THE ANGLO-FRENCH ENTENTE IN THE XVII CENTURY
BY CHARLES BASTIDE
ON THE ROAD TO CALAIS
THE ANGLO-FRENCH ENTENTE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
By CHARLES BASTIDE
Even as a hawke flieth not hie with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellency with one tongue.
Ascham.
LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV
Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh
INTRODUCTION
Of late there have appeared on the literary relations of England and France some excellent books, foremost of which may be mentioned, besides the now classical works of M. Jusserand, Dr. A. H. Upham's French Influence in English Literature and Sir Sidney Lee's French Renaissance in England.
The drift of the main argument set forth in those several volumes may be pointed out in a few words. Up to the death of Louis xiv., France gave more than she received; but, in the eighteenth century, England paid back her debt in full. France, intended by her geographical position to be the medium through which Mediterranean civilisation spread northwards, continued by her contributions to the English Renaissance and the influence of her literary models on the Restoration writers, a work that historians trace back to Caesar's landing in Britain, Ethelbert's conversion to Christianity, and the triumph of the Normans at Hastings. But ere long the native genius of the people asserted itself. Thanks to a series of lucky revolutions, England reached political maturity before the other Western nations, and, in her turn, she taught them toleration and self-government. The French were among the first to copy English broad-mindedness in philosophy and politics; to admire Locke and Newton; and to practise parliamentary government.
To books that lead up to conclusions so general may succeed monographs on minor points hitherto partly, if not altogether, overlooked. In the following essays will be found some information on the life that Frenchmen led in England in the seventeenth century and at the same time answers to a few not wholly uninteresting queries. For instance: was it easy to journey from Paris to London, and what men cared to run the risk? Did the French learn and, when they settled in England, did they endeavour to write, English correctly? Though the two nations were often at war, many Englishmen admired France and a few Frenchmen appreciated certain aspects of English life; how was contemporary opinion affected by these men? Though England taught France rationalism in the eighteenth century, must it be conceded that rationalism sprang into existence in England? when English divines proved overbold and English royalists disrespectful, they might allege for an excuse that Frenchmen had set the bad example. Hence the importance of noticing the impression made by the Huguenots on English thought.
Since nothing gives a stronger illusion of real life than the grouping of actual facts, extracts and quotations are abundant. They do not only concern governors and generals, Cromwell and Charles ii., but men of the people, an Aldersgate wig-maker, a Covent Garden tailor, a private tutor like Coste, and poor Thémiseul, bohemian and Grub Street hack.
The danger of the method lies in possible confusion, resulting from the crowding together of details. But the anecdotes, letters, extracts from old forgotten pamphlets, help to build up a conviction in which the one purpose of the book should be sought.
The history of the relations of France and England in the past is the record of the painful endeavours of two nations to come to an understanding. Though replete with tragical episodes brought about by the ambition of kings, and the prejudices and passive acquiescence of subjects, the narrative yields food for helpful reflections. In spite of mutual jealousy and hatred, the two nations are irresistibly drawn together, because, having reached the same degree of civilisation, they have need of each other; whereas the causes that keep them apart are accidental, being royal policy, temporary commercial rivalry, some estrangement too often ending in war through the selfishness of party leaders; yet the chances of agreement seem to grow more numerous as the years roll by; and the unavoidable happy conclusion makes the narrative of past disunion less melancholy.
The fantastic dream of one generation may come true for the next succeeding ones. Did Louis xiv. and William iii. think that while their armies were endeavouring to destroy each other in Flanders, and their fleets on the Channel, some second-rate men of letters, a few divines who wrote indifferent grammar, a handful of merchants and skilled workmen were paving the way for peace more surely than diplomatists? The work of those cosmopolites was quite instinctive: they helped their several nations to exchange ideas as insects carry anther dust from one flower to another. Voltaire was probably the first deliberately to use the example of a foreign nation as an argument in the controversy which he carried on against tradition and authority, and, in that respect, he proved superior to his more obscure predecessors.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help I have received while collecting material. My thanks are due above all to M. Mortreuil of the Bibliothèque Nationale, to whose unfailing kindness I owe much; and to M. Weiss, the courteous and learned librarian of the Bibliothèque de la Société pour l'histoire du protestantisme français. Nor shall I omit the authorities of the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. I desire also to express my thanks to Mr. W. M. Fullerton, Dr. F. A. Hedgcock, Mr. Frederic Cobb, MM. Lambin and Cherel.
I must add that the chapters on the political influence of the Huguenots, that appeared some years ago in the Journal of Comparative Literature, of New York, have been rewritten.
To the readers of Anglais et Français du dix-septième Siècle an explanation is owing. If the original title is retained only in the headlines, it is because, on the eve of publication, a book appeared bearing almost the same title. They will, it is hoped, hail in the short-lived Anglo-French entente of Charles ii.'s time, the forerunner of the present "cordial understanding."
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Introduction [v]
I. From Paris to London under the Merry Monarch [1]
II. Did Frenchmen learn English in the Seventeenth Century? [19]
III. Specimens of English written by Frenchmen [39]
IV. Gallomania in England (1600-1685) [62]
V. Huguenot Thought in England (First Part) [77]
VI. Huguenot Thought in England (Second Part) [114]
VII. Shakespeare and Christophe Mongoye [142]
VIII. French Gazettes in London (1650-1700) [149]
IX. A Quarrel in Soho (1682) [167]
X. The Courtship of Pierre Coste, and other Letters [176]
XI. The Strange Adventures of the Translator of Robinson Crusoe, the Chevalier de Thémiseul [207]
Index [229]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
On the Road to Calais (see p. 4) [Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
The Fortune-Teller, after Arnoult [36]
A French Coquette at her Toilet-Table [66]
The Duchess of Portsmouth as a Leader of Fashion [70]
"L'Anglais," Popular Representation of an Englishman, c. 1670, after Bonnart [74]
A Scheme of the Persecution [100]
Jean Claude, the Huguenot Divine [120]
Louis XIV. destroys Heretical Books [140]
"Nouvelles ordinaires de Londres," Number I [156]
At Versailles, after Bonnart [164]
The French Tailor, after Arnoult [168]
Pierre Bayle, Refugee and Man of Letters [204]
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay, Secretary of State, 1690, after Mignard [222]
ANGLO-FRENCH ENTENTE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER I
From Paris to London under the Merry Monarch
"The French," wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "are the most travelled people. The English nobility travel, the French nobility do not; the French people travel, the English people do not." Strange as the fact appears, our forefathers in the seventeenth century, even as in the eighteenth, wandered over England as well as Spain or Italy, but they drew up their wills before setting out.
The nobility travelled little; only a royal injunction would cause a gentleman to forsake Versailles; the ambassadors left with reluctance. But there followed a suite of attachés, secretaries, and valets. One day, Secretary Hughes de Lionne had a mind to send his son to London. The young marquis was entrusted to the charge of three grave ambassadors; good advice therefore he did not lack, and we must believe his journey was not altogether distasteful as he was seen to weep when the day came for him to return.[1]
Next to official envoys stood unofficial agents, gentlemen who preferred exile to a more rigorous punishment; lastly, mere adventurers.
