The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England during Tudor and Stuart Times / With an Introductory Chapter on the Preceding Period

by K. Rebillon Lambley

and so on for the parts of the body, the numbers, days, and months, with similar guides to pronunciation. He then proceeds to treat of the sounds of letters and syllables, based on comparison with English. These rules occupy less than a fifth of the book; the remainder contains practical exercises. First come familiar phrases and dialogues, strongly religious in tone, including prayers, the catechism, commandments, etc., and conversation specially suited to royal princesses. A chronological abridgement of the sacred scriptures by way of dialogue is followed by rules of grammar, likewise in dialogue form. Lastly come the Fables of Aesop put into "burlesque French" for the use of her Highness the Lady Mary when a child, and models of letters suitable for children, and accompanied by answers.

In later years Lainé spent some time at Paris as secretary[1047] to Sir Henry Savile, the English envoy at the French Court, who did so much to prepare a favourable reception in England for the refugees at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.[1048] Lainé was the first teacher to receive a grant of letters of denization under the Order in Council of the 28th July 1681.[1049] Shortly afterwards the same privilege was bestowed on Francis Cheneau, whose French Grammar, enrich'd with a compendious and easie way to learne the French tongue in a short time, was licensed for printing in 1684.[1050] For many years Cheneau continued to teach French, and in time added Latin, English, and Italian to his repertory. He describes himself as a native of Paris, "formerly slave and Governor of the Isles of Nacsia and Paros in the Archipelago." At the time of the appearance of his second work on the French language, in 1716, he was "living in his House in Old Fish St. next door to the Faulcon in London," where could be seen his short grammars for Latin, Italian, and English.

The most versatile compiler of French manuals at this period was Guy Miège, a native of Lausanne, who came to England at the time of the Restoration. For two years he was employed in the household of Lord Elgin, and was then appointed under-secretary to the Earl of Carlisle, ambassador extraordinary to Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. After spending three years abroad with the embassy, he travelled in France on his own account from 1665 till 1668, preparing a Relation of the Three Embassies in which he had taken part. THE DICTIONARIES OF GUY MIÈGEHis book was published in 1669, on his return to London. He then settled in England as a teacher of French and geography, and wrote many works for teaching the language. The first was A New Dictionary French and English and English and French (1677), dedicated to Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond. As usual, this French-English Dictionary is based on a French-Latin one—in this case that of Pomey. Miège was also closely acquainted with Howell's edition of Cotgrave's dictionary, last published in 1670; but he held it very defective in retaining so many obsolete words, and in not being adapted to the "present use and modern orthography—which indeed is highly pretended to in the last edition thereof, but so performed that the title runs away with all the credit of it." He looked upon Cotgrave "as a good help indeed for reading of old French books (a thing which few people mind)." For his own part, his design was to teach the latest Court French, and he made a point of omitting all the provincial and obsolete words Cotgrave had searched out so carefully, words "that offend the eyes and grate the ears, but the Rubbish of the French Tongue." To "season the naturall dulness of the work" he included many proverbs, descriptions, and observations in both the English and French parts.

Considering that "the way to understand the bottom of a language is to learn how the derivatives are formed from their primitives and the compounds from their simples,"[1051] he arranged all the derivatives after their respective primitives; that nothing might be wanting, however, he placed them in their alphabetic order also, with a reference to the necessary primitive.

Miège's innovation in excluding all obsolete terms from his dictionary raised such a storm at its first appearance[1052] that he felt himself bound to yield to public opinion by making a separate collection of such words, which he called A Dictionary of barbarous French or A Collection, by way of Alphabet, of Obsolete, Provincial, misspelt, and Made Words in French, taken out of Cotgrave's dictionary with some additions. It was, he said, "performed for the satisfaction of such as read old French." By the time of its publication in 1679, however, the storm raised by his first work had died away.

Miège continued his lexicographical labours. In 1684 appeared A Short French Dictionary English and French, with another in French and English, a work of no ambitious aims, containing a list of words pure and simple, with no descriptions or observations, intended for beginners, travellers, and those who could not afford the price of the larger one, and, above all, for foreigners reading English. The English were too eager and advanced in the study of French to find much help in so slight a work, but foreigners evidently adopted the dictionary; editions appeared at the Hague in 1691, 1701 (the fifth), and 1703;[1053] another was issued at Rotterdam as late as 1728.

