ORIGIN OF THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGES OF EUROPE.

THE predominance of the Latin language, during many centuries, retarded the cultivation of the vernacular dialects of Europe. When the barbarous nations had triumphed over ancient Rome, the language of the Latins remained unconquered; that language had diffused itself with the universal dominion, and, living in the minds of men, required neither legions nor consuls to maintain its predomi

nance.

From accident, and even from necessity, the swarming hordes, some of whom seem to have spoken a language which had never been written, and were a roving people at a period prior to historical record, had adopted that single colloquial idiom which their masters had conveyed to them, attracted, if not by its beauty, at least by its convenience. This vulgar Latin was not, indeed, the Latin of the great writers of antiquity; but in its corrupt state, freed from a complex construction, and even from grammar, had more easily lent itself to the jargon of the ruder people. Teutonic terms, or Celtic words with corrupt Latinisms, were called "the scum of ancient eloquence, and the rust of vulgar barbarisms," by an indignant critic in the middle of the fifth century.* * It was amid this confusion of races, of idioms, and of customs, that from this heterogeneous mass were hewed out those vernacular dialects of Europe which furnished each people with their own idiom, and which are now distinguished as the modern languages.

In this transference and transfusion of languages, Italy retained the sonorous termination of her paternal soil, and Spain did not forget the majesty of the Latin accent; lands favored by more genial skies, and men blessed with more

* Sidonius Apollinaris.

flexible organs. But the Gothic and the Northern races barbarously abbreviated or disfigured their Latin words; to sounds so new to them they gave their own rude inflections; there is but one organ to regulate the delicacy of orthoepy a musical and a tutored ear. The Gaul,* in cutting his words down, contracted a nasal sharpness; and the Northmen, in the shock of their hard, redundant consonants, lost the vowelly confluence.

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This vulgar or corrupt Latin, mingled with this diversity of jargons, was the vitiated mother of the sister-languages of Europe; sisters still bearing their family likeness, of the same homely origin, but of various fortunes, till some attained to the beauty and affluence of their Latin line. From the first the people themselves had dignified their spurious generation of language as Romans, or Romance, or Romaunt, still proud perhaps of its Roman source; but the critical Latins themselves had distinguished it as Rustic, to indicate a base dialect, used only by those who were far removed from the metropolis of the world.

But when these different nations had established their separate independence, this vernacular idiom was wholly left to the people; it was the image of their own barbaric condition, unworthy the studies, and inadequate to the genius, of any writer. The universal language maintained its pre-eminence over the particular dialect, and as the course of human events succeeded, in the overwhelming

* An ingenious literary antiquary has given us a copious vocabulary, as complete evidence of Latin words merely abbreviated by omitting their terminations, whence originated those numerous monosyllables which empoverish the French language. In the following instances the Gauls only used the first syllable for the entire word, damnum-damn; aureum - or; malum-mal; nudum-nud; amicus ami; vinum- -vin; homo -hom, as anciently written; curtus- - court; sonus-son; bonus-bon; and thus many others. The nasal sound of our neighbors still prevails; thus Gracchus sinks into Grucque; Titus Livius is bat Tite Live; and the historian of Alexander the Great, the dignified Quintius Curtius, is the ludicrous Quinte Curce! —Auguis, du Génie de la Langue Françoisc.

of ancient Rome, another Rome shadowed the world. Ecclesiastical Rome, whence the novel faith of Christianity was now to emanate, far more potent than military Rome, perpetuated the ancient language. The clergy through the diversified realms of Europe were held together in strict conformity, and by a common bond chained to the throne of the priesthood one faith, one discipline, one language!

The Latin tongue, both in verse and prose, was domiciliated among people of the most opposite interests, customs, and characters. The primitive fathers, the later schoolmen, the monkish chroniclers, all alike composed in Latin; all legal instruments, even marriage-contracts, were drawn in Latin: and even the language of Christian prayer was that of abolished paganism.