Not a few Frenchmen came over to England on business purposes. The Bordeaux wine merchant, the Rouen printer, the Paris glovemaker, could not always trust their English agents when some difficult question arose. Cardinal Mazarin's envoy mentions in his dispatches the "numerous Bordeaux merchants in London, some of whom are Catholics."[2] At the Restoration there existed a kind of French Chamber of Commerce, and, as early as 1663, the ambassadors extol the adroitness of one Dumas, who appears to have played the part of an unofficial consul-general.[3]
But there were travellers by taste as well as by necessity. Long before the word globe-trotter was added to the English language, not a few Frenchmen spent their lives wandering about the world, to satisfy a natural craving for adventure. Men of letters had been known to travel before Voltaire or Regnard. Shall we name Voiture, Boisrobert, Saint-Amant, the author of Moses, an epic ridiculed by Boileau? Saint-Amant celebrated his journey in an amusing poetical skit in which he complains of the climate, the splenetic character of the people, the rudeness of the drama. But most of the travellers preferred to note their impressions in ordinary prose. Some published guides. Those narratives enable us to find out how a Frenchman could journey from Paris to London under the Grand Monarch.
Then, as now, the travellers had the choice between the Calais and Dieppe routes. According to their social status, they would set out in a private coach, on horseback, or in the stage coach. The latter was not yet the diligence, it was a heavy cumbersome vehicle "neither decent nor comfortable," through the canvas cover of which the rain would pour.[4] It took five days to go from Paris to Calais. As travelling by night was out of the question, the traveller would put up at Beaumont-sur-Oise, Poix, Abbeville, Montreuil.
As soon as the traveller had passed the gates of the capital, his adventures began. When the Swiss servant fell off his horse, every one laughed because he received no more consideration than a "stout portmanteau."[5] Then the roads were bad: the coach might upset or stick fast in the mud. Dangers had to be taken into account as well as inconveniences: in November 1662, Ambassador Cominges quaintly congratulated himself upon avoiding "two or three shipwrecks on land," meaning that there were floods between Montreuil and Boulogne.[6] Another danger arose from the highwaymen who infested the country, and, in time of war, no one dreamed of leaving the shelter of a fortress such as Abbeville or Montreuil without getting previous information on the movements of the enemy in Flanders or Artois.[7]
A traveller will always complain of the inns; in the seventeenth century they seem to have been of more than Spartan simplicity: "We were no sooner got into our chambers," writes a distinguished traveller, "but we thought we were come there too soon, as the highway seemed the cleaner and more desirable place.... After supper, we retreated to the place that usually gives relief to all moderate calamities, but our beds were antidotes to sleep: I do not complain of the hardness, but the tangible quality of what was next me, and the savour of all about made me quite forget my supper."[8]
The illustration "On the road to Calais," taken from a contemporary print, gives a good idea of what an inn, the "Tin Pot" at Boulogne or the "Petit Saint-Jean" at Calais, then looked like. The scene is dreary enough, in spite of the picturesque bare-legged turnspit by the roaring wood-fire, the furniture is scanty, there are draughts, and the litter lying about spells slovenliness and discomfort.
In such a place, one must be as wary of one's fellow-travellers as of the rascally innkeepers. "One of the Frenchmen," Locke goes on to say, "who had disbursed for our troop, was, by the natural quickness of his temper, carried beyond the mark, and demanded for our shares more than we thought due, whereupon one of the English desired an account of particulars, not that the whole was so considerable, but to keep a certain custom we had in England not to pay money without knowing for what. Monsieur answered briskly, he would give no account; the other as briskly, that he would have it: this produced a reckoning of the several disbursements, and an abatement of one-fourth of the demand, and a great demonstration of good nature. Monsieur Steward showed afterwards more civility and good nature, after the little contest, than he had done all the journey before."
Those were minor difficulties next to what the traveller had to expect who was bold enough to cross the Channel. In 1609, Beaumont and Fletcher mention not without horror "Dover's dreadful cliffe and the dangers of the merciless Channel 'twixt that and Callis."[9] The passengers crossed on what would appear now a ridiculously small bark, which belonged to the English Post Office. The boat, pompously named "a packet-boat," attempted the passage twice a week, but did not always effect it. Even when the sea was calm the skipper had to wait for the tide before weighing anchor. If the tide turned in the night, the passengers would set up in an inn outside the walls of Calais because the gates closed at sunset, and, as about the same time a huge chain was stretched across the harbour's mouth, they were compelled to reach by means of a small cock-boat the bark anchored in the roads.
At last, the passengers being safely on board, the sails are set. Hardly has the wind carried the packet-boat beyond Cape Grisnez when the swell becomes uncomfortably perceptible. Nowadays we cross the Channel on fast steamers, but progress which has given us speed has not done away with the chief discomfort. Even as we do, so our forefathers dreaded sea-sickness.
Locke, good sailor as he was, rather coarsely jests at his fellow-traveller, the astronomer Römer: "I believe he will sacrifice to Neptune from the depths of his heart or stomach."[10] Those who have experienced the sufferings of a bad passage will sympathise with the Frenchman Gourville. "I went on board the packet-boat," he writes, "to go to Dover; at two or three leagues out at sea, we were beset by a dead calm; as I was very ill, I compelled the sailors to let down a small skiff not ten feet long; and two of them having got into it with their oars, I had trouble enough to find room; hardly had we rowed two leagues, when a gale arose that scared my two sailors. I got to land nevertheless and, no sooner had I drained a glass of canary, than I felt well again."[11] On coming back, Fortune did not favour him. The North Sea that he had thus braved, took her revenge. "I travelled post to Dover where I went on board the packet-boat. The winds being against us, I felt worse than the first time, and it took me three weeks to recover."
The time of crossing varied considerably. "The Strait of Dover," wrote Coulon, "is only seven leagues wide, so that with a fair wind one can cross from one kingdom to the other in three hours."[12] But then the wind was seldom fair. Generally it took twelve or fourteen hours to sail from Calais to Dover. The passengers always had to take the unexpected into account. "At 6 in the evening," Evelyn records in his Diary, "set saile for Calais, the wind not favourable. I was very sea sicke. Coming to an anker about one o'clock; about five in the morning we had a long boate to carry us to land tho' at a good distance; this we willingly enter'd, because two vessells were chasing us, but being now almost at the harbour's mouth, thro' inadvertency there brake in upon us two such heavy seas as had almost sunk the boate, I being neere the middle up in water. Our steeresman, it seems, apprehensive of the danger, was preparing to leape into the sea and trust to swimming, but seeing the vessell emerge, he put her into the pier, and so, God be thanked, we got to Calais, tho' wett."[13] Thus delays were frequent enough; for which fogs, contrary winds, and storms were chiefly responsible. No one appears to have grumbled much at the loss of time: the age was not one of quick travelling, and worse might befall a passenger than tossing about the Channel on a cold night. Many a seventeenth-century packet-boat met with the fate of the White Ship, when it did not fall into the hands of unscrupulous privateers. Under the Protectorate, the packet-boat was escorted by "a pinnace of eight guns";[14] but the improvident Government of Charles ii. left the merchants to guard their ships as well as they might.
