Ancient French school-books for English learners—Their historical and philological interest—Succession of writers and teachers—Hollyband, Florio, Delamothe, and others—Sketches of their work—Their imperfect acquaintance with our language—Other publications of an educational cast.
Ancient French school-books for English learners—Their historical and philological interest—Succession of writers and teachers—Hollyband, Florio, Delamothe, and others—Sketches of their work—Their imperfect acquaintance with our language—Other publications of an educational cast.
I. Turning to the French language, there is a very singular relic of early times in the shape of an Anglo-Gallic Vocabulary of the end of the fifteenth century, in which the spelling of both languages is strikingly archaic:—
“Here is a good boke to lerne to speke french.Vecy ung bon lievre a apprendre parler fraunchoys.In the name of the fader of the sonne.En nom du pere et du fils.And of the holy goost I will begynne.Et du saint esprit ie veuel cōmenchier.To lerne to speke frenche.A apprendre a parler franchoys.”
After this exordium follow the numbers, the names of precious stones, articles of merchandise, fruits, wines, &c.Wine of rochellis renderedvin de rosele. What we know asBeauneis calledbyanein French andbeaunein English. On the fourth page, among “Other maner of speche in frenche,” occur:—
“Sir god giue you good day.Sire dieu vous doint bon iour.Sir god giue you good euyn.Sire dieu vous doint bon vespere.Holde sir here it is.Tenez sire le veez ey.”
Thezintenezseems to have been specially cut, for it is of a different font or case, and, curiously enough, in the next sentence it is wrongly inserted inditez(fordites). The question is asked how much one man owes another, and the reply isten shillings, for which the French equivalent is taken to bedix soulz. But there were no shillings in England at that time;perhaps the writer was thinking of the skilling, with which our coin has no more than a nominal affinity.
TheEclaircissement de la langue Françoise, by John Palsgrave, 1530, and theIntroductory to learn, pronounce, and speak the French tongue, by Giles Du Wes or Dewes, written some years later for the use of the Princess Mary in the same way as Linacre’sLatin Grammarhad been, are sufficiently familiar from their reproduction in modern times under the auspices of the French Government. Dewes was not improbably related to a person of the same name who acted as preceptor to the son of Cromwell, Earl of Essex. Both he and Palsgrave were professional teachers; but Palsgrave was a Londoner, who had completed his studies in the Parisian Gymnasium; and he at all events was a Latin, no less than a French scholar. In the dedication of his English version of theComedy of Acolastusto Henry VIII. in 1540, he speaks at some length, and in laudatory terms, of the official Primer issued in that year, and he also conveys to us the notion of being then advanced in life.
Nearly, if not quite, contemporary with himand Dewes was Pierre du Ploiche, who in the time of Henry published a very curious little volume of more general scope, calledA Treatise in English and French right necessary and profitable for all young children. Du Ploiche, when this work appeared, was residing in Trinity Lane, at the sign of the Rose. He gives us in parallel columns, the English on the left hand, and the French equivalent on the right, theCatechism, theLitany and Suffrages, and a series ofPrayers. These occupy three sections; the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections are devoted to secular and familiar topics:For to speake at the table,for to aske the way, andfor to bie and sell; and the concluding portion embraces the A. B. C. and Grammar.
The English is pretty much on a par with that found in educational treatises produced by foreigners, and the French itself is decidedly of an archaic cast, though, doubtless, such as was generally recognised and understood in the sixteenth century. I shall pass over the religious divisions, and transcribe a few specimens from the three groups of dialogue on social or personal subjects.
The third chapter, where the scene at a meal is depicted, affords, of course, some interesting suggestions and illustrations, yet little that is very new, except that we seem to get a glimpse of the practice, borrowed from monastic life, of some one reading aloud while the rest were at their repast. For one says: “Reade Maynerd,Lisez Maynart,” to which the other rejoins: “Where shall I reade?” and the first answers: “There where your fellow lefte yesterday,” so that it was apparently the custom to take turns. We perceive, too, that the dinner was both ushered in and wound up with very elaborate graces. In this dialogue, as well as in the next about asking the way, there is mention of almost every description of utensil, but no reference to the fork, which was not yet in general use.
