Page:The grand tour in the eighteenth century by Mead, William Edward.djvu/143

 was making a grand tour according to rule and thus conforming in one more particular to well-ordered conventions.

In any case, it was of prime importance that, unless the tourist was to associate wholly with his fellow countrymen, he should pick up some acquaintance with the languages of the Continent. In fact, one main reason for making the long tour was that he might get at least a smattering of one or two of them. The two most in favor were French and Italian. French, in particular, was an essential part of the preparation of any young man of the upper classes for a social career or for public life. With French the tourist could go through France, Holland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, and be at home in all cultured society. But the stolid Englishman often hesitated to use his French or Italian for fear of committing some blunder in accent or grammar. Not too communicative in his own tongue, he might well ask himself why he should go out of his way to exchange commonplaces in bad French or Italian with people he had never seen before and was unlikely ever to meet again. Instinctively, therefore, he sought out his countrymen in preference to the natives of the country he visited.

How serious a hindrance the imperfect mastery of foreign tongues was to anything beyond a merely superficial social intercourse, and how greatly it contributed to mutual misunderstandings, we need hardly remark. The poet Gray's experience at Paris was typical of any place on the Continent where there were many English. "We had," writes he, "at first arrival an inundation of visits pouring in upon us, for all the English are acquainted and herd much together, and it is no easy matter to disengage oneself from them, so that one sees but little of the French themselves. To be introduced to the People of high quality, it is absolutely necessary to be Master of the Language, for it is not to be imagined that they will take pains to understand anybody, or to correct a stranger's blunders. Another thing is, there is not a House where they don't play, nor is any one at all acceptable, unless they do so too,