Happy the passenger whose title, fortune, family connections or mere impudence secured him a place on one of the royal yachts! He had nothing to fear from the insolence or greed of the seamen, and instead of setting foot on a filthy tar-bespattered deck, he found, according to the Duc de Verneuil, "rooms which were admirably clean with foot carpets and velvet beds."[15]
But the traveller lands on English shores. Hardly has he left the boat when the Custom-House officers are upon him. The alert and courteous officials one meets with nowadays at Dover or Newhaven have little in common with their predecessors of the Restoration. The latter were coarse, ill-clad wretches bent on extorting from the travellers a pay that a needy Government held back. Useless to add, that they readily succumbed to the offer of a bribe. Even the Puritan Custom-House officers had been known for a consideration to wink at a forged pass. "Money to the searchers," observed Evelyn, "was as authentiq as the hand and seale of Bradshaw himselfe."[16]
When the Frenchman has got rid of these, he is confronted by the harbour-master, who demands the payment of a licence to pass over seas. Nor are his troubles at end: he needs must get the governor of the castle to affix his seal to the pass. If that exalted personage is out with the hounds, there is nothing to do but to await his return. There is not even the expedient of visiting the town to while away the time. Dover, in the seventeenth century, far from resembling the picturesque port we know closely nestling in a hollow of the white cliffs, held altogether "in one ill-paved street about a mile long" and lined with "tumbledown houses."[17]
What about the castle? "Built upon a chalky rock, very lofty and looking out to sea. It was formerly called the key to England, and, before cannon came into use, was considered impregnable; but at the present time it is used solely as a prison. It is placed too high for it to endanger any vessel, and by land it could not withstand half a day's regular siege."[18] The harassed traveller must needs bend his steps to an inn, probably the French inn, kept by one Lefort and his capable wife.[19]
Travellers never landed at Folkestone: it was then "a small poor-looking town, inhabited by fishermen."[20] Skippers seldom preferred Rye to Dover, which greatly puzzled Frenchmen. "Rye is built on a hill at the foot of which is a pretty good harbour which might accommodate all kinds of ships; but I cannot imagine why the haven is so neglected. I am sure the French or the Dutch would make it a very convenient haven, being at the mouth of a fine river. The port is blocked up by sandbanks, through the carelessness and idleness of the inhabitants and the selfish disposition of some of their neighbours, who have reclaimed from the sea a great part of the port and turned it into enclosed lands. But that is the people's business and not mine."[21]
At last the Frenchman, all formalities being disposed of, is free to pursue his journey. He may choose between a saddle horse or a coach. According to Chamberlayne, the charge for a horse was threepence a mile, besides fourpence a stage for the guide. The coach cost less: one shilling for five miles.[22] In a few hours the traveller would reach Gravesend and there he would take boat up to London Bridge.
Coulon gives a slightly different route: Dover to Gravesend via Canterbury, Sittingbourne, and Rochester; Gravesend to London via Dartford (spelt by Coulon Datford). By the way, he copies a sixteenth-century guide-book, Jean Bernard's Traité de la Guide des Chemins d'Angleterre (1579).[23]
Travelling is both easier and quicker than in France, but there are dangers to look out for. "Take heed," cautions Jean Bernard, "of a wood called Shuttershyll (Shooter's Hill) or the Archers' Hill, very perilous for travellers and passers-by on account of the thieves and robbers, who would formerly take refuge there." Even under the Merry Monarch, marauders lurked about every main road.
One of the guide-book writers, the Lyonnese Payen, has handed down to us a very curious computation, which it is worth while to transcribe:—
"TABLE OF THE ROADS, OF THE INNS AND THE EXPENSE TO BE INCURRED"
"FROM PARIS TO ENGLAND"
"Dieppe: 30 leagues.
Lodge at Place Royale and pay per meal, 20 sous.
Rye: 30 leagues.
Pay for the Channel crossing, 3 livres.
Lodge at the Ecu de France and pay for meal, 15 sous.
Gravesend: 30 leagues.
Pay by post, 9 livres.
Lodge at Saint Christopher's and pay per meal, 20 sous.
London: 10 leagues.
Pay by boat on the Thames, 10 sous.
Lodge at the Ville-de-Paris, at the Common Garden, and pay for meal, 12 sous."[24]
The Ville-de-Paris was a French inn, and the landlord at the time was one Bassoneau, as Claude Mauger records in his delightful dialogues.[25]
M. Payen was a wise man; as he travelled without ostentation, he managed to get from Paris to London spending about 26 francs or a little over. In London, he could rent a room for four shillings a week.
It is interesting to compare the above account with that of Fynes Moryson, an Englishman writing some thirty-five years previously. Choosing the longer route at a time when civil wars had made the roads round Paris impassable, he took boat from Paris to Rouen, was three days going down the river and paid the boatman "one French crown" or three francs. His meals had cost him 15 sous in Paris, but he was charged only 12 for them in Rouen, and the hostler told him that before the religious wars the price of a meal was as low as 8 sous. Along the road the innkeepers asked 15 sous, the price of the supper including lodging for the night. Yet, he exclaims, "all things for diet were cheaper in France than they used to be in England." From Rouen he rode to Dieppe and there took passage to Dover for "one crown." Odd expenses he duly recorded: 10 sous for a "licence to pass over sea" plus 5 sous gratuity to the officer; 10 sous "for my part in the hire of a boat to draw our ship out of the haven." It took him fourteen hours to sail to Dover. There he had to disburse sixpence for a seat in the boat that carried the passengers ashore. The rest of the journey was easy, though two little mishaps happened to him: in Dover he was taken into custody on suspicion of being a papist and brought before the Mayor; on his arrival in his sister's house in London, the servants sought to drive him from the door, not one of them recognising in the dirty, ill-clad, lean stranger the gentleman who had set out for his travels ten years before.[26]
Political changes have, as well as private misfortunes, obliged a great man to travel under conditions which to the most humble would appear trying enough. The details of Charles ii.'s flight after the defeat at Worcester are now known with the utmost accuracy. Extraordinary adventures, including the episode of the famous Boscobel oak, brought the royal outlaw to the little port of Shoreham in Sussex, where the captain of a brig bound for Poole with a cargo of coal consented to take him over to France. On 25th October 1651, about seven or eight o'clock, the tide came up and they set sail. No sooner did the boat stand to sea than Charles began playing a little comedy to avert suspicions. Drawing near the men, he told them he was a merchant fleeing from his creditors, but with money owing to him in France. He entreated them to induce the captain to sail for the coast of Normandy, and made them a gift of twenty shillings. After feigning to refuse, the captain ended by listening to the men's entreaties. Next morning the coast of Normandy was sighted, but the wind failing, they had to cast anchor two miles from Fécamp. Thereupon a sail came in sight and the captain fancied it might be an Ostend privateer. A boat was instantly lowered, and the King, together with Wilmot, reached the port with all possible speed.