There is a delicate refinement of phraseology here and there, as where “You ly” is rendered “Vous espargnez la verité;” and Du Ploiche does not fail to advertise himself and his address, for when one of the interlocutors demands: “Where go you to schole?” the other is made to reply: “In trinytie lane at the signe of the Rose.”
The annexed extract from the same chapter may assist in fixing the date of the publication to 1544:—
The portion which yields this matter comprises all the incidents of a long journey, the arrival at the inn, the call for refreshment, the baiting and putting up of the horse, the retirement to rest, and the breakfast before departure in the morning.
The sixth section, on buying and selling, exhibits no remarkable examples, or rather nothing that I can, with so large a choice, afford to cite, and the grammatical part follows theusual lines. The present treatise came to a new edition in 1578, but it does not seem to have been very successful.
In point of fact, the taste and demand for such a class of hand-books or primers had not fully set in. With the reign of Elizabeth the habit of foreign travel and the consequent value of a conversance with languages, especially French and Italian, imparted the first marked stimulus and development to this class of literary enterprise.
II. Claude Desainliens, who transformed himself intoClaudius Holy-BandorHollyband, and who seems in his earlier days to have had quarters over or adjoining the sign of the Lucrece in St. Paul’s Churchyard, became a voluminous producer of the dictionaries, grammars, and phrase-books so popular in early times, and included in his range the Italian as well as the French series. Long after his death his works continued to be in demand, and were edited with improvements by others. Desainliens began, so far as I know, with hisFrench Littletonin 1566, and his French Dictionary was notprinted till 1593. In 1581 he had moved from the Lucrece to the Golden Ball, just by.
Perhaps of all his multifarious performances hisFrenchandItalian Schoolmasterswere the two which met with the greatest favour; and the longer career of the former may perhaps be ascribed to the more general cultivation of the French language in England. TheItalian Schoolmasteroriginally appeared in 1575 as an annex to a version of the story ofArnalte and Lucenda; but in the subsequent impressions of 1597 and 1608 the philological portion occupies the place of honour, and the story is made to follow. In the former the rules for pronunciation and such matter as fell within his knowledge as an Italian may be passed as representing what was the correct practice and view at the period; it is with the English illustrations and equivalents that one is apt to be surprised and amused; and one, moreover, figures the occasional bewilderment even of an English pupil at the strange unidiomatic forms which Desainliens has adopted. In other words, instead of translating English into Italian, he has translated Italian into broken English; as, for instance,where in a dialogue a man is inquiring the way to London, we find at the conclusion such pureItalicismsasHave me recommended: I am yours: Remaine with God. Then, again, terms are misapplied, of course, as thus: “Tell me deere fellowe, is it yet farre to the citie?” And when he has entered his inn, he calls to the host: “Bring me for to wash my hands and face.” At the same time the pages of this and similar volumes abound with fruitful illustrations of all kinds, which we should have been very sorry indeed to lose; and it is to be recollected that the English gloss was secondary, and that the bizarre style and texture of this class of book arose from the aim at enabling the learner to be prepared for all sorts of occasions and every variety of conversational topic. The author consequently leads him through the different occupations and incidents of life, and imagines successive interviews and dialogues with such persons as he would be likely to encounter. In the parley with a farrier, it comes out that the charge for shoeing a horse was fivepence a foot; and in the sectionPer maritarsi = To be married, Hollyband starts by renderingO bella giovane“Ho fair maiden.” He urges her to be prompt in her decision by citing the proverb, “Ladie, whilest the iron is hote, it must be wrought.”
Much of the matter introduced by Desainliens is highly curious and even important. I shall transcribe a section or two, as they are brief, for the sake of the English suggestions:—
“To sing and daunce.“O fellowes, I wish that wee shoulde sing a song, and I will take the lute.Let vs sing and daunce, when you will.Mystres, will it please you to daunce a galliard with me? pray you therefore.I cannot daunce after the Italian fashion.We shall daunce after the high Dutch.Go to, play a galliard vpon the violl.I would rather vpon the virginals....Of the Booke binder.Shew me an Italian, and English bookes and of the best print.I have none bound at this present.Bind me this with silke and claspes....Reach me royall paper to write.Neede you any ynke and bombash?No, but wast paper, & of that which wee call drinking paper....Of the Shoemaker.I would you shoulde make mee a paire of bootes, a ierkin, and a paire of shoes, pantofles, mules, and buskins.We will make thē sir, & of good leather.See this faire shooing.Put on those pompes....”
“To sing and daunce.
“O fellowes, I wish that wee shoulde sing a song, and I will take the lute.Let vs sing and daunce, when you will.Mystres, will it please you to daunce a galliard with me? pray you therefore.I cannot daunce after the Italian fashion.We shall daunce after the high Dutch.Go to, play a galliard vpon the violl.I would rather vpon the virginals....
Of the Booke binder.
Shew me an Italian, and English bookes and of the best print.I have none bound at this present.Bind me this with silke and claspes....Reach me royall paper to write.Neede you any ynke and bombash?No, but wast paper, & of that which wee call drinking paper....
Of the Shoemaker.
I would you shoulde make mee a paire of bootes, a ierkin, and a paire of shoes, pantofles, mules, and buskins.We will make thē sir, & of good leather.See this faire shooing.Put on those pompes....”
After all, possibly, such publications as that before me are chiefly valuable for a purpose for which they were not designed—for the bounteous light which they shed on our old English customs and notions; and I do not think that they have been hitherto fully brought into employment. It is obviously impossible for me, however, in the present case to remedy this shortcoming, more particularly as the quotations suffer by curtailment or paraphrase.
TheArnalte and Lucendatakes up the major part of the volume, and must be said to be freer from grammatical inaccuracies than that division of the book devoted to grammar. Nor could a man live in London without catching some of the colloquialisms current among its residents. In hisItalian Phraseswe meet on the English side of the page with: “Hee looketh rather like a cutter or fencer then,” and“He goeth accompanied with Roisters and cutters.”
The French Dictionary of Desainliens was entirely superseded by that of Randle Cotgrave in 1611. The latter spared no pains to make his book a really valuable performance; he invited help from others, and modelled his labours on a fairly intelligible plan, and it remains to this day in the enlarged edition by Howell a standard and indispensable work of reference. It was the only one available for the school-boy and student for a considerable length of time.
III. Delamothe and Erondelle were contemporary with Desainliens, and may have been equally eminent and successful as teachers; but they did not display the same degree of literary activity. The former indeed produced nothing but aFrench Alphabet(1595). Pierre Erondelle was a native of Normandy; and besides new and improved editions of his predecessor Desainliens, he brought out in 1605 a quaint book of lessons for the acquisition of French, which he calledThe French Garden for English Ladies and Gentlemen to walk in; Or A Summer day’sLabour. The volume mainly consists of thirteen dialogues in French and English, embracing the various occupations of the day, from the first rising in the morning till bedtime. Some of the conversations are remarkable for their archaicnaivetéso far as English ideas of decorum in speech are concerned; but they are nothing more than the plainness of phrase which was once recognised both here and on the Continent, and the banishment of which has, at all events, not of itself added to our morality. Sterne, in hisSentimental Journey, signalises as a French trait the incident of the lady of quality with whom he drove in her carriage; but he must have been aware that the tone in the same circles at home was equally pronounced; and editors of the earlier Georgian literature have to exercise a pruning hand in dealing with MSS. to be presented now-a-days to public view.
Another of these foreign professors was Jacques Bellot, who published several educational works for the instruction of the English in the French grammar and language. Among theseLe Jardin de Vertu et Bonnes Moeurs, 1581, where the English and French are given, asusual, in parallel columns, is the most remarkable. There is a Table ofErratafor both languages; but that for the English might, from a native point of view, be indefinitely extended, as Bellot proves himself as incapable of comprehending our idiom as the rest of his countrymen. He renders “La memoire du prodigue est nulle” by “Of the prodigall ther is no memory,” and “La seulle vertu est la vraye noblesse” by “The only vertue, is the true nobilitie.”
