Nicolas Gouïn Dufief (c. 1776–1834) was a

French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...

teacher who taught in England and America.

Life

He was a native of

Nantes Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...

, was born in or about 1776. His father, Nicolas-Henri Dufief, a knight of the

Order of Saint Louis The Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis (french: Ordre Royal et Militaire de Saint-Louis) is a dynastic order of chivalry founded 5 April 1693 by King Louis XIV, named after Saint Louis (King Louis IX of France). It was intended as a rewar ...

, served during the revolution as a volunteer under the French princes in Germany; his mother, the Countess Victoire Aimée Libault Gouïn Dufief, was personally engaged in the many battles fought by her relative, General

François de Charette François Athanase de Charette de la Contrie (2 May 1763 – 29 March 1796) was a Franco-Breton Royalist soldier and politician. He served in the French Navy during the American Revolutionary War and was one of the leaders of the Revolt in the V ...

, against the revolutionists, for which she was afterwards known as "the heroine of La Vendée". Dufief, though a stripling of 15, joined in 1792 the royal naval corps assembled under the

Charles Hector, comte d'Estaing Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector, comte d'Estaing (24 November 1729 – 28 April 1794) was a French general and admiral. He began his service as a soldier in the War of the Austrian Succession, briefly spending time as a prisoner of war of the B ...

Enghien Enghien (; nl, Edingen ; pcd, Inguî; vls, Enge) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. On 1January 2006, Enghien had a total population of 11,980. The total area is , which gives a population dens ...

, and went through the campaign with his regiment in the army of the brothers of

Louis XVIII Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier; 17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824), known as the Desired (), was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. He spent twenty-three years in ...

until its disbandment. The same year he sought refuge in England, but soon afterwards sailed for the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

, and was attracted thence to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, which he reached in July 1793. During his sojourn in America, he became acquainted with Dr.

Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted exp ...

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...

, and other eminent men. Here, too, he published an essay on '' The Philosophy of Language'', in which he first explained to the world how he was led to make those discoveries "from which my system of universal and economical instruction derives such peculiar and manifold advantages". For nearly twenty-five years he taught French with success in America and in England, to which he returned about 1818. He died at Pentonville, London, 12 April 1834.

Works

His chief work is ''Nature displayed in her mode of teaching Language to Man; being a new and infallible Method of acquiring Languages with unparalleled rapidity; deduced from the analysis of the human mind, and consequently suited to every capacity: adapted to the French. To which is prefixed a development of the author's plan of tuition'', 2 volumes octavo, London, 1818, which despite its size and costliness reached a twelfth edition in the author's lifetime. Shortly before his death he completed ''A Universal, Pronouncing, and Critical French-English Dictionary'', octavo, London, 1833. He was author, too, of ''The French Self-interpreter, or Pronouncing Grammar'', duodecimo, Exeter (1820?).

Notes

References

;Attribution *; Endnotes: **Prefaces to Nature Displayed **Gentlemen's Magazine new ser. i. 561. *

Madeleine B. Stern Madeleine Bettina Stern (July 1, 1912 – August 18, 2007), born in New York, New York, was an independent scholar and rare book dealer. She graduated from Barnard College in 1932 with a B.A. in English literature. She received her M.A. in Eng ...

. ''Nicholas Gouin Dufief of Philadelphia, Franco-American Bookseller, 1776–1834'', The Philobiblon Club, 1988, . {{DEFAULTSORT:Dufief, Nicolas Gouin 1770s births Year of birth uncertain 1834 deaths French schoolteachers People from Nantes Knights of the Order of Saint Louis French writers Language teachers French exiles Ancien Régime