[139] Letters of Descartes, quoted by E. J. B. Rathery, Les Relations sociales et intellectuelles entre la France et l'Angleterre . . . Paris, 1856.
[140] Which provided the material for that "bonnie bouncing book," as Ben Jonson called it—Coryat's Crudities: Hastily gobled up in Five Months' Travells in France, etc. 1611.
[141] Rye, op. cit. pp. xxxv-xxxvii.
[142] L. Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England, New York, 1907.
[143] The Tudor group of distinguished linguists includes the names of many women. The chronicler Harrison remarks that it is a rare thing to hear of a courtier that has but his own language, and to tell how many ladies are skilled in French, Spanish, and Italian is beyond his power (Holinshed's Chronicle, 1586, i. p. 196). Nicholas Udal writes in the same strain in his dedication to Queen Katherine Parr of his translation of Erasmus's Paraphrase of the Gospels; we are told that a great number of noble women at that time in England were given to the study of human sciences and of strange tongues; and that it was a common thing to see "young virgins so nouzled and trained in the study of letters that thei willingly set all other vain pastymes at nought for learnynge's sake." Amongst the most accomplished of such "Queens and Ladies of high estate and progeny" were Queen Katherine Parr and Lady Jane Grey. Mulcaster in his Positions (1581) praises English ladies for their fondness of serious study, and so does the Italian teacher Torriano in his Italian reviv'd (1673), p. 99. Many examples of fluent linguists are found in Ballard's Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, 2nd ed., 1775.
[144] Elizabeth's command of foreign languages was constantly a subject of remark. Dr. William Turner in the dedication of his Herbal (1568) to the queen, addresses her thus: "As to your knowledge of Latin and Greek, French, Italian, and others also, not only your own faythful subiectes, beynge far from all suspicion of flattery, bear witness, but also strangers, men of great learninge, in their books set out in Latin tonge, give honourable testimonye." Best known of these learned observers was Scaliger (Scaligeriana, Cologne, 1695, p. 134). Similar eulogies in verse were left by French poets: Ronsard, Elegies, Mascarades et Bergeries (1561), reproduced in Le Bocage royal (1567); Jacques Grévin, Chant du cygne; Du Bartas, Second Week; and Agrippa d'Aubigné; also by John Florio, First Frutes, 1578, ch. xiii.
[145] First Frutes, 1578, ch. i.
[146] John Eliote, Ortho-Epia Gallica, 1596.
[147] Merchant of Venice, Act I. Scene 2.
[148] Cp. Brunot, Histoire de la langue française, ii. pp. 2 sqq. Dallington in his View of France remarks on the same neglect. In The Abbot and the Learned Woman, Erasmus praises the latter for studying the classics and not, as was usual, confining herself to French (Colloquia, Leiden, 1519).