The writer trips, as may be conjectured, just in those nice points in which even an Englishman is not always at home.
New and improved systems were continually submitted to the public, or rather, in the language of those days, to the Nobility and Gentry. In 1634, the Grammar of Charles Maupas of Blois, an esteemed and experienced teacher, who during a career of thirty years numbered among his pupils many of the young men of family in Holland as well as in England, was adapted by William Aufield for the use of his countrymen. The original is still regarded as a standard work, though discarded by the schools. Both the French and English are of the antiquecast, of course, and many of the examples and much of the phraseology are obsolete; but the book was written for Frenchmen and translated for Englishmen, to both of whom the speech of these days would have seemed at least equally strange, and proved not less embarrassing.
The pages of Maupas, as he is presented to us in his English dress, acquire an oddity and an almost humorous side, which are absent from the French text itself; as, for instance:—
“Of making Stop.“Holà, ho there, prou well, well, so so; assez enough, enough; demeure, arreste, stay, stay, budge not.”“Of feeling Pain.“Aou, haou, aouf, ah, of, alas. The same words will serve in English.”“Of Joy.“Gay, deliait, alaigrement, heighday, as a man woud wish, merrily then.”
“Of making Stop.
“Holà, ho there, prou well, well, so so; assez enough, enough; demeure, arreste, stay, stay, budge not.”
“Of feeling Pain.
“Aou, haou, aouf, ah, of, alas. The same words will serve in English.”
“Of Joy.
“Gay, deliait, alaigrement, heighday, as a man woud wish, merrily then.”
Claudius Mauger and Paul Festeau were two other professors at a somewhat later date, who endeavoured to secure patronage for their methods and books by throwing special temptations in the way of customers. The former, who seems to have been resident in London,introduced into his pages as an attractive novelty a series of Dialogues illustrative of English exploits by land and sea, as well as of contemporary French history, while Festeau baited his hook with the two scarcely reconcilable assurances that his plan was the exactest possible for attaining the purity and eloquence of the French tongue, as it was spoken about 1660 in the Court of France, and that Blois, his native place, was the city “where the true tone of the French tongue was found by the unanimous consent of all Frenchmen.”
Foreigners’ English.
I. A good deal has been incidentally heard of the habitual infelicity of the natives of other European countries where it has been a question of the treatment of our language either colloquially or with a literary object. This was a source of difficulty which must have been generally appreciated; but no one appears to have essayed to come to the succour of the distressed, till in 1578 Jacques Bellot, already mentioned, and the author of a French Grammar printed in 1578, announced in 1580The English Schoolmaster, for teaching strangers to pronounce English. That such a book was published is probable enough, but it is not at present known; and we have meanwhile to content ourselves with speculating what kind ofaffair such an undertaking could have been, where the writer was a foreign teacher so ignorant of our language! But it was not amiss for Bellot to try his hand in the absence of any other adventurer; nor was it till after the Restoration that a second experiment was made in the same direction by James Howell, the tolerably celebrated author of theFamiliar Letters, who brought out in 1662A New English Grammar, prescribing as certain rules as the language will bear, for foreigners to learn English. This was nearly a century after Bellot; and Howell was both a linguist and a scholar.
Like many other laudable endeavours, however, the proffered help was not much appreciated; and although the Germans, Dutch, and Russians have within the last quarter of a century made remarkable progress in the study of English, the French and other Continental nations remain unable or indisposed to conquer their ancient prejudices. Doubtless, the closer affinity between the languages of Germany and the Low Countries and our own considerably facilitated the mastery of English by the Teutoniccommunity; and it was principally in Flanders that the earliest attention was paid to those highly valuable polyglot hand-books for travellers and students, into which the English, as a rule, was admitted more on account, probably, of its service to the foreign visitor in England than for the sake of the Englishman abroad, as had been the case with certain early vocabularies and primers elsewhere noticed.
In the old plays the foreigner is invariably introduced making, consciously or otherwise, the most alarming havoc in our vocabulary and grammar; but the dramatist seems, as a rule, to have drawn a good deal on his own fancy instead of borrowing from life; and such is the case, it must be said, even with Shakespear’sDr. Caius, who speaks broken English, but hardly a Frenchman’s broken English. TheDuke de Jarmanyof the same writer would probably have had the same nondescript gibberish put into his mouth had he been brought on the stage; this sort ofdramatis personawas among the comic effects.
The Mrs. Plawnish of a modern novelist thought that bad English might be good French;but the jargon of Caius issui generis; he “hacks our English.” as mine host puts it, but not naturally, although Shakespear must have had the opportunity of studying such a character from the original. But he even confers on the French doctor in theMerry Wivesthe very name of an actual English one, who was living in his boyhood, and who was not merely a contributor to literature, but a writer on philological subjects; so that those who had been acquainted with the real Caius were apt to feel some mystification at his dramatic presentment, claiming a nationality which did not belong to him, and murdering a language which was his own.
As regards the familiarity of the French and Germans with our idiom, the position is changed; for while that of the former remains nearly stationary, that of Germany has grown more accurate and more general.
II. But the conversance with our language in former times, even among those who devoted their attention to philology and instruction, was excessively scanty and inexact. If no more thana bare quotation, example, or equivalent in English is given, the solecisms are sometimes ludicrous in the extreme; and this branch of the subject is sufficiently interesting and novel to induce me, before I conclude my inquiry, to shew somewhat farther than I have done in the account of the foreign professors of languages settled in London during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ignorance of English exhibited by two distinct classes of writers, namely, by foreigners occupying among us of old the position of tutors or teachers, and by the authors of publications designed for employment by ourselves visiting the Continent, or by our neighbours coming hither.
The notions entertained by educated professional Frenchmen, and even by Hollanders and Germans, about our grammar and idiom were from the outset down nearly to the present century of the vaguest and most puerile character. Perhaps one of the most edifying monuments of this inveterate repugnance to the acquisition of so much as the alphabet of our poor tongue is to be found in a volume printed at Nürnberg so late as 1744 under the titleRepresentation ofthe High-landers who arrived at the Camp of the Confederated Army, 1743, where beneath the first of a series of plates occurs this elucidation: “The Highlanders in their accostumes clothes and downwards hanging cloak.” The explanatory description of the next engraving is “A High-lander who puts on his cloak about his schoulders, when weather is sed to rain.” These solecisms of course arose from the incompetence of the foreign artist or publisher, or both; but even where an ignorant typographer in a Continental town was employed to set up an English book by the author himself, the liability to blunders was very great, and we are not to be surprised at slips of the press in such a work as Bishop Hooper’sDeclaration of the Commandments, printed at Zurich in 1549, when at the end the writer apprises us that “the setters of the print understand not one word of our speech!”
The most diverting illustrations of the jargon which was intended to pass for good conversational English abound in the pocket-guides and dictionaries, of which some went through several editions, and were evidently in great requestby the sections of society to which they appealed. One of them is an octoglot vocabulary, 1548, and a second a series of Colloquies in six languages, accompanied by a dictionary, 1576. The English examples in the latter are highly curious, as affording an insight into our language as it was spoken at that date by foreign students and visitors; and, in point of fact, it is hard to choose between the two, which is the more remarkable. Let us take the Preface to the earlier publication from an impression of 1631 before me:—
“To the Reader.“Beloved Reader this boocke is so need full and profitable / and the vsance of the same so necessarie / that his goodnes euen of learned men / is not fullie to be praised for ther is noman in France / nor in thes Nederland / nor in Spayne / or in Italie handling in these Netherlandes which hat not neede of the eight speaches that here in are writen and declared: Fer whether thad any man doo marchandise / or that hee do handle in the Court / or that hee fo lowe the warres or that hee be a trauailling man / hy should neede to haue an interpretour / for som of theese eight speaches. The which wee considering have at our great cost and to your great profite / brought the same speaches here in suchwise to gether / and set them in order / so that you fromyence fouath shall not neede eny interpretour / but shalbe able to speake them your self / ....”
“To the Reader.
“Beloved Reader this boocke is so need full and profitable / and the vsance of the same so necessarie / that his goodnes euen of learned men / is not fullie to be praised for ther is noman in France / nor in thes Nederland / nor in Spayne / or in Italie handling in these Netherlandes which hat not neede of the eight speaches that here in are writen and declared: Fer whether thad any man doo marchandise / or that hee do handle in the Court / or that hee fo lowe the warres or that hee be a trauailling man / hy should neede to haue an interpretour / for som of theese eight speaches. The which wee considering have at our great cost and to your great profite / brought the same speaches here in suchwise to gether / and set them in order / so that you fromyence fouath shall not neede eny interpretour / but shalbe able to speake them your self / ....”
An extract from one of the interlocutions must suffice:—
“D.Peeter / is that your sone?P.Yea it is my sonne.D.it is a goodlie childe. God let hun al wayes prosper in virtue.P.I thancke you coosen.D.Doth he not go to the scole?P.Yes / hee learneth to speake French.D.Doth hee? it is very well done. John / can you well speake French?J.Not very well coosen, but I learne.D.Wher go you too schoole?J.In the Lumbeardes streat.D.Have you gon long too schoole?J.About half a yeare.”
“D.Peeter / is that your sone?
P.Yea it is my sonne.
D.it is a goodlie childe. God let hun al wayes prosper in virtue.
P.I thancke you coosen.
D.Doth he not go to the scole?
P.Yes / hee learneth to speake French.
D.Doth hee? it is very well done. John / can you well speake French?
J.Not very well coosen, but I learne.
D.Wher go you too schoole?
J.In the Lumbeardes streat.
D.Have you gon long too schoole?
J.About half a yeare.”
So the dialogue goes on, and there is a series of them.
III. A second exemplification of the superlative obstacles which persons born out of England have at all periods encountered in the endeavour to comprehend on their own part, and render intelligible to others, our insular speech, is taken from the Italian Grammar of Henry Pleunus, printed at Leghorn at the end of the seventeenth century.
Now, here, in lieu of the alleged width ofacceptability, which meets the eye in the traveller’s pocket-dictionary just described, we get a positive assurance that the author was a master of the English tongue; and it may be predicated of him that, compared with the majority of foreigners, he exhibits a proficiency very considerably above the average, though we honestly believe it to be grossly improbable that “every one speaks English at Legorne,” as he says in one of the Anglo-Italian dialogues. There can be no desire to be hypercritical in judging such a production, or to lay stress on occasional slips of spelling and prosody; but the English of Pleunus very often strikes one—nor is it surprising that it should be so—as Italian literally rendered. He probably never attained an idiomatic phraseology; and one would have said less about it, had it not been for that sort of professorial assumption on the title-page.
Going back in order of time, I shall furnish some specimens of the tetraglotHistory of Aurelio and of Isabel Daughter to the King of Scotland, translated from the Spanish, and printed in 1556 at Antwerp. I propose to quote a passage where two knights in love with Isabelpropose to cast lots for her:—“I fynde none occasion that is so iuste, that by the same lof you, or you of me maye complayne vs: inasmuch that euery one of vs by him selfe is ynoughe more bounde vnto the loue, that he beareth to Isabell, then vnto any other bounde of frendshippe. And therfore I see not, that I for respecte of you, nor you also for mine to be ought to withdrawe from the high enterprise alreadie by vs begonne. Nor in likewise might be called a vertuouse worke, that we both together in one place sould displane the louingly sailes [voilles amoureusesin the French column], for that shoulde be to defile, that so great betwene vs and more, then of brother conioyned frendship.”
Here it is not so conspicuously the orthography that is at fault, as the composition and syntax. But up and down this little book, too, there are some drolleries of spelling. The translator from the Spanish of Juan de Flores, whoever he was (a Frenchman probably), understood French and Italian; but surely his conversance with the remaining tongue was on a par with that of the majority of his Continentalfellow-dwellers then, before, and since; and doubtless his printer has not failed to contribute to the barbarous unintelligibility of the English text. This is the book to which Collins the poet mistakenly informed Warton that Shakespear had resorted for the story of theTempest.
But a far stranger monument of orthographical and grammatical heresies exists inThe historijke Pvrtreatvres of the woll[4]Bible, printed at Lyons in 1553. It is a series of woodcuts, with a quatrain in English beneath each picture descriptive of its meaning, and is introduced by an elaborate epistle by Peter Derendel and an Address from the printer to the reader. Both, however, probably proceeded from the pen ofDerendel, who was doubtless connected with Pierre Erondelle, a well-known preceptor in London at a somewhat later date.
The verses which occur throughout the volume are literal translations, presumably by Erondelle, from the French, and are singular enough, and might have tempted quotation; but, eccentric as they are, they are completely thrown into the background by theprolegomena, and more especially by the preface purporting to come from the printer of the work, which is the common set of blocks relating to Biblical subjects, made in the present case to accompany an English letterpress.
I will transcribe only the commencement of the preface, whoseever it may be:—“The affection mine all waies towarde the hartlie ernest, louing reader, being cōtinuallie commaunded of the dutie of mi profession, mai not but dailie go about to satisfie the in this, withe thow desirest and lookest for in mi vacation, the withe, to mai please the, I wolde it were to mi minde so free and licentiouse streched at large, as it is be the mishappe of the time restrained.”
The discovery of Moses by Pharaoh’s daughter is thus poetically set forth:—
“The kinges daughter fonde him in great pitieThe russhes amonge, withe to him fauourable,As god did please, him to saue thought worthie,His owne mother giuing him for noorce able.”
Once more, the fall of Abimelech inJudgesix. is portrayed after the ensuing fashion:—
“Hauing killed his bretherne on a stone,Abimelech was forced ielde the ghoast:For besieging with for warre Thebes, anonA strocke he had, of a woman with lost.”
The spelling and the syntax in these examples are equally outrageous; yet they are possibly not more so than might be expected from persons unversed in the intricacies and anomalies of our language. But the point is, that the undertaking was executed for the special behoof, not alone of English residents abroad, but also of English students of sacred history at home; for there was nothing of the class at that time in our literature or our art. It is almost incomprehensible on what ground English was selected, as French would have been as serviceable to the educated reader here, while the Anglo-Gallicpatoismust have proved a puzzle to all alike.
The early English educational booksproduced by foreign printers were not quite invariably so wide of the mark in an idiomatic respect. Some of them were doubtless read in proof by the English author or editor; and such may have been the case with a version of theShort Catechismeof Cardinal Bellarmine published in 1614 at Augsburgh, where the slips do not exceed an ordinary Table of Errata.
Now and then, too, the writer himself was alone responsible for the eccentricities which presented themselves in his book, as where Stanyhurst, in his version of theÆneid, published at Leyden in 1582, renders the opening lines of Book the Second thus:—
“With tentive list’ning each wight was setled in harckning;Then father Æneas chronicled from loftie bed hautie.You me bid, O Princesse, too scarrifie a festered old soare,How that the Troians wear prest by Grecian armie.”
Here it was the idiosyncrasy of the Briton which reduced a translation to a burlesque, and disregarded the canons of his own language, as well as taste and propriety in diction. For the entire work is cast in a similar mould, and is heterodox in almost every particular; some passages are too grossly absurd even for an Irishman who had spent most of his life in Belgium or Holland.
Origin and spirit of Phonography—William Bullokar the earliest regular advocate of it—Charles Butler—Dr. Jones and his theory examined.
Origin and spirit of Phonography—William Bullokar the earliest regular advocate of it—Charles Butler—Dr. Jones and his theory examined.
I. The phonetic system of orthography, which may be regarded as empirical and fallacious, only forms part of such an inquiry as the present by reason of the presence in our earlier literature of a few books which were apparently designed, more or less, for educational purposes.
The fundamental theory of the promoters of this principle, both in former times and in our own, seems to have been that the sound should govern the written character, and that all laws of philology and grammar should defer to popular pronunciation. It is, of course, begging the question, in the first place; and one of the warmest enthusiasts on the subject admits that the very pronunciation, which is the product ofsound, and on which he relies, differs in different localities.
The writers on behalf of phonetics possessed, no doubt, their own honest convictions; but they have at no period succeeded in carrying with them any appreciable number of disciples. Between 1580 and 1634, William Bullokar and Charles Butler endeavoured at various dates to establish their peculiar creed; but it never gained footing or currency, and its influence has left no trace on our language, except in the literary or calligraphic essays of persons unable to read and write, or in one or two isolated cases where the new heresy for the moment infected a man like Churchyard, the old soldier-poet, for on no other hypothesis can we explain the uncouth spelling of his little poem on the Irish Rebellion of 1598, which is an orthographical abortion, out of harmony with the usual style of the author, and surpassing in foolishness the wildest suggestions of the professed adherents and supporters of the doctrine.
Bullokar published his large Grammar in 1580, and his Brief one in 1586; and he also put forth in 1585 a version of Æsop’s Fables,the title of which is a curiosity:—“Æsopz Fablz in Tru Ortography with Grammar-Notz. Her-vntoo ar also iooined the Short Sentencz of the Wyz Cato: both of which Autorz are translated out-of Latin intoo English by William Bullokar.
Gev’ God the praizThat teacheth all waiz.When Truth trieth,Erroor flieth.”
Butler became a convert in later life to the views previously entertained and promulgated by Bullokar, bringing out a third edition of hisHistory of Beesin 1634, adapted to the new standard; and in hisEnglish Grammar, published a twelvemonth before, he enunciated the same orthographical dogmas. He was of Magdalen College, Oxford, and prepared, as early as 1600, a Latin text-book on Rhetoric for the use of his College. This was more popular and successful than his phonetic excursus, and is quoted even still now and again, because it contains a slight allusion to Shakespear.
But perhaps the most strenuous and elaborate attempt to reform us in this particular direction was made by Dr. Jones, who drew up aPracticalPhonography, “Or the New Art of Rightly Spelling and Writing Words by the Sound thereof,” for the use of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Queen Anne, somewhere before 1701, in which year he communicated the fruit of his researches to the public. His description of the art as a new one must be interpreted by his ignorance of the previous labours of Bullokar and Butler, and as a proof that the proposal had met with no response; and the fact that the Doctor’s own volume is almost unknown may be capable of a similar explanation.
I have no means of judging what kind of reception was accorded to Dr. Jones at the time; but the tone of that gentleman’s Preface was certainly not propitiatory or diffident; for he freely speaks of the miserable ignorance of the world and of his own condescension to the undertaking, in order to remove or enlighten it; and yet, from another point of view, he addressed himself to the task of instituting a grammatical code based on that very ignorance of which he complains. For you have not to travel beyond the introductory remarks to stumble on the following directions for thepronunciation andergothe spelling of half-a-dozen familiar words and proper names:—Aron,baut(bought),Mair,Dixnary,pais(pays), andWooster; and at the same time on the very threshold of his text he allows “that English Speech is the Art of signifying the Mind by human Voice, as it is commonly used in England, (particularly in London, the Universities, or at Court).”
Dr. Jones was a learned and well read medical man, and the monument of his erudition and scholarship lies before me in the shape of this portentous volume of 144 pages, which, if the young Duke had not died from another cause, might have proved fatal to him and to his royal mother’s hopes of a successor in the Stuart line.
That our national pronunciation is slovenly and against philological laws, nobody will probably deny; but it would not be an improvement or a gain to corrupt our written language by levelling it down to our spoken one.