[188] The MS. was reproduced in facsimile in 1893. The prayers in French begin thus: "Mon Dieu et mon pere puis qu'il t'a pleu desployer les tresors de ta grande misericorde envers moy ta tres humble servante, m'ayant de bon matin retirée des profonds abismes de l'ignorance naturelle et des superstitions damnables pour me faire iouir de ce grand soleil de justice . . . etc."
[189] Lettres, Amsterdam, 1723, liv. i. p. 5.
[190] An account of the little that is known of André's life is given in Gairdner's Memorials of Henry VII., pp. viii et seq.
[191] Of foreign countries, the Netherlands seem to have come next to England in zeal for the study of French, and Germany takes the next place. Countries in which sister Romance tongues were spoken, Italy and Spain, were apparently entirely dependent on practice for learning French.
[192] The printing was completed by Robert Coplande on the 22nd March 1521. The book consists of sixteen leaves of the folio size of the time, in black letter, with signatures A-B in sixes and C in fours. There is a unique copy in the Bodleian.
[193] Bale, Scriptorum Britanniae Summarium, 1548, p. 723, and Pits, Relationes Historicae de rebus Anglicis, 1619, p. 745, attribute to Barclay a work called De pronuntiatione linguae gallicae. This suggests that possibly the Introductory was first written in Latin.
[194] Time after time he mentions the usages of different parts of the country, as piecha for pieça in certain districts; jeo and ceo for je and ce in Picard and Gascon; the writing of the names of dignitaries and officers in the plural instead of the singular, as luy papes de Rome.
[195] L'Esclarcissement de la langue françoyse, bk. i. ch. xxxv.
[196] "There is a boke which goeth about in this realme, intitled The Introductory to write and pronounce French, compyled by Alexander Barclay. I suppose it is sufficient to warne the lerner that I have red over that boke at length, and what my opinion is therein it shall well apeare in my boke's self, though I make thereof no further expresse mencion."
[197] Thus the vowel a is sometimes a letter, sometimes a word. In the former case it is often sounded like English a; when it is a word d should not be added. This section of the work is reprinted in A. J. Ellis's Early English Pronunciation, Early Engl. Text Soc., 1869, etc., pt. iii. pp. 804 sqq.