The Anglo-French Entente in the Seventeenth Century. Charles Bastide
the word," says Madame de la Fayette, "is common to both languages, M. Feuillet, the father-confessor, heard it and interrupted the conversation, saying she should give up her life to God and not dwell on any other consideration."[62] In her death throes, the unfortunate princess seems to have found relief in talking her mother-tongue, for it is in English that she instructed her senior waiting-woman to "present the Bishop of Condom (Bossuet) with an emerald."
The men of letters were in close touch if not with the Court at least with the nobles their patrons. In the sixteenth century, many French writers and poets crossed the Channel. The list includes Ronsard, Du Bartas, Jacques Grévin, Brantôme.[63] The latter uses the word good cheer, and it is said that Ronsard learned English.
In the following century there came to London, Boisrobert, Voiture, Saint-Amant, Théophile de Viau. Saint-Evremond lived in England many years without learning more than a few words, such as those he quotes in his works: mince pye, plum-porridge, brawn, and Christmas. Albeit Saint-Evremond is credited with a free translation of Buckingham's "Portrait of Charles ii.," Johnson was probably right in saying that "though he lived a great part of a long life upon an English pension, he never condescended to understand the language of the nation that maintained him."[64] But Jean Bulteel, the son of a refugee living in Dover, adapted a comedy of Corneille to the English stage (1665).
Scholars were more curious of reading the works of their English confrères. The English then had the reputation of being born philosophers. "Among them," wrote Muralt the traveller, "there are men who think with more strength and have profound thoughts in greater number than the wits of other nations."[65] The works of Hobbes had caused a great stir on the Continent. His frequent and prolonged stays in France, his disputes with Descartes, his relations with Mersenne and Sorbière, contributed to his fame. A little later, the names of Locke and Newton were known. As early as 1668, Samuel Puffendorf inquired of his friend Secretary Williamson whether there existed an English-French or English-Latin dictionary.[66] Bayle wished to read the works of those new thinkers. "My misfortune is great," he wrote, "not to understand English, for there are many books in that tongue that would be useful to me."[67] Barbeyrac learned English on purpose to read Locke.[68] Leibniz was proud enough to inform Bishop Burnet that he knew enough English "to receive his orders in that tongue"; yet, for him Aberdeen University remained l'université d'Abredon.[69]
The teachers of French in England were almost men of letters, the number and variety of books they wrote showing how vigorously they wielded the pen. We may remember here Bernard André of Toulouse, who taught Henry viii. French, Nicolas Bourbon, a friend of Rabelais, Nicolas Denisot, French master to Somerset's daughters. Then came Saint-Lien, whose productions would fill a library,[70] James Bellot,[71] Pierre Erondel,[72] Charles Maupas,[73] Paul Cougneau.[74]
After the Restoration may be noted Claude Mauger,[75] Guy Miège,[76] Paul Festeau, "maître de langues à Londres,"[77] d'Abadie,[78] Pierre Bérault, "chapelain de la marine britannique." "If," wrote the latter in his quaint Nosegay or Miscellany of Several Divine Truths (1685), "any gentleman or gentlewoman hath a mind to learn French or Latin, the author will wait upon them; he lives in Compton Street, in Soo-Hoo Fields, four doors of the Myter." These men spread the taste of French manners and French books. One of the more obscure among them, Denis, a schoolmaster at Chester, taught Brereton, the future translator of Racine.
The most unpardonable ignorance was that of most of the travellers. Under Etienne Perlin's pen (1558) Cambridge and Oxford are transmuted into Cambruche and Auxonne; Dartford becomes Datford with Coulon (1654); Payen calls the English coins crhon, toupens, farden (1666); even sagacious Misson prefers the phonetic form coacres (quakers) and coacresses (quakeresses) (1698). Sorbière travelled about England, meeting some eminent men of the time, without knowing a word of English.[79] They have for excuse their extraordinary blindness. Thus Coulon does not hesitate to deliver his opinions on the English language, which he calls "a mixture of German and French, though it is thought that it was formerly the German language in its integrity." As for Le Pays, he candidly owns that he would have found London quite to his taste if the inhabitants had all spoken French (1672).
If the travellers, like the ambassadors, were content to glance contemptuously at the strange country, the Huguenots, who were compelled by fate or the royal edicts to live in England, showed more curiosity. On those foreign colonies of London and the southern ports we now possess accurate information.
Let us leave aside Shakespeare's Huguenot friends;[80] we have the evidence of Bochart, minister at Rouen; the Huguenot settlers in England in the first half of the seventeenth century would learn English, attend church services, and receive communion at the hands of the bishops.[81] The earliest translations of English works came from Huguenot pens. In August 1603, Pierre De l'Estoile, the French Evelyn, records how "Du Carroy and his son, together with P. Lebret, were released from prison, where they were confined for printing in Paris the Confession of the King of England (a pamphlet by James i. setting forth his Anglican faith); whence they should have been liberated only to be hanged but for the English ambassador's intercession; so distasteful to the people was that confession, in which mass was termed an abomination."[82]
A glance at the Nouvelles ordinaires de Londres, the weekly French gazette published in French during the Commonwealth and the Protectorate,[83] will convince any one that the editor knew English well: in those pages there are no traces of "coacres" for "quakers." Proper names are always spelt correctly, be they ever so numerous. The readers know both languages, otherwise what use would there be to advertise in the gazette a recently-published devotional English work?[84] However, they could not be expected to help their countrymen to read Shakespeare, for they felt the Puritan's dislike for the stage; witness the satisfaction with which is recorded the arrest by Cromwell's musketeers of a company of players "at the Red Bull in St. John's Street."[85]
If the translation of Eikon Basiliké was due to Porrée and Cailloué, both Huguenots, Milton's reply was translated by a pupil of the Huguenot Academy of Sedan, the Scotsman John Dury.
After the Restoration, the information is still more abundant. In 1662, Mauger writes that "he has seen many Frenchmen in London, able to speak English well."[86] Translations become more