On the 27th, Charles and Wilmot took horses for Rouen. At the inn where they resolved to stay, they were mistaken for thieves, so disreputable was their appearance, and, no doubt, trouble would have befallen them had not some English merchants vouched for their respectability. Refreshed and supplied with new clothes more befitting their rank, the two wanderers set out for Paris, the day after, in a coach.
Forty-eight hours later, they had reached the capital. Having slept at Fleury, they arrived on the 30th at Magny, where Queen Henrietta, James Duke of York, the Duc d'Orléans and a number of gentlemen met them. Late at night Charles, much tired but always good-humoured, entered the Louvre. "His retinue," wrote the Venetian ambassador, "consisted of one gentleman and one servant; his costume was more calculated to induce laughter than respect; his appearance was so changed that the outriders who first came up with him, thought he must be one of his own servants."[27]
To-day, in London, one may read every morning letters from France. It was not so three centuries ago. The mails for France, the "ordinary," as it was then called, left London twice a week, on Monday and Thursday.[28] An answer would be forthcoming a fortnight later, if no mishap had taken place, that is to say, if the carrier had not been drowned on the way,[29] or if the Secretary of State had not caused the bags to be opened in his office. "Here," wrote Cominges to Louis xiv., "they know how to open letters with more dexterity than anywhere in the world; they think it the right thing to do and that no one can be a great statesman without prying into private correspondence."[30] The Record Office preserves the melancholy letters that never reached those to whom they were addressed.
The present house-to-house delivery of letters was unknown. They had to be called for at the Post Office in Lombard Street. Contemporary guides never fail to give a lengthy description of the building, and the grand court where the City merchants used to walk up and down while the officers sorted the foreign mails.
Frenchmen of rank seldom leave London. "The quarter of the Common Garden is ordinarily that of the travelling Frenchmen, more busy at Court than at the Exchange.... Most of our young Frenchmen who go to London know only that region, and have ventured only as far as the Exchange by land or the Tower by water."[31]
How does the Frenchman of rank spend his time in London? Moreau de Brazey has answered the question in the most satisfactory manner: "We rise at nine, those who assist at the levees of great men have plenty to do till eleven; about twelve, the people of fashion assemble in the chocolate and coffee houses; if the weather is fine, we take a walk in Saint James's Park till two, when we go and dine. The French have set up two or three pretty good inns for the accommodation of foreigners in Suffolk Street, where we are tolerably well entertained. At the inn, we sit talking over our glasses till six o'clock, when it is time to go to the Comedy or the Opera, unless one is invited to some great lord's house. After the play one generally goes to the coffee-house, plays at piquet, and enjoys the best conversation in the world till midnight."[32]
At that late hour, the kind help of the City constable may be needed: "the watchmen or guards are so civil and obliging that they lead a foreigner to his home with a lantern; but if he rebels and is overbearing, they are content to lead him to the Roundhouse, where he spends the night till the fumes of the wine may have vanished."[33]
Though the guide-book has expatiated on the attractions of London life, the Frenchman soon gets weary. Neither the country nor the people please him. The English, he thinks, are haughty, fantastic, unfriendly. Moreover, they are melancholy because their climate engenders spleen. Complaints against the fogs ever recur in the ambassador's dispatches: "What I wish," wrote the Duc d'Aumont to the Marquis de Torcy (19th January 1713), "is that the fog, the air, and the smoke did not irritate my lungs." Courtin speaks in the same strain: "an ambassador here must be broad-shouldered. M. de Cominges has an everlasting cold that will follow him to the grave or to France, and I who am by nature of delicate health, have grown hoarse for the last four or five days and feel a burning in my stomach, with great pains in the side."[34] A bad winter, a fit of influenza, were enough to make the Grand Monarch's envoys loathe a country which they did not care to understand.
Never was a king worse informed by his ambassadors than Louis xiv. None of them dreamed of forsaking the Court to study the middle classes and the people. Of the institutions of England they knew what contemporary lawyers and archæologists had to teach. The love of freedom, the insular pride, they did not even suspect. Ignorant as they were, they tried by giving advice to the king, who mocked them, and money to his ministers, to subvert parliamentary government established at the price of six years of civil war and six years of dictatorship. "The French nobility do not travel"; when the gentlemen of France left Versailles they carried away with them their spirit of caste and narrow-mindedness. Forgetting nothing, they did not readily learn anything new.
But France had unofficial representatives beyond the Channel besides the royal envoys and their retinue of brainless young marquises.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Jusserand, French Ambassador at the Court of Charles ii., Appendix.
[2] Guizot, Répub. d'Angleterre, i. p. 420.
[3] Jusserand, French Ambassador at the Court of Charles ii.
[4] Babeau, Voyageurs en France, p. 78.
[5] Lettres de Locke à Thoynard (ed. Ollion), p. 35.
[6] Jusserand, French Ambassador at the Court of Charles ii.
[7] Evelyn, Diary, 12th November 1643.
[8] Locke, Journal in France, November 1675.
[9] 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 by civil war or religious persecution, an alliance, a royal marriage, may bring the neighbouring countries into closer touch. Then the inquiry must concern the different classes: the nobles, the merchants and bankers, the travellers, men of letters, and artisans. Even under Charles ii., it must have been imperative in certain callings for a Frenchman to understand English.
At the Court of France, it would have been thought absurd to learn English. "Let the gentleman, if he findeth dead languages too hard and the living ones in too great number, at least understand and speak Italian and Spanish, because, besides being related to our language, they are more extensively spoken than any others in Europe, yea, even among the Moors." The advice thus tendered by Faret[45] was followed to the letter. The French ambassadors in London were hardly ever able to spell correctly even a proper name.[46] Jean du Bellay wrote Guinvich for Greenwich, Hempton Court for Hampton Court, Nortfoch for Norfolk, and called Anne Boleyn Mademoiselle de Boulan. Sully, though sent twice to England, did not trouble to learn a word of the language. When Cromwell gave audience to Bordeaux, the "master of the ceremonies" acted as interpreter. Gourville, of whom Charles ii. said that he was the only Frenchman who knew anything about English affairs, acknowledges in his Mémoires that he could not understand English. M. Jusserand tells us in a delightful book[47] how one of Louis xiv.'s envoys wrote to his master that some one at Whitehall had greeted a speech by exclaiming "very well": "the Count de Gramont," he added, "will explain to your Majesty the strength and energy of this English phrase."
Ministers of State were as ignorant as ambassadors. In the Colbert papers, the English words are mangled beyond recognition. Jermyn becomes milord Germain; the Lord Inchiquin, le Comte d'Insequin; the right of scavage, l'imposition d'esdavache; and no one apparently knows to what mysterious duty on imports the famous minister referred when he complained of the English imposition de cajade.
