A place all the smaller from the fact that the subjects
of the "Grand roi," particularly at the beginning of
his reign, knew scarcely more English than those of his
grandfather, Henri IV., and in the matter of foreign
tongues continued to take interest only in Spanish and
Italian. 1 Madame de Sevigne never ceased to cultivate
the latter; she wrote to her daughter : " Et 1'italien,
l'oubliez - vous ? J'en lis toujours un peu pour
entretenir noblesse." Spain was the great fount re-

1 Menage, in his " Origines de la languc franchise," Paris,
1650,4.В°, makes a few comparisons between French and English
(see for instance the words " souiller," " soldat "), but in his recapitu-
latory index there is only place for Latin, Spanish, and Italian.


sorted to by French dramatists and romance writers
in quest of a subject ; her language continued to be
commonly studied : " Spanish grammars have not
been bought to the amount of fifty thousand livres,
but very near it," wrote Scarron to his friend
Marigny. "Sir," said one day old M. de Chalon,
late Secretary of the Commandments of Queen Anne
of Austria, and now retired to Rouen, addressing
young Corneille, " the comic style which you adopt
can only procure you a short-lived glory. You will
find in Spanish authors subjects which, treated ac-
cording to our tastes by hands like yours, would
produce great effects. Learn their language ; it is
easy ; I am ready to show you what I know of it, and
until you are able to read for yourself, to translate a
few passages from Guillem de Castro." Corneille
followed this advice and wrote the " Cid " ; it could
never have occurred to him to seek inspiration in that
Shakespeare whose contemporary he was for ten vears,
but from whose works M. de Chalon would have had
great difficulty in translating a " few passages."