The idiom of their father-land- or, as we have affectionately called it, our "mother-tongue," and as our ancient translator of the Polychronicon energetically terms it," the birth-tongue"- those first human accents which their infant ear had caught, and which from their boyhood were associated with the most tender and joyous recollections, every nation left to fluctuate on the lips of the populace, rude and neglected. Whenever a writer, proposing to inform the people on subjects which more nearly interested them, composed in the national idiom, it was a strong impulse only which could induce him thus to submit to degrade his genius. One of the French crusaders, a learned knight, was anxious that the nation should become acquainted with the great achievements of the deliverers of Jerusalem; it was the command of his bishop that induced him to compose the narrative in the vernacular idiom; but the twelve years which he bestowed on his chronicle were not considered by him as employed for his glory, for he avows that the humiliating style which he had used was the mortifying performance of a religious penance.

All who looked toward advancement in worldy affairs, and were of the higher orders in society, cultivated the lan

guage of Rome. It is owing to this circumstance, observes a learned historian of our country, that "the Latin language and the classical writers were preserved by the Christian clergy from that destruction which has entirely swept from us the language and the writings of Phenicia, Carthage, Babylon, and Egypt."* We must also recollect, that the influence of the Latin language became far more permanent when the great master-works of antiquity were gradually unburied from their concealments. In this resurrection of taste and genius, they derived their immortality from the imperishable soul of their composition. All Europe was condemned to be copiers, or in despair to be plagiarists.

It is well known how the admirable literatures of Greece and Rome struck a fresh impulse into literary pursuits, at that period which has been distinguished as the restoration of letters. The emigration of the fugitive Greeks conveyed the lost treasures of their more ancient literature to the friendly shores of Italy. Italy had then to learn a new language, and to borrow inspiration from another genius.

The occupation of disinterring manuscripts, which had long been buried in dungeon-darkness, was carried on with an enthusiasm of which perhaps it would be difficult for us at this day to form an adequate conception. Many exhausted their fortunes in remote journeys, or in importations from the east; and the possession of a manuscript was considered not to have been too dearly purchased by the transfer of an estate, since only for the loan of one the pledge was nothing less. The discovery of an author, perhaps heard of for the first time, was tantamount to the acquisition of a province; and when a complete copy of Quintilian was discovered, the news circulated throughout Europe. The rapture of collation, the restoration of a corrupt text, or the perpetual commentary, became the ambition of a life, even after the era of printing.

* Turner's History of England.

† See Curiosities of Literature, article Recovery of Manuscripts. VOL. I.-10

This was the useful age of critical erudition. It furnished the studious with honors and avocations; but they were reserved only for themselves: it withdrew them from the cultivation of all vernacular literature. They courted not the popular voice, when a professorial chair, or a dignified secretaryship, offered the only profit or honor the literary man contemplated. Accustomed to the finished composition of the ancients, the scholar turned away from the rudeness of the maternal language. There was no other public opinion than what was gathered from the writings of the few who wrote to the few who read; they transcribed as sacred what authority had long established ; their arguments were scholastic and metaphysical, for they held little other communication with the world, or among themselves, but through the restricted medium of their writings. This state was a heritage of ideas and of opinions, transmitted from age to age with little addition or diminution. Authority and quotation closed all argument, and filled vast volumes. University responded to university, and men of genius were following each other in the sheeptracks of antiquity. Even to so late a period as the days of Erasmus, every Latin word was culled with a classical superstition; and a week of agony was exhausted on a page finely inlaid with a mosaic of phrases.* While this verbal generation flourished, some eminent scholars were but ridiculous apes of Cicero, and, in a cento of verses, empty echoes of Virgil. All native vigor died away in the coldness of imitation; and a similarity of thinking and of style deprived the writers of that raciness which the nations of

* ERASMUS composed a satirical dialogue between two vindictive Ciceronians; it is said that a duel has been occasioned by the intrepidity of maintaining the purity of a writer's Latinity. The pedantry of mixing Greek and Latin terms in the vernacular language is ridiculed by RABELAIS in his encounter with the Limousin student, whom he terrified till the youngster ended in delivering himself in plain French, and left off “Pindarizing” all the rest of his days.— Pantagruel, lib. ii., c. 6.