of their prolixity. He argued, in reply, that "if the reader pleases to consider the store of phrases in the body of the Work amongst the Rules which do contain near two hundred pages, he will very well apprehend that, when a scholar hath learnt all these Phrases without book in learning the rules, he needs not at all burden his memory with many dialogues: for ... I have found by experience that those who have learned them were able afterwards to translate French into English, with the aid of a dictionary and I do maintain that it is not necessary to learn such abondance of Dialogue by heart, it is enough to read and English them, and next to that to explain them from English into French, and so doing the words and phrases do insensibly make an impression in the memory and the discreet scholar goeth forward with a great deal of ease. As for young children I yield that it is good they should continue the Dialogues: but after they have learned short phrases, they must of necessity learn long ones, otherwise they could never attain to the capacity of joyning words together. Beside when a master doth teach his scholar, he must not ask him a whole long phrase at once, he must divide it in parts according to the distinction of points. As for instance, if I will ask this long phrase of a child | Quand on a gaigné une fois | le jeu attire insensiblement | en esperance de gaigner davantage |. I will ask it him at three several times." Festeau gives the pupil the English in three separate phrases, and requires him to give the French rendering. "Them that will take the pains to peruse it," to use Festeau's own words in describing his grammar, "will observe a very new method, clear and intelligible Rules to the least capacities, fine remarks upon all the parts of speech and particularly upon the gender of nouns, and the use of moods and tenses. They will find the difficulties of the particles, en, on, and que explained, which give commonly so much trouble to the learner, they will see the use and good order of impersonal verbs, as well active as passive, likewise also of the reciprocal and reflected verbs. Finally they will see familiar dialogues on divers sorts of subjects, very useful and profitable for them that desire to speak properly: no barbarous kind of words and phrases as are found in some other grammars, by reason that the Author professes to speak and to write his own language well." A vocabulary of thirty pages, in the style of Mauger's, and rules for the accents and the length of the vowels fill the rest of the volume. This was how the work stood in the third edition, which, Festeau explains, "might rightly be said the fourth, seeing that there was fifteen hundred copies drawn off the second edition, and two thousand of this, whereas they use to draw but a thousand at most: and considering the time it first came out, it seems that it sells pretty well. If some other former grammars have had more editions, it cannot be inferred thence that this comes short of them: we can buy nothing at market but what is to be sold, and when this hath been in the light as long, no doubt but (especially being better known) it may have as many editions." PIERRE LAINÉPossibly he was referring to Mauger's popularity, and the two friends may have become rivals during the latter part of their stay in England. On similar grounds he claimed that the sixth edition might be called the tenth, as two thousand copies were drawn of the four last editions. Mauger, however, states that "many thousand" copies of his grammar were drawn at every edition.
By this time Festeau's grammar had acquired a considerable reputation. "The approbation that it hath received," he writes, "of the most learned of the nation, who have esteemed it the neatest, the easiest and most correct, is not a small advantage to it: It is that which hath encouraged me to bring it to a better perfection." There is, however, very little difference between the half score or so editions which were issued.