FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94  
95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   >>   >|  
olar and yet "was afraid to enter into discourse" with a French boy, for fear he should speak too quickly! The position of these scholars relatively to Latin was in fact too isolated for it to have been possible that they should reach the point of mastery. Suppose a society of Frenchmen, in some secluded little French village where no Englishman ever penetrates, and that these Frenchmen learn English from dictionaries, and set themselves to speak English with each other, without anybody to teach them the colloquial language or its pronunciation, without ever once hearing the sound of it from English lips, what sort of English would they create amongst themselves? This is a question that I happen to be able to answer very accurately, because I have known two Frenchmen who studied English literature just as the Frenchmen of the sixteenth century studied the literature of ancient Rome. One of them, especially, had attained what would certainly in the case of a dead language be considered a very high degree of scholarship indeed. Most of our great authors were known to him, even down to the close critical comparison of different readings. Aided by the most powerful memory I ever knew, he had amassed such stores that the acquisitions, even of cultivated Englishmen, would in many cases have appeared inconsiderable beside them. But he could not write or speak English in a manner tolerable to an Englishman; and although he knew nearly all the words in the language, it was dictionary knowledge, and so different from an Englishman's apprehension of the same words that it was only a sort of pseudo-English that he knew, and not our living tongue. His appreciation of our authors, especially of our poets, differed so widely from English criticism and English feeling that it was evident he did not understand them as we understand them. Two things especially proved this: he frequently mistook declamatory versification of the most mediocre quality for poetry of an elevated order; whilst, on the other hand, his ear failed to perceive the music of the musical poets, as Byron and Tennyson. How _could_ he hear their music, he to whom our English sounds were all unknown? Here, for example, is the way he read "Claribel:"-- "At ev ze bittle bommess Azvart ze zeeket lon At none ze veeld be ommess Aboot ze most edston At meedneeg ze mon commess An lokez dovn alon Ere songg ze lintveet svelless Ze clirvoic-ed mavi dvell
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94  
95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

English

 

Frenchmen

 
language
 

Englishman

 

authors

 

studied

 

understand

 

French

 

literature

 

declamatory


mediocre

 
manner
 
quality
 

versification

 
tolerable
 
mistook
 

dictionary

 

frequently

 

pseudo

 

criticism


widely

 

living

 

appreciation

 

tongue

 

feeling

 

differed

 

knowledge

 

things

 

evident

 
apprehension

proved

 

Tennyson

 
edston
 

meedneeg

 

commess

 
ommess
 

Azvart

 
zeeket
 

clirvoic

 
svelless

lintveet

 

bommess

 

bittle

 
failed
 

perceive

 

musical

 
elevated
 

whilst

 

Claribel

 
sounds