For the use of English students and those desiring to study either language more thoroughly, Miège prepared, during many years of hard work, an enlarged edition of his first French dictionary of 1677, which, he tells us, was compiled under great disadvantages; "the Publick was in haste for a French Dictionary, and they had it accordingly, hurried from the design to the composition, and from under my pen to the press." The new work, on a much larger scale, was known as The Great French Dictionary, in two parts, and published in 1688, eleven years after the appearance of its nucleus, the New French Dictionary (1677). It gives words according to both their old and modern orthography, "by which means the reader is fitted for any sort of French book," and, writes Miège, "although I am not fond of obsolete and barbarous words, yet I thought fit to intersperse the most remarkable of them, lest they should be missed by such as read old Books." Each word is accompanied by explanations, proverbs, phrases, "and as the first part does, here and there, give a prospect into the constitution of the kingdom of France, so the second does afford to foreiners what they have hitherto very much wanted, to wit, an Insight into the Constitution of England...." In the Great Dictionary Miège abandoned his plan of arranging the derivatives under their primitives, because it had made his former work "swarm with uneasy references"; he followed the alphabetical order strictly, "but in such a manner that, where a derivative is remote from its primitive, I show its extraction within a Parenthesis." MIÈGE'S FRENCH GRAMMARSEach of the two sections of the Great Dictionary is preceded by a grammar of the language concerned. First comes the Grounds of the French Tongue, before the French-English Dictionary, and then a Méthode abrégée pour apprendre l'Anglois. This French grammar was a reprint of one of those which Miège had compiled while working at his dictionaries.

In 1684 Miège tells us that he had "put forth two French grammars, both of them well approved by all unprejudiced persons. The one is short and concise, fitted for all sorts of learners, but especially new beginners; the other is a large and complete piece, giving a curious and full account of the French Tongue. To this is annexed a copious vocabulary and a long Train of useful Dialogues." The more advanced of these grammars was the first to appear, being published in 1678 under the title of A New French Grammar, or a New Method for learning the French Tongue. After dealing with pronunciation, he passes to the accidence and syntax, with special attention to his favourite theory of the importance of a knowledge of primitives and derivatives. He is much indebted to the grammars of Vaugelas and Chiflet, especially in his observations on letter-writing, on repetition of words, and on style. The second half of the book contains a vocabulary, arranged under the usual headings, and familiar dialogues, without which he dare not offer the work to a public "so well convinced of their Usefulness, as to the speaking part of a Language"; therefore, "though it were something against the grain," he included such exercises, "exceeding even Mr. Mauger's in number." The one hundred and fifteen familiar dialogues are followed by four more advanced ones in French alone, "for proficient learners to turn into English." The first deals with the education of children, and the others with geography, a subject Miège taught in either French or English "as might be most convenient."

The elementary grammar had been issued about 1682[1054] as A short and easie French Grammar fitted for all sorts of learners; according to the present use and modern orthography of the French with some Reflections on the ancient use thereof. In 1682 the vocabulary and dialogues of the earlier grammar were, each of them, issued separately, probably to facilitate their use with this second grammar.

In 1687 appeared the Grounds of the French Tongue or a new French Grammar,[1055] which Miège incorporated in his Great French Dictionary in the following year. In general outline its contents resemble those of the grammar which had appeared ten years before. It is, however, an entirely new work. Most of the rules differ,[1056] and the vocabulary and dialogues are new. He breaks away from the old tradition of introducing the Latin declension of nouns into French grammars.[1057] The Grounds of the French Tongue is about a hundred pages shorter than the grammar of 1678, and on the whole it is less interesting from the point of view of the student of French. The second part, called the Nouvelle Nomenclature Françoise et Angloise, which might be obtained apart from the grammar, had originally appeared in 1685 as part of Miège's Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre l'Anglois.[1058] Consequently the dialogues are more suited to the student of English than to the student of French, as they deal chiefly with life in England and the impressions of a Frenchman in London, including an account of the coffee-houses, the penny post, the churches, English food and drink, and so forth.