[879] Diary, July 6, 1679.
[880] Ibid., Jan. 27, 1688.
[881] For this purpose he wrote The True and readie way to learne the Latin Tongue, expressed in an answer to the Question whether the ordinary way of teaching Latin by Rules of Grammar be best, 1654.
CHAPTER V
THE TOUR IN FRANCE
And now methinks I see a youth advance
Ready prepared to make the tour of France.
Satire against the French, 1691.
When, in the middle of the seventeenth century, England was torn in twain by civil war and party quarrels, even the Puritans willingly sent their children to be brought up in France. It was at this period that Thomas Grantham, a severe critic of the usual method of teaching Latin in Grammar Schools,[882] wrote this significant passage: "Let a boy of seven or eight years of age be sent out of England into France: he shall learn in a twelvemonth or less to write and speak the French tongue readily, although he keep much company with English, read many English books, and write many English letters home, and all this with pleasure and delight." The number of English children in France at this period was considerable.[883] At St. Malo, for instance, when proceedings were taken against the English in the town, the chief victims were the "English boys sent to learn French."[884]
The memoirs of the Verney family afford a detailed picture of one of the numerous families of royalist sympathies, cut off from English public school and university life, and brought up in France. Sir Ralph Verney had taken the side of Parliament in the long struggle, but in 1643 went into voluntary exile in France rather than sign the Covenant. He settled at Blois with his family, and procured French tutors for his boys. Apparently he had some trouble at first, one of the tutors being dismissed "for drinking, lying and seeking to proselytise." Finally the education of the boys was entrusted to the Protestant pastor, M. Testard, who received foreign pupils. The young students worked hard at Latin and French under the minister's supervision. Testard reported of Edmund, the elder, "Il fait merveille. . . . Je luy raconte une histoire en français, il me la rend extempore en Latin."[885] And one day Mme. Testard found the young John hard at work in bed in the early morning with two books in French and Latin. The children wrote in French to their mother when she was absent in England making valiant and finally successful attempts to get the sequestration taken off Sir Ralph's estate. And when, after her death, Sir Ralph sought to divert his mind by travelling in Italy, Edmund,[886] then aged thirteen, wrote this letter—which shows clearly the dangers of a purely oral method: