[70] Bateson, Mediaeval England, p. 342; Warton, History of English Poetry, p. 10 n.
[71] Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd series, 1846, i. p. xi.
[72] M. A. E. Green (née Wood), Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, London, 1846; The Paston Letters, new edition by J. Gairdner, 3 vols., London, 1872-75; H. Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd series, London, 1846; J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Letters of the Kings of England, London, 1846; C. L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, Oxford, 1893, pp. 193 et seq.; Hallam, Literature of Europe, 6th ed., London, 1860, i. p. 54.
[73] "Que tout seigneur, baron, chevalier et honestes hommes de bonnes villes mesissent cure et dilligence de estruire et apprendre leurs enfans le langhe françoise, par quoy il en fuissent plus avec et plus costumier ens leurs gherres" (Froissart, quoted by Behrens, op. cit. p. 957 n.).
[74] Higden, ut supra.
CHAPTER II
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
These great changes which took place in the status of French in England did not, however, affect fundamentally the popularity of the language: they had to do with Anglo-French alone. French, as distinct from this and as a foreign language, received more attention than ever before, especially from the higher classes, and from travellers and merchants. It was the language of politeness and refinement in the eyes of Englishmen, not only as a result of the Conquest, but for its inherent qualities; and so it retained this position when it gave way to English or Latin in other spheres where its predominance had been due, either directly or indirectly, to the Conquest. French had enjoyed a social reputation in England before the arrival of the invaders,[75] and had already made some progress towards becoming the language which the English loved and cultivated above all modern foreign tongues, and to which they devoted for a great many years more care than they did to their own. "Doulz françois," writes an Englishman at the end of the fourteenth century in a treatise for teaching the language,[76] is the most beautiful and gracious language in the world, after the Latin of the schools,[77] "et de tous gens mieulx prisée et amée que nul autre; quar Dieu le fist se doulce et amiable principalement a l'oneur et loenge de luy mesmes. Et pour ce il peut bien comparer au parler des angels du ciel, pour la grant doulceur et biaultée d'icel"—a more eloquent tribute even than the more famous lines of Brunetto Latini. Another writer of the same period informs us that "les bones gens du Roiaume d'Engleterre sont embrasez a scavoir lire et escrire, entendre et parler droit François," and that he himself thinks it is very necessary for the English to know the "droict nature de François," for many reasons.[78] For instance, that they may enjoy intercourse with their neighbours, the good folk of the kingdom of France; that they may better understand the laws of England, of which a great many are still written in French; and also because "beaucoup de bones choses sont misez en François," and the lords and ladies of England are very fond of writing to each other in the same tongue.[79]
As a result of the altered circumstances which were modifying the attitude of the English, there is a corresponding change in the standard of the French which the manuals for teaching that language sought to attain. All the best text-books of the end of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries endeavour with few exceptions to impart a knowledge of the French of Paris, "doux françois de Paris" or "la droite language de Paris," as it was called, in contrast with the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe and other parts of England. Those authors of treatises for teaching French of whose lives we have any details, had studied French in France, at Paris, Orleans, or some other University town. The fact that many of their productions still contain numbers of words belonging to the Norman and other dialects does not diminish the importance and significance of their more ambitious aims. These pioneer works on the French language, written in England by Englishmen without the guidance of any similar work produced in France, were bound to contain archaisms as well as anglicisms.[80]