s professor." They
admit that French is the language of treatises; but Latin was used by
St. Jerome. They write to the duchess of Burgundy: "Et quamvis treugae
generales inter Angliam et Franciam per Dominos et Principes temporales,
videlicet duces Lancastriae et Eboraci necnon Buturiae ac Burgundiae, bonae
memoriae, qui perfecte non intellexerunt latinum sicut Gallicum, de
consensu eorumdem expresso, in Gallico fuerunt captae et firmatae, litterae
tamen missivae ultro citroque transmissae ... continue citra in Latino,
tanquam idiomate communi et vulgari extiterunt formatae; quae omnia
habemus parata ostendere, exemplo Beati Ieronimi...." In no wise touched
by this example, the French reply in their own language, and the
ambassadors, vexed, acknowledge the receipt of the letter in somewhat
undiplomatic terms: "Vestras litteras scriptas in Gallico, nobis
indoctis tanquam in idiomate Hebraico ... recipimus Calisii." "Royal and
Historical Letters," ed. Hingeston, 1860 (Rolls), vol. i. pp. 357 and
397. A discussion of the same kind takes place, with the same result,
under Louis XIV. See "A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II.,"
p. 140.

[398] "Doulz francois qu'est la plus bel et la plus gracious language et
plus noble parler, apres latin d'escole, qui soit ou monde, et de tous
gens mieulx prisee et amee que nul autre.... Il peut bien comparer au
parler des angels du ciel, pour la grant doulceur et biaultee d'icel."
"La maniere de Langage," composed in 1396, at Bury St. Edmund's, ed.
Paul Meyer, "Revue Critique," vol. x. p. 382.

[399] Middle of the fourteenth century, ed. Aungier, Camden Society,
1884, 4to.

[400] As an example of a composition showing the parallelism of the two
vocabularies in their crude state, one may take the treatise on Dreams
(time of Edward II.), published by Wright and Halliwell, which begins
with the characteristic words: "Her comensez a bok of Swevenyng."
"Reliquiae Antiquae."

[401] London, 1882.

[402] See a list of such words in Earle, "Philology of the English
Tongue," 5th edition, Oxford, 1892, 8vo, p. 84. On the disappearance of
Anglo-Saxon proper names, and the substitution of Norman-French names,
"William, Henry, Roger, Walter, Ralph, Richard, Gilbert, Robert," see
Grant Allen, "Anglo-Saxon Britain," ch. xix., Anglo-Saxon Nomenclature.

[403] "Troilus," iii. stanza 191.

[404] Earle's "Philology of the English Tongue," 5th ed., Oxford, 1892,
p. 379.

[405] _Ibid._ p. 3