And afterwards the rules of syntax.
Et ensuite les règles de Composition.
How long will I be in learning all that?
Combien seray-je à apprendre tout cela?
But little time if you will follow me.
Peu de temps si vous voulez me suivre.
Berault added a selection of Cordier's Colloquies in French and English to his work, as well as the usual proverbs, idioms and polite letters, and a vocabulary. The letters have no English translation, Berault believing that "whoso will peruse this grammar, he will not only be able to explain them but any other French book whatsoever." Accordingly he supplied a list of what he considered suitable modern French books, all of which could be obtained from one or other of the French booksellers in London.
In the second half of the seventeenth century the position of the French language in England was further strengthened by its growing popularity all over Europe. "I have visited," wrote the dramatist Chappuzeau in 1674,[1070] "every part of Christendom with care. FRENCH AND LATINIt has been easy for me to observe that to-day a prince with only the French language which has spread everywhere, has the same advantages that Mithridates had with twenty-two." The French language was regarded as "one of the chiefest qualifications of accomplished persons," and "the common language of all well-bred people, and the most generally used in the commerce of civil life." Bayle states that in many parts of Europe there were people who spoke and wrote French as purely as the French themselves, and that in many foreign towns all the men and women of quality and many of the common people spoke French with ease. Writers of the time are unanimous in describing French as the universal language; and most French teachers write in the style of Guy Miège to the effect that "the French tongue is in a manner grown universal in Europe ... and of all the parts of Europe next to France none is more fond of it than England."
Thus, in the second half of the seventeenth century, French was in a position to dispute its ground with Latin. France herself set the example. French was the language used at Court, while Latin was used only by scholars. Significant it is that in 1676 Louis XIV., in consequence of Charpentier's Défense de la langue françoise pour l'inscription de l'arc de Triomphe, replaced the Latin inscriptions on his triumphal arches by others in French. Replying to Charpentier's essay, a Jesuit, P. Lucus, wrote a treatise in defence of Latin.[1071] Charpentier retorted by two laboured volumes, De l'excellence de la langue françoise (1683), and finally won the day. In this he refers to the universality of French, and draws attention to the advantages which would result to science if it were studied in that language. The long Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, which first reached England from France, also shows the spirit of the times. And Bayle asserts as evidence of the supremacy of French that: "Veut-on qu'un libelle courre bien le monde, aussitôt on le traduit en françois, lors même que l'original est en Latin: tant il est vrai que le latin n'est pas si commun en Europe aujourd'hui que la Langue françoise."[1072]
In England French had long been a rival to Latin as the most commonly used foreign tongue, and after the Restoration it was generally recognized, among courtiers, men of fashion, ministers of state, and diplomats, as the more convenient means of intercourse. Only scholars and the universities continued to uphold the traditional supremacy of the Latin tongue, and even at the universities Latin had passed out of colloquial use before the Restoration, though still used in disputations and other prescribed exercises.[1073] The victory of French in the world of fashion was an easy one. It had "long since chased Latin from the gallant's head," declares Sedley,[1074] and Ravenscroft in his prologue to the English Lawyer,[1075] in which a jargon made up of Latin and English predominates, thus addresses the gallants:
Gallants, pray what do you doe here to-day?
Which of you understands a Latine play?...
This age defies th' accomplishments of Schools,
The Town breeds Wits, the Colleges make Fools.
Samuel Vincent,[1076] instructing the gallant how to behave at an ordinary, warns him to "beware how (he) speaks any Latin there: your ordinaries most commonly have no more to do with Latin, than a desparate town or Garrison hath."[1077]
Latin also lost what ground it held as the official language. Milton had been Latin secretary during the Commonwealth, but after the Restoration French was the language used. "Since Latin hath ceased to be a Language, if ever it was any, which I am not sure of, at least in this present age," wrote Lord Chancellor Clarendon,[1078] "the French is almost naturalised through Europe, and understood and spoken in all the Northern Courts and hath nearly driven the Dutch out of its own country, and almost sides the Italian in the Eastern Parts, where it was scarce known in the last Age." French, therefore, had little to fear from Latin as the language of intercourse with ambassadors and other foreigners in England; and still less from English, which was not to receive any recognition at the hands of foreigners for years to come. Considering the almost universal popularity of French, and the general neglect of English, most Englishmen were obliged to agree FRENCH IN THE SCHOLASTIC WORLDwith Clarendon that it was "too late sullenly to affect an ignorance" of that language because the French "will not take the Pains to understand ours," and we may gain much by being conversant in theirs. He adds "it would be a great Dishonour to the court if, when Ambassadors come thither from Neighbour Princes, no body were able to treat with them, or converse with those who accompany them in no other language but English, of which not one of them understand one word; not to mention how the king shall be supplied with Ministers, or Secretaries of State, or with Persons fit to be sent Ambassadors abroad," if those who aspire to such rank are not acquainted with the necessary foreign language.