Goustez Anglois, Gent bien heureuse,
Les fleurs qu'en vostre Isle argenteuse
Vous donne Holybande pour un gage.
It is not certain how Bellot employed his time there. He may have had a school, or have taught privately. In any case he was a member of the French Church, and in the returns of aliens he calls himself a "schoolmaster" and a "teacher of children."[413] But the title on which he is most insistent is that of "gentleman." He is a "gentilhomme cadomois," or a gentleman of Caen, and usually attaches the abbreviation G.C. to his name. His attitude to the usual type of French teacher is distinctly supercilious. He prided himself on belonging to the "noblesse instruite et de Savoir," and had the reputation of teaching elegant French.
In 1580 he dedicated to no less a person than François de Valois,[414] brother to Henry III., a work for teaching English to foreigners. Like Holyband, he gave his book the title of "Schoolmaster": Maistre d'Escole Anglois pour les naturelz françois, et autre estrangers qui ont la langue françoyse, pour parvenir a la vraye prononciation de la langue Angloise.[415] The work contains rules of pronunciation and grammar, given in opposite columns in French and English; it was evidently written in French in the first place, and then somewhat carelessly translated into English, for in the English column the illustrative examples are given in French. This produces a curious effect, and involves such statements as: "quand should be pronounced as Houen" (when), etc. In the dedication he refers to his "misfortune," by which, presumably, he means his exile.[416]
Bellot was busily occupied in the production of other text-books also during his residence in Paul's Churchyard. The Maistre d'Escole Anglois appeared in January 1580, and in 1581 was followed by a third work, in the form of a collection of moral dicta, entitled Le Jardin de vertu et bonnes mœurs plain de plusieurs belles fleurs et riches sentences, avec le sens d'icelles, recueillies de plusieurs autheurs,[417] and intended to be used as a "reader." It was published by the French refugee printer Thomas Vautrollier, who, at the same time, issued a new edition of Holyband's French Littleton. The works of the two friends were of the same size, and are bound together in the copy preserved in the British Museum.
Holyband, with his long-standing reputation, may have been able to further Bellot's interests. In 1580 he had dedicated his Latin work on French pronunciation to the queen, and in the following year Bellot obtained the same favour for his little work. He accordingly opened his book with six French sonnets in honour of Her Majesty, celebrating her generous reception of strangers, not omitting to beg her protection for the "garden":
Reçoy donc ce jardin: te plaise a l'appuyer
De ta faveur Royalle: et pren le jardinier
En ta protection contre la gent hargneuse:
Alors il tachera (sans appouvrir la France)
L'Angleterre enrichir d'œuvres d'autre importance,
Pour façonner l'Anglois au Françoys, en son estre,
Alors il chantera tes vertus en tout lieu. . . .
The whole of the Jardin is printed in French and English; each maxim or saying is accompanied by explanations of the most difficult words, by means of synonyms, paraphrases, and definitions, as in the following example:
NORMANS IN ENGLAND
It will be noticed that Bellot had not fully mastered the English idiom, although he had written an English grammar. The rest of the "beautiful flowers of vertue" which he planted in his "garden" are similar in character and treatment. He characteristically closes his little book with a prayer, which he quaintly compares to a fence to keep the "goats" from harming the "flowers."