The Anglo-French Entente in the Seventeenth Century. Charles Bastide
Scornful Lady, Act I. Sc. 2.
[10] Lettres de Locke, p 38.
[11] Mémoires de Gourville, p. 539 (1663).
[12] Fidèle Conducteur pour le voyage d'Angleterre (1654).
[13] Diary, 13th July 1650.
[14] Diary, 12th July 1649.
[15] Jusserand, French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II.
[16] Diary, 12th July 1650.
[17] Moreau de Brazey, Guide d'Angleterre, p. 72.
[18] Ibid. p. 73.
[19] State Papers, Dom., 1668–1669, p. 155.
[20] Moreau de Brazey, Guide d'Angleterre, p. 75.
[21] Ibid. p. 76.
[22] Angliæ Notitia, ii. p. 254 (1684).
[23] This Bernard or Bénard styles himself elsewhere: "Secretary to the King for English, Welsh, Irish, and Scotch" (es langues angloise, galoise, irlandoise, et escossoise).
[24] Voyages de M. Payen, 1663.
[25] French Grammar, 1662.
[26] Itinerary, 1617.
[27] Eva Scott, Travels of the King, pp. 279–80.
[28] Chamberlayne, op. cit. ii. p. 254.
[29] Jusserand, French Ambass. p. 206.
[30] Jusserand, idem. p. 193.
[31] Sorbière, Relation d'un voyage en Angleterre, 1664.
[32] Guide, pp. 156–58.
[33] Ibid. p. 293.
[34] Jusserand, op. cit.
CHAPTER II
Did Frenchmen Learn English in the Seventeenth Century?
It is generally supposed that no Frenchman before Voltaire's time ever took the trouble to learn English. Much evidence has been adduced in support of this opinion. In one of Florio's Anglo-Italian dialogues, an Italian traveller called upon to say what he thinks of English, answers that it is worthless beyond Dover.[35] In 1579, Jean Bernard, "English Secretary" to Henri III. of France, deplored the fact that English historians wrote in their mother-tongue, because no one understood them on the Continent.[36] Not one contributor to the Journal des Savans, then the best French literary paper, could read in 1665 the Transactions of the Royal Society. "It is a pity," wrote Ancillon in 1698, "that English writers write only in English, because foreigners are unable to make use of their works."[37] Misson, a French traveller, said: "The English think their language the finest in the world, though it is spoken only in their isle."[38] "I know by experience," wrote Dennis the critic in 1701, "that a man may travel over most of the western parts of Europe without meeting there foreigners who have any tolerable knowledge of English."[39] As late as 1718, Le Clerc regretted that only a very small number of Continental scholars knew English.[40] Those who had learned to speak it out of necessity, soon forgot it when they went back to France.[41]
To Frenchmen, English appeared a barbarous dialect, most difficult to master. "Few foreigners, above all Frenchmen," said Harrison, "are able to pronounce English well."[42] A hundred years later, Le Clerc declared it "as difficult to pronounce English well as it is easy to read an English book; one must hear Englishmen speak, otherwise one is unable to master the sound of certain letters and especially of the th, which is sometimes a sound approaching z and sometimes d, without being either."
So, while the English not only watched the progress of French literature but were carefully informed about the internal difficulties of France, the French knew the English writers merely by their Latin works; and at a turning-point in history the French diplomatists, through their ignorance of the real situation of James ii., were caught napping when the Revolution broke out.
No doubt all this is true; but it remains, nevertheless, a little venturesome to assert that up to the eighteenth century Frenchmen neglected to learn English. The intercourse between the two countries has always been so constant that, in all ages, English must have been familiar, if not to large sections of society, at least to certain individuals in France. In the Middle Ages, the authors of the Roman de Renart had a smattering of English,[43] and in the sixteenth century Rabelais was able not only to put a few broken sentences in the mouth of his immortal Panurge, but to risk a pun at the expense of the Deputy-Governor of Calais.[44]
In an inquiry the like of which we are now instituting, it is expedient not to lose sight of leading events. A war will make trade slack and hinder relations between the two countries; on the contrary, emigration caused