The marriage of Henri iv.'s daughter Henrietta with an English king ought to have incited Frenchmen to learn English. We know that the Queen learned English and even wrote it.[48] She gathered round her quite a Court of French priests, artists, and musicians. There were "M. Du Vall, Monsieur Robert, Monsieur Mari,"[49] and "Monsieur Confess."[50] Even as Queen Elizabeth, Henrietta had French dancing-masters. Her mother-in-law, Queen Anne, chose Frenchmen as precentors in the Chapel Royal. Nicolas Lanier, one of these, became a favourite to Charles i., who employed him in buying abroad pictures for the Royal Gallery. When a mask was played at Court, Corseilles, a Frenchman, painted the scenery. It is owing to Queen Henrietta that French players, for the first time since the remote days of Henry vii., came over to London in 1629 and 1635 and were granted special privileges, such as the permission to perform in Lent.[51] They were not welcome to the people: a riot broke out at Blackfriars on their first visit, and, for reflecting on the Queen on the occasion of their second visit, Prynne the Puritan was prosecuted and cruelly punished.
At the Restoration, Charles ii. followed his mother's example. Yet we must guard against the tendency to exaggerate in the King a gallomania dictated more by reasons of policy than determined by taste. When he came to Paris for the first time in 1646 he could not speak a word of French,[52] and later on, he often hesitated to use a language that seemed unfamiliar.[53] Yet he had been taught French by an official in the Paris Post-house, who tampered with the letters coming into his hands, and in his hours of leisure wrote pamphlets in favour of the fallen House.[54]
The Frenchmen invited over to England after the Restoration do not appear to have known English. However, the Count de Gramont was an exception to the rule. They formed in Whitehall quite a colony: Cardinal D'Aubigny was the Queen's almoner, and Mademoiselle de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, the King's mistress; Louis de Duras, Earl of Feversham, commanded one of the regiments of guards; Nicolas Lefèvre, sometime professor of chemistry in Paris, was at the head of the Royal laboratory; Blondeau engraved the English coins; Fabvollière was the King's engineer, Claude Sourceau, the King's tailor; Paris players, the famous Bellerose among them, went to London and acted before the Court; Frenchmen were to be found even in the Royal kitchens, witness René Mézandieu, a serjeant in the Poultry Office.[55]
The Pepys papers yield proof of the general use then made of the French tongue. An Italian named Cesare Morelli writing to Pepys from Brussels in 1686 discards his mother-tongue; probably knows no English, so naturally uses French.
If the Frenchmen at the Court of Charles ii. did not learn English, the English summoned to Paris by Louis xiv. helped but little to make their language known. A curious thing happened: through living long in a foreign country, the exiled Englishman would forget his mother-tongue. Macaulay tells how the Irish Catholics that hurried back to England under James ii. appeared to be out of their element. Their uncouthness of expression stirred their countrymen's laughter.[56] One Andrew Pulton, returning after eighteen years' absence, asked leave, when called upon to dispute with Dr. Tenison, to use Latin, "pretending not to any perfection of the English tongue."
Colbert had occasion to reciprocate Charles ii. in inviting a few Englishmen to serve Louis xiv., such as one Kemps, "employed in the laboratory," and the portrait-painter Samuel Cooper. The minister's attention was often directed towards England, in which his political genius divined latent possibilities. But the financial transactions of Charles ii. had revolted his habits of honesty, and he distrusted the English, of whom his master Mazarin had had occasion to complain.[57] So he prepared to have recourse to Frenchmen. "M. Duhamel," writes his secretary De Baluze, "says that M. de Saint-Hilaire has written a memoir on the State of the Church in England and on the diversity of religions there, and has left the paper in England; but he will send it over as soon as he gets back."[58]
On the list of payments made to scholars can be read the name of M. de Beaulieu, "busy translating English manuscripts." Others besides Colbert needed English translators: "Père de la Chaise," Henry Savile wrote to ambassador Jenkins (29th July 1679), "has had the speeches of the five last Jesuits hanged in England translated into French."[59]
The rule laid down by Colbert was followed by his successors. By the side of ambassadors it became the habit to set interpreters or unofficial agents. Such, for instance, was Abbé Renaudot, "who knew English so well that he could not only translate Lord Perth's letters, but compose in English, either letters addressed to the French agents in England, or drafts of ordinances and proclamations in the name of James ii."[60] To him was due the French translation of the papers of Charles ii. and the Duchess of York, published by command of James ii.
No one about Henrietta of England, Charles ii.'s sister, wife to the Duc d'Orléans, seems to have thought of learning English. The Princess could discourse with the Duke of Buckingham about the "passion of the Count de Guiche for Madame de Chalais" without letting her voice drop to a whisper. No one among the bystanders understood what she was saying.[61] On her death-bed she summoned the English ambassador Montague and began talking English; at a certain moment she uttered the word "poison." "As 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 plentiful, as the Term Catalogues testify. Then there are precise facts: for instance, the first time Evelyn met Allix, the pastor at Charenton, Allix spoke Latin, in order to be understood by Archbishop Sancroft.[87] Three years later, Allix, now an English divine, was able to publish a book in English. M. de Luzancy, an ex-Carmelite, fled to England and abjured the Catholic faith at the Savoy in 1675. Becoming minister at Harwich, he had occasion to write to Pepys, and accordingly penned some excellent English. Another refugee, François de la Motte, was sent to Oxford by Secretary Williamson. A few months later, he was reported as able "to pronounce English better than many strangers who preach there," and, to show that he had not wasted his time, he wrote his benefactor a letter in English, preserved in the Record Office.[88] The quarrel that broke out in 1682 between French artisans living in Soho gave some humble Huguenot the opportunity of proving his knowledge of English.[89] When Saint-Evremond wished to read Asgill the deist's works, he had recourse to his friend Silvestre. Born in Tonneins, in South-Western France, in 1662, Silvestre had studied medicine at Montpellier, then went to Holland, and settled in London in 1688; "the King wished to send him to Flanders, to be an army-surgeon, but he preferred to stay in London, where he had many friends."[90]
After the Revolution, the number of Huguenots in England was so considerable that many of them became English authors: it is enough to quote the names of Guy Miège, Motteux, and Maittaire. But we now come to the eve of the eighteenth century when England and France, as in the Middle Ages, were brought into close touch. "Whereas foreigners," wrote Miège in 1691, "used to slight English as an insular speech, not worth their taking notice, they are at present great admirers of it."[91]
The merchants had to know English even as the refugees. While the French gentlemen at Court had no need to mix with the middle or lower classes, the merchants often had to see in person their English buyers. During the sixteenth century, simple grammars and lists of words were available. The Flanders merchants might learn from Gabriel Meurier, teacher of English in Antwerp, the author of a text-book printed at Rouen in 1563. Pierre De l'Estoile mentions in 1609 one Tourval, an "interpreter of foreign languages," then living in Paris;[92] none other, most probably, than the Loiseau de Tourval who contributed to Cotgrave's famous Dictionary. In 1622, a Paris printer issued La Grammaire angloise de George Mason, marchand de Londres.[93] Three years later appeared L'alphabet anglois, contenant la prononciation des lettres avec les déclinaisons et les conjugaisons, and La grammaire angloise, pour facilement et promptement apprendre la langue angloise. These publications must have found readers.
