Another instance of the popularity of these romances and other French writings is found in Pepys's Diary.[830] Both Pepys and more particularly his wife, who was the daughter of a French refugee, were great readers of the romances. Pepys himself seems to have found them a little tiresome, and relates how on a certain occasion Mrs. Pepys wearied him by telling him long stories out of the Grand Cyrus, and how he hurt her feelings by checking her outpourings. She would sit up till past midnight reading Cyrus or Polexandre. He would often stop at his bookseller's to buy French books for his wife, including L'Illustre Bassa in four volumes, and Cassandre. One evening she read to him the epistle of Cassandre, which he pronounced "very good indeed." When they went to see Dryden's Evening Love, or the Mock Astrologer, Mrs. Pepys recognized at once its debt to L'Illustre Bassa, and on the following afternoon "she read in the L'Illustre Bassa the plot of yesterday's play, which is exactly the same."
His French books seem to have been a great source of interest to Pepys, and to have served him on many occasions. Being ill, "taking physique all day," he beguiled the time by reading "little French romances." He appears to have been particularly attracted by Sorbière's Voyage en Angleterre, which on its appearance caused some indignation at the English Court. Pepys read the book in the year of its publication (1664).[831] Unfortunately he has not left us a very full account of the other French books he knew. However, on the 1st May 1666, he writes that he went "by water to Redriffe, reading a new French book my Lord Bruncker did give me to-day, L'Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules" [by the Comte de Bussy], "being a pretty libel against the amours of the Court of France." Another volume which pleased Pepys was a "pretty" work, La Nouvelle allégorique, "upon the strife between rhetorique and its enemies, very pleasant." His choice of French literature was wide, ranging from Du Bartas, which he judged "very fine as anything he had seen," to Helot's "idle roguish book," L'Eschole des Filles, which he burnt, "that it might not stand in the list of books, nor among them to disgrace them if it be found."[832]
At both Allestry's and Martin's, Pepys's booksellers, there was a great variety of French and foreign books, which often tempted him. "To my new bookseller's, Martin's," he writes on the 10th January 1667-8, "and there did meet with Fournier the Frenchman, that hath wrote of the sea and navigation,[833] and I could not but buy him." He was much interested in French treatises on music,[834] and sent to France for Mersenne's L'Harmonie Universelle, which he could not get at his bookseller's. Pepys's friend, William Batelier, brought him "one or two printed musick books of songs"[835] from France, among other French books. "Home," he again notes, on the 26th January 1668, "and there I find Will Batelier hath also sent the books which I made him bring me out of France, among others L'Estat de France, Marnix, etc.,[836] to my great content, and so I was well pleased with them and shall take a time to look them over ... but my eyes are now too much out of tune to look upon them with any pleasure." And when his failing eyesight prevented him from reading with ease, his wife, Batelier, and his brother-in-law, Balty St. Michel, would read to him in French as well as in English. He got Balty to read to him out of Sorbière's Voyage en Angleterre, and under the date the 30th of January 1668-9 we find this entry: "I spent all the afternoon with my wife and Will Batelier talking, and then making them read, and particularly made an end of Mr. Boyle's Book of Formes, which I am glad to have over, and then fell to read a French discourse which he hath brought over with him for me."
POLITE CONVERSATION FASHIONABLE No doubt the polite French literature which the French teachers recommended so strongly to their pupils had some influence on the character of the dialogues which form part of their manuals. Mauger, Festeau, and Lainé all include polite conversations in their dialogues, and leave the old familiar subjects of buying and selling, wayside and tavern talk. Polite conversation was the fashion, and coteries for fostering it grew up in England on the model of those in France. Mrs. Katherine Philipps, generally known as "the matchless Orinda," is perhaps the most prominent of the ladies who tried, without any permanent success it is true, to introduce the refinements of the French salons into England.[837] Each member of the "Society of Friendship" she gathered round her assumed fanciful names in the style of those affected by the adherents of the Parisian salons. "Orinda" was of course a great reader of French literature, and knew French perfectly. She is chiefly remembered for her translations of some of Corneille's plays into English.[838] French books of conversation, such as Mlle. de Scudéry's Conversations sur divers sujets[839] or the similar volume by Clerombault, which was rendered into English by a "person of honour" [1672], also give some clue to the tastes and tendencies of the time, though they had no direct influence on the dialogues specially written for students of French. But, like them, they turn on such subjects as the pleasures, the passions, the soul, love, beauty, merit, and so forth. Thus the French teachers of the time, in introducing a new style into their dialogues, undoubtedly yielded, to some extent at all events, to the tastes of their numerous lady pupils. A large proportion of Mauger's pupils were ladies. He praised their accent, and considered it clearer and more correct than that of their brothers. And in the later editions of his treatise the grammar rules are given in the form of a conversation between a lady and her French master. Another French teacher of the time, the author of a collection of dialogues in which the new style is the dominating feature, also shows a decided preference for his lady pupils. This writer was William or Guillaume Herbert, the author of the French and English dialogues in a more exact and delightful method then any yet extant.
The thirty-four dialogues contained in this collection are all, with the exception of the first which is autobiographical, written in the précieux style, full of points and conceits,[840] and all, with the same exception, are very alike and a little wearisome. Herbert says he does not write for every one, but for "les plus subtils." And in his first dialogue, which gives a free account of his condition and opinions, he proceeds to ridicule the traditional style of the French and English dialogues. A stranger addresses a friend of the author:
Pourquoi ne parle-t-il point de vendre et d'acheter?
Parce qu'il n'a rien à vendre et que fort peu d'argent pour acheter; et que les autres faiseurs de livres François en ce pais ont tout vendu et tout acheté avant qu'il allât au marché.
Pourquoi ne dit-il rien du Manger et du Boire?
Pour tant qu'il y prend fort peu de plaisir, faute d'appétit, et que quelques-uns de ceux qui l'ont precédé l'ont fait pour lui, nommant fidèlement toutes les viandes qu'ils ont portées à la table de leurs maîtres. Qui lèche les plats, en peut bien parler.
Pourquoi ne parle-t-il point des Habits, et de La Mode, du Lever et du Coucher, de la Chambre et du Lit?