[823] Pp. 48-130. Lainé retains the usual six Latin cases; the verbs are divided into four conjugations; the indeclinables are given in lists. A vocabulary of nouns which have two meanings according as they are masculine or feminine is included.
CHAPTER IV
THE FRENCH TEACHING PROFESSION AND METHODS OF STUDYING THE LANGUAGE
From their very first appearance the voluminous French romances of the time enjoyed great popularity in England,[824] partly, perhaps, on account of the lack of a supply of similar works in the vernacular. Several English translations appeared, but many preferred to read them in the original. Their importance in the eyes of the French teachers may also have increased their vogue. They were especially affected by Charles I.; and when on the eve of his death, he was distributing a few of his favourite possessions among his friends, he left the volumes of La Calprenède's Cassandre to the Earl of Lindsey.[825] Later on, Pope describing, in his Rape of the Lock, the adventurous baron in quest of the much-coveted lock, pictures him imploring Love for help, and declares he
to Love an altar built
Of twelve vast French Romances neatly gilt.
Among the most eager readers of French romances was Dorothy Osborne. We are enabled to trace part of her course in reading from the charming letters she wrote to Sir William Temple, her future husband. They are full of references to things French, and replete with French words; she uses English words in a French sense: injury with her means insult; and she writes to explain that when she said maliciously she really meant "a French malice, which you know does not signify the same thing as an English one." A little note sent to Temple when she was in London, shortly before their marriage, evidently in answer to one from him, may be quoted as a specimen of her French, and her total disregard of spelling and grammar:
Je n'ay guere plus dormie que vous et mes songes n'ont pas estres moins confuse, au rest une bande de violons que sont venue jouer sous ma fennestre m'ont tourmentés de tel façon que je doubt fort si je pourrois jamais les souffrire encore; je ne suis pourtant pas en fort mauvaise humeur et je m'en voy ausi tost que je serai habillée voire ce qu'il est posible de faire pour vostre satisfaction; apres je viendré vous rendre conte de nos affairs et quoy qu'il en sera vous ne sçaurois jamais doubté que je ne vous ayme plus que toutes les choses du monde.[826]
The French romances were Dorothy's constant companions, and her letters are full of criticisms of and references to her favourite passages. She sent the volumes to Temple by instalments,[827] as she finished them, pressing him for his opinion. Le Grand Cyrus seems to have been her favourite. She had also a great admiration for Ibraham ou l'Illustre Bassa, which, like Polexandre et Cléopâtre and the four volumes of Prazimène, was her "old acquaintance." Parthenissa, the English romance in the French style by Lord Broghill, did not meet with her approval. "But," she confides to Temple, "perhaps I like it worse for having a piece of Cyrus by me that I am highly pleased with, and that I would fain have you read. I'll send it you." As for the English translations of her favourites, she had no patience with them. They are written in a language half French and half English, and so changed that Dorothy, their old friend, hardly recognizes them in this strange garb.
French romances were not the only French interest Dorothy Osborne and Temple had in common. They had first become acquainted while travelling to France, the Osbornes on their way to join their father at St. Malo, and Temple setting out on the usual "tour." Temple, apparently, lingered with his new friends in France, until his father, hearing of this, ordered him to Paris.[828] There he evidently acquired the knowledge of French which Dorothy playfully declares a necessary qualification for her husband: for she could not PEPYS'S FRENCH BOOKSmarry one who "speaks the French he has picked up out of the old Laws"; or, the other extreme, the "travelled monsieur whose head is all feather inside and out, that can talk of nothing but dances and duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes when every one else dies with cold to see him."[829]