Information on the French merchants in England is scanty. They did not care to draw attention upon business transactions which a sudden declaration of war might at any time render illicit. But something is known about the printers.
About 1488, Richard Pynson, a native of Normandy and a pupil of the Paris University, settled in England. He became printer to Henry vii. and published some French translations. From the few extant specimens we may conclude that Pynson hardly knew how to write English. But he was the first of a line of French printers in England, the most famous of whom were Thomas Berthelet and the Huguenot Thomas Vautrollier.
As in 1912 an English firm print in England for sale on the Continent our French authors, so in 1503 Antoine Vérard, a Paris printer, published English books. When Coverdale had finished his translation of the Bible, he carried the manuscript over to France and entrusted it to François Regnault. This printer seems to have been an enterprising man, having in London an agency for the sale of the English books that he set up in type in Paris. The printing of the "Great Bible" was a lengthy task. In spite of the French king and the English ambassador Bonner, Regnault got into trouble with the authorities and the clergy. The "lieutenant-criminel" seized the sheets, but, instead of having them burnt by the hangman, as it was his duty to do, the greedy official sold them to a mercer who restored them to Regnault for a consideration. In the meantime presses and type and even workmen had been hurried to London, where the work was completed (1539). Nor must the provincial printers be forgotten, thus from 1516 to 1533 almost the whole York book-trade was in the hands of the Frenchman Jean Gachet.[94] Many books sold by English booksellers came from the presses of Goupil of Rouen or Regnault of Paris.
THE FORTUNE-TELLER
after Arnoult
The tradition of French printers in England was continued in the following century by Du Gard, the printer of certain Milton pamphlets and of the Nouvelles ordinaires de Londres, and Bureau, "marchand libraire dans le Middle Exchange, dans le Strand," most obnoxious to the French ambassador because a determined opponent of the French Court.
About French artisans and servants the information is, of course, of the most meagre description. There are merely allusions by the contemporary playwrights to the French dancing-master, fencer, or sweep, equally unable to pronounce English correctly, to the great merriment of the "groundlings."[95] However, a French valet, Jean Abbadie, who served many noblemen at the close of the seventeenth century, took the trouble to learn and could even write English.[96]
Now and then a name emerges from the obscure crowd. That, for instance, of "John Puncteus, a Frenchman, professing physick, with ten in his company," licensed "to exercise the quality of playing, for a year, and to sell his drugs";[97] or of Madame Le Croy (De La Croix), the notorious fortune-teller,
"Who draws from lines the calculations,
Instead of squares for demonstrations,"
and
"Imposes on
The credulous deluded town,"[98]
and no doubt carried on the dubious trade of her countrywoman "la devineresse," as recorded by Arnoult the engraver. We may fancy Madame La Croix slyly handing the billet-doux to the daughter, under the unsuspecting mother's very eyes.
Lower still we shall reach the criminal classes: adventurers, gamblers, robbers, and murderers. If the notorious poisoner, the Marquise de Brinvilliers, stayed in England but a short time in her chequered career, Claude Du Val the highwayman became famous in his adopted country as well for his daring robberies as for his gallantry to ladies:
"So while the ladies viewed his brighter eyes,
And smoother polished face,
Their gentle hearts, alas! were taken by surprise."[99]
The State Trials have preserved the name of a French gambler, De La Rue, who in 1696 acted as informer at the trial for high treason of Charnock and his accomplices.
It is difficult to go lower than these infamous men: our inquiry is at end. We shall conclude that if it is an exaggeration to state that the French as a rule learned English in the seventeenth century, it is true that individual instances may be found of Frenchmen learning English, and even speaking and writing it.[100] Though they did not help to spread either English manners or literature in France, they contributed in a most marked manner to make the English familiar with the French language.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Einstein, Italian Renaissance in England, p. 103.
[36] Guide des Chemins d'Angleterre, Preface.
[37] Jusserand, Shakespeare en France, p. 97.
[38] Mémoires et observations faites par un voyageur en Angleterre, 1698.
[39] Adv. and Ref. of Mod. Poetry, Ep. dedic.
[40] Bibliothèque choisie, xxviii., Preface.
[41] "Monsr Boyd ... has forgott, I believe, most of his English."—Original Letters of Locke, etc., p. 229.
[42] Description of Britain, bk. i. (1577).
[43] Jusserand, Histoire littéraire du peuple anglais, i. p. 149 n.
[44] Pantagruel, iii. ch. xlvii.
[45] L'honnête homme ou l'art de plaire à la cour.
[46] D'Estrades should be excepted. He knew English, so he was sent to the Hague.
[47] French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II.
[48] See Chap. III.
[49] Reyher, Masques, p. 81 sq.
[50] Ibid. p. 79.
[51] See Anglia, xxxii.
[52] Mémoires de Mlle de Montpensier, i. pp. 126, 211.
[53] Jusserand, French Ambassador, p. 203.
[54] Procès de Charles I., traduit de l'anglois, par le Sieur de Marsys, interprète et maistre pour la langue françoise du Roy d'Angleterre.
[55] Angliæ Notitia, p. 154.
[56] History of England, ch. vi.
[57] Cardinal Mazarin employed many secret agents under the Protectorate; he spoke of them as "double-dealing minds, whom no one can trust" (Correspondence, 25th April 1656).
[58] Lettres, mémoires et instructions de Colbert, vii. p. 372.
[59] Savile, Correspondence, p. 112.
[60] A. Villien, L'abbé Renaudot, p. 56.
[61] Madame de la Fayette, Histoire de Madame Henriette d'Angleterre, p. 182.
[62] Ibid. p. 205.
[63] See for details Sir Sidney Lee, French Renaissance.
[64] Life of Waller.
[65] Lettres sur les François et les Anglois, p. 10.
[66] State Papers, Dom., 1667-1668, p. 604.
[67] Lettres choisies, ii. p. 737.
[68] Essai sur l'Entendement (2nd ed.), Avis by Coste.
[69] Clarke and Foxcroft, Life of Burnet, pp. 361-62.
[70] The French Littleton, 1566; The French Schoole-Maister, 1573; A Dictionarie, 1584, etc.
[71] The French Grammar, 1578.
[72] The French Garden, 1605.
[73] A French Grammar and Syntax, 1634.
[74] A Sure Guide to the French Tongue, 1635.
[75] French Grammar, 1662.
[76] Dictionary, 1677.
[77] Nouvelle Grammaire Angloise, 1678.
[78] A New French Grammar, 1675.
[79] Relation d'un voyage, pp. 20, 169 (1664).
[80] See Chap. VII.
[81] Bochart, Lettre à M. Morley, p. 7.
[82] Journal de Henri IV., i. p. 354.
[83] See Chap. VIII.
[84] Nouvelles ordinaires de Londres, p. 1550.
[85] Ibid. p. 956.
[86] French Grammar, p. 288.
[87] Diary, 8th July 1686.
