DES AUTEURS MODERNES, A L'USAGE DE LA JEUNESSE : WITH TRANSLATION OF THE NEW AND DIFFICULT WORDS PREFACE. ELEMENTARY books, numerous and various, are constantly issuing from the press, professing to afford every facility for obtaining a speedy and accurate knowledge of foreign languages. But the knowledge so acquired must necessarily be also elementary, unless the study of these books be succeeded by a course of reading, which will render the learner familiar with the language as it is written and spoken at the present day. Here a great difficulty presents itself to the teacher of French, for while the language of educated society in France has undergone a great change from the influence of modern writers, the works themselves which exercise this influence are most of them totally unfit to be put into the hands of young people. A comparison between the familiar phraseology of the works of the last century, and even of the elegant writer De Jouy in the beginning of this, with the works which now give the tone to conversational French, will demonstrate the great idiomatic revolution which has taken place in the language within the last quarter of a century; yet young people still continue to read extracts from Gil Blas, Marmontel's tales, Marivaux's novels, &c., to obtain a knowledge of the French idiom of the present day. It is as though a Frenchman should present himself in an English circle with fashionable phrases from Johnson's Rambler, or Goldsmith's comedies. Books exemplifying the modern idiomatic construction of the language must, therefore, be found of great assistance to its teachers. The chief object of the present volume is to offer this assistance, by affording the means of making the youth of England acquainted with the French language, as it is spoken in the present day, and as it is presented in the works of the modern authors of France, without the risk of sullying the mind of the young reader by an introduction to such scenes and principles as but too often disgrace the pages of writers, who would be an honour to humanity were their moral qualities but equal to their genius. The second object is to facilitate the task of the teacher, by endeavouring to render the work attractive in the eyes of the pupil; and such selections have, therefore, been made, as will, it is hoped, be interesting and entertaining to the young reader, while, at the same time, they will prove worthy specimens of the peculiar style of their respective authors. The compiler has further endeavoured, as much as possible, to make selections which are not only negatively pure, but which are calculated to inspire those noble sentiments, and to awaken those holy feelings, toward the development of which every branch of education ought to tend. Should the serious, nevertheless, be inclined to desire that these passages had been more numerous, and those of pure amusement more rare, it may be sufficient to reply, that the very nature of the undertaking necessitated the insertion of a large proportion of the latter. Idiomatic phraseology is not exemplified in grave and important disquisitions, but in those of a lighter and more social cast; and it may perhaps be due to the authors themselves to say, that the compiler has had more regard to her own objects than to their fame in her selections. TABLE DES MATIÈRES. Intervention de Napoléon dans toutes les affaires Destruction des fortifications de Vienne La Tarantelle ४१ Hospitalité des Florentins 109 |