[88] See the letters of De la Motte and De Luzancy, printed in Chap. III.
[89] See Chap. IX.
[90] Saint-Evremond, Works, x. xxiii.
[91] New State of England, ii. p. 15.
[92] Journal de Henri IV., p. 526.
[93] Reprinted by Dr. Brotanek, Halle, 1905.
[94] E. Gordon Duff, English Provincial Printers, p. 58.
[95] Beaumont and Fletcher, Women Pleased, Act iv. Sc. 3.
[96] See Chap. III.
[97] Gildersleeve, Government Regulations of the Elizabethan Drama, p. 70.
[98] Poems on State Affairs, ii. p. 152.
[99] Butler, Pindarick Ode to the Happy Memory of the most renowned Du Val.
[100] Chap. III.
CHAPTER III
Specimens of English, written by Frenchmen[101]
MERIC CASAUBON
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (1635)
The chiefest subject of this booke is, the vanity of the world and all worldly things, as wealth, honour, life, etc., and the end and scope of it, to teach a man how to submit himselfe wholly to God's providence, and to live content and thankfull in what estate or calling soever. But the booke, I doubt not, will sufficiently commend itselfe, to them who shall be able to read it with any judgement, and to compare it with all others of the same subject, written either by Christians or Heathens: so that it be remembered that it was written by a Heathen; that is, one that had no other knowledge of any God, then such as was grounded upon naturall reasons meerely; no certaine assurance of the Immortality of the soule; no other light whereby hee might know what was good or bad, right or wrong, but the light of nature, and humane reason.... As for the Booke itselfe, to let it speake for itselfe; In the Author of it two maine things I conceive very considerable, which because by the knowledge of them, the use and benefit of the Booke may be much the greater then otherwise it would be, I would not have any ignorant of. The things are these: first, that he was a very great man, one that had good experience of what he spake; and secondly, that he was a very good man, one that lived as he did write, and exactly (as farre as was possible to a naturall man) performed what he exhorted others unto.
(Marcus Aurelius, His Meditations, translated out of the Originall Greeke, with Notes. London. 1635. Preface.)
On Reason (1655)
I think that man that can enjoy his natural wit and reason with sobriety, and doth affect such raptures and alienations of mind, hath attained to a good degree of madnesse, without rapture, which makes him so much to undervalue the highest gift of God, Grace excepted, sound Reason. It made Aristotle deny that any divination, either by dreams or otherwise, was from God, because not ignorant only, but wicked men also were observed to have a greater share in such, then those that were noted for either learning or piety. And truly I think it is not without some providence of God that it should be so; that those whom God hath blessed with wisdome, and a discerning spirit, might the better content themselves with their share, and be the more heartily thankfull. And in very deed, sound Reason and a discerning spirit is a perpetual kind of divination: as also it is somewhere called in the Scriptures.
(A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme, London, 1655, pp. 46-47.)
[Born in Geneva, in 1599, Méric Casaubon was educated in Sedan, followed his father Isaac to the Court of James I. and settled in England where he became prebendary of Canterbury.]
QUEEN HENRIETTA
Queen Henrietta of France to Prince Charles (April 15, 1646)
Deare Charles,—Having reseauved a lettre from the King[102] I have dispatch this berear, Dudley Wiatt to you, with the copie of the lettre, by which you may see the King's command to you and to me. I make no doubt that you will obey it, and suddeyneley; for sertainly your coming hither is the securitie of the King your father. Therfor make all the hast you can to showe yourself a dutifull sonne, and a carefull one, to doe all that is in your power to serve him: otherwise you may ruine the King and yourself.
Now that the King is gonne from Oxford, whether to the Scotch or to Irland, the Parliament will, with alle ther power, force you to come to them. Ther is no time to be lost, therfor loose none, but come speedeley. I have writt more at large to Milord Culpepper, to show it to your Counsell. Ile say no more to you, hoping to see you shortley. I would have send you Harry Jermin but he is goinge to the Court with some commands from the King to the Queen-Regente.
Ile adde no more to this but that I am your most affectionat mother,
Henriette Marie R.
For me dearest Sonne.[103]
MAUGER
Extract from Claudius Mauger's French Grammar (1662)
Courteous English reader, I need not to commend you this work, having already received such a general approbation in this noble country that in eight years of time it hath been printed foure times, and so many thousands at once. Only I thank you kindly if any of my countrymen, jealous of the credit that you have given it amongst yourselves, will speak against it, he doth himselfe more harm than to me, to be alone against the common voice of such a learned and heroical a Nation. Many think I beg of you. First of all be pleased to excuse me, if my English phrase do not sound well to your delicate ears. I am a learner of your tongue, and not a master; what I undertake 'tis to explain my French expressions; secondly, if any Frenchman (especially one that professeth to be a master of the Language) dispiseth it unto you, do not believe him, or if any other critical man will find faults where there are none, desire him to repair to the author, and you shall have the sport to see him shamefully convinced for some small errours of printing (although it is very exactly corrected, that cannot be hope if there be any, none but ignorants will take any advantage of them). I have added abundance of new short dialogue concerning for the most part the Triumphs of England, and a new State of France, as it is now governed, since Cardinal Mazarin's death, with two sheets, viz. the first and the last of the most necessary things belonging to the Learner, and so I desire you to make an acceptance of it. Farewell.
If anybody be pleased to find me out, he may enquire at the Bell in St. Pauls-Church-Yard, or else in Long-acre, at the signe of the French-armes at Mr. l'Anneau.
[Little is known of Claude Mauger, one of the numerous and obscure teachers of French who took refuge in London in the seventeenth century.]
PETER DU MOULIN
Peter Du Moulin's Defence of the French Protestants (1675)
My angry Antagonist, to make me angry also, giveth many attacks to the French Protestants ... he saith that they had Milton's Book against our precious King and Holy Martyr in great veneration. That they will deny. But it is no extraordinary thing that wicked Books which say with a witty malice all that can be said for a bad cause, with a fluent and florid stile, are esteemed even by them that condemn them. Upon those terms Milton's wicked Book was entertained by Friends and Foes, that were Lovers of Human Learning, both in England and France. I had for my part such a jealousie to see that Traytour praised for his Language that I writ against him Clamor Regii Sanguinis ad Cœlum.
That some of the Regicides were taken in the Congregations of the French Protestants is no disgrace to them. The Churches doors are open to all commers; false Brethren and Spies enter into it. But how much they detested their act, they exprest both in their Conversation and in printed Books, as much as the English Royalists.
His Lordship supposeth that they had a kindness for Cromwell, upon this ground, that Cromwell had a kindness for them. Had his Lordship had any ground for that assertion by any act of theirs, he would have been sure to have told us of it. It is true that Cromwell did them that kindness by his interest with Mazarin to make them injoy the benefits of the Edicts made in their favour. He knew that it was the interest of the King of England (which he would have been) to oblige his Protestant Neighbours, and to shew himself the Head of the Protestant Cause.
(A Reply to a Person of Honour, London, 1675, pp. 39-41.)
[Eldest son to Pierre Du Moulin, pastor at Charenton, Peter Du Moulin studied at Sedan and Leyden, was tutor to Richard Boyle, took orders, threw in his lot with the royalists, and became in 1660 prebendary of Canterbury.]
FRANÇOIS DE LA MOTTE
Letter to Secretary Williamson (July 20, 1676)
Since I live here[104] on the gracious effects of your liberality I think I am obliged to give you an account of my behaviour and studies, and I do it in English, though I am not ignorant you know French better than I do. I do what lies in me to be not altogether useless in the Church of England. I have got that tongue already well enough to peruse the English books and to read prayers which I have done in several churches and I have made three sermons I am ready to preach in a fortnight. Some scholars I have showed them to, have found but very few faults in my expressions. I hope to do better in a short time, for I pronounce English well enough to be understood by the people, and have a great facility to write it, having perused to that end many of your best English divines, so I hope in three months to be able to preach every week. I hope your Lordship will make good my troubling you with this letter, considering I am in a manner obliged to do so to acknowledge the exceeding charity you have showed me which makes me offer every day my humble prayers to God for your prosperity.
[François de la Motte, an ex-Carmelite, came over to England, was befriended by Secretary Williamson, and owing to the latter's patronage entered the Church. The above letter is printed in Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1676-1677, p. 235. There are still extant a few sermons of this preacher.]
LOUIS DU MOULIN
Apology for the Congregational Churches (1680)
I think myself here obliged to add an Apology as to my own Account, for what I have said as to the Independant Churches. I do imagine I shall be accused at first for having made the description of the Congregational way, not according as it is in effect, but in that manner as Xenophon did the Cyropædia to be the perfect model of a Prince. They will say that any other interest than that of the inward knowledge I have of the goodness, truth, and holiness of the Congregational way, ought to have excited me to commend it as I have done. That I commend what I do not approve in the bottome of my heart, since I do not joyn my self to it.... To which, I answer that though I should joyn my self to their Assemblies, it would be no argument that I should approve of all the things they did, and all they believed, as they cannot conclude by my not joyning to their Congregations, that I have not the Congregational way in greater and higher esteem than any other. As I am a Frenchman, and by the grace of God of the Reformed Church, I joyn to the Church of my own Nation, to which I am so much the more strongly invited by the holiness of the Doctrines, and lives of our excellent Pastors, Monsieur Mussard and Monsieur Primerose, and because they administer the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the same manner as Jesus Christ did it with His Disciples; not having anything to give me offence in their conduct, unless that they are not absolutely undeceived of the practice of our Pastors in France, of excommunicating in the name and authority of Jesus Christ, and of interposing the same sacred Name, and the same sacred Authority to excommunicate as St. Paul made use of to deliver the Incestuous person over to Satan....
(Conformity of the Discipline and Government of the Independants to that of the Primitive Church, London, 1680, p. 54.)
[Second son to Pierre Du Moulin, Louis Du Moulin came to England with his father, and followed the fortunes of the Independents. He was seventy-four when he published the above work. He died three years after, at Westminster, confessing his errors, according to Bishop Burnet, whose zeal in this case got the better of his discretion.]
PIERRE DRELINCOURT
Speech to the Duke of Ormond (1680)
I should not presume to take up any part of that time, which your Grace so happily employs in the Government and Conservation of a whole Nation; nor to divert the rest of this honourable Board from those important Affairs, which usually call your Lordships hither; were I not under an Obligation both of Gratitude and Duty, to be an Interpreter for those poor Protestants, lately come out of France, to take Sanctuary with you: and to express for them and in their names, as they have earnestly desired me, a part of that grateful sense, which they have, and will for ever preserve, of your Lordships' Christian Charity and Generosity towards them: This they have often, I assure you, acknowledg'd to Heav'n in their Pray'rs, but cou'd not be satisfied, till they had made their solemn and publick Acknowledgments to their Noble Benefactors.
(A Speech made to His Grace the Duke of Ormond, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and to the Lords of the Privy Council, Dublin.)
[Pierre Drelincourt was the sixth son of Charles Drelincourt, the author of the famous Consolations, translated into English 1675, and to a later edition of which Defoe was to append the story of the ghost of Mrs. Veal. Pierre studied in Geneva, went over to England, took Orders and became Dean of Armagh. The Doctor Drelincourt of whom Coste speaks (see Chapter X.) was Pierre's brother.]
DE LUZANCY
Letter to Pepys (Jan. 18, 1688-89)
Sir,—I have bin desired by your friends to send you the inclos'd paper, by which you may easily be made sensible how we are overrun with pride, heat, and faction; and unjust to ourselves of the greatest honor and advantage which we could ever attain to, in the choice of so great and so good a man as you are. Had reason had the least place amongst us, or any love for ourselves, we had certainly carried it for you. Yet, if we are not by this late defection altogether become unworthy of you, I dare almost be confident, that an earlier application of the appearing of yourself or Sir Anthony Deane, will put the thing out of doubt against the next Parlement. A conventicle set up here since this unhappy Liberty of Conscience has bin the cause of all this. In the meantime, my poor endeavours shall not be wanting, and though my stedfastness to your interests these ten years has almost ruined me, yet I shall continue as long as I live,
Your most humble and most obedient Servant,
De Luzancy, Minister of Harwich.
(Corr. of Samuel Pepys, p. 740.)
[De Luzancy, an ex-monk, came over to England and became minister to the French congregation in Harwich. The above letter refers to an election at Harwich, when Pepys was not returned.]
GUY MIÈGE
On England and the English (1691)
As the country is temperate and moist, so the English have naturally the advantages of a clear complexion; not sindged as in hot climates, nor weather-beaten as in cold regions. The generality, of a comely stature, graceful countenance, well-featured, gray-eyed, and brown-haired. But for talness and strength the Western people exceed all the rest.
The women generally more handsome than in other places, and without sophistications, sufficiently indowed with natural beauties. In an absolute woman, say the Italians, are required the parts of a Dutch woman from the waste downwards, of a French woman from the waste up to the shoulders; and over them an English face.
In short there is no country in Europe where youth is generally so charming, men so proper and well proportioned, and women so beautiful.
The truth is, this happiness is not only to be attributed to the clemency of the air. Their easy life under the best of governments, which saves them from the drudgery and hardships of other nations, has a great hand in it.
For merchandizing and navigation, no people can compare with them but the Hollanders. For literature, especially since the Reformation, there is no nation in the world so generally knowing. And, as experimental philosophy, so divinity, both scholastick and practical, has been improved here beyond all other places. Which makes foreign divines, and the best sort of them, so conversant with the learned works of those famous lights of the Church, our best English divines.
In short, the English genius is for close speaking and writing, and always to the point.... The gawdy part and pomp of Rhetorick, so much affected by the French, is slighted by the English; who, like men of reason, stick chiefly to Logick.
(State of England, London, 1691, Part II., pp. 3-12.)
[Little is known of Guy Miège, a refugee who continued, under William iii., Chamberlayne's Angliæ Notitia.]