a distance from the Roman power, and so in progressing towards civilization, retained their own language; or, as settling within the Roman state, they became amalgamated with the older inhabitants, and, as they progressed in cultivation, seized upon a civilization (as far as they were capable of receiving it) and a language which was ready made to their hands. We thus find even that the Normans, who came into Neustria at so late a period, quickly exchanged their own language for that of the people amongst whom they settled, and who were in a more forward state of cultivation than themselves. Those, on the contrary, who, like the Anglo-Saxons, settled on ground where they came not in the same contact with a Roman or even Romanized population, their civilization being formed and developed on a model furnished from within, retained naturally the language which had been spoken by their forefathers. Their own letters (runes) had served very well for magical spells and inscriptions; but when they began to write, which was not before they became Christians, they were all obliged to borrow the Roman characters, which were communicated to them by the Christian missionaries.

By the barbarians who had thus received it, the language of the Romans was soon as much broken up as had been the empire. Each tribe was changing unwittingly the vowels and consonants of the new words it had adopted according to laws which depended upon circumstances connected with the development of its own organs of speech. The language at the same time was itself undergoing a change precisely similar to that which produced out of the older Saxon the language we now speak, in which its terminations were in a great measure lost, and in which many combinations of letters were subjected to the manifold operations distinguished in our common gramnar by such names as syncope, crasis, and the like. So that, from the influence of all these circumstances, the language, of each country, when we first find it in writing, is very different from that of which so many and pure monuments have been left us by the ancients.

We must not, however, suppose that the language which the Romans delivered up to their invaders was the pure diction which we find in their writings. We have many reasons for believing, that in the best ages of Roman literature, the language of common life differed much both in words and forms from the same language as presented to us in the writings of the learned. In the latter times of the Empire these words and forms often make their appearance in writing, and are so many marks of the barbarism of the period. This language of common life was the true "langue vulgare," which is the great stumbling-block in the system broached by Raynouard; it was not a language formed out of and succeeding the Latin; above all, it was not Provençal; but it was the Latin itself as spoken by the common people. Of the existence and character of this vulgar language we have abundant and interesting proofs in the Introductory Chapter of Diez's profound Grammar of the Romanic dialects. We can trace many of the uncommon words and forms that occur in the Neo-Latin

tongues to the earliest age of the Latin language. Thus the word batuere, to beat, fight, which occurs in Plautus, is represented by the Italian battere, the Portuguese and Old Spanish bater, the Provençal batre, the French battre, &c. Pacuvius used the word macror, leanness; it is the French maigreur. In Festus and Palladius we find planca, a plank; it is the origin of the French planche, and is properly a Teutonic word. In Ennius and Varro we have speres for spes; it seems to have been preserved in the Prov. esper, the Fr. espoir, the Span. espera, &c., though these forms may possibly have come from sperare. Again the Ital. mangiare, Fr. manger, is the Latin manducare, used sometimes in the early writers for edere, and commonly enough in the later ones. Many words which belonged properly to the vulgar language make their appearance in the later writers. Thus, as early as the time of Tertullian, æternalis was used for æternus; hence the old French eternal. At the same time we find compassio in the sense of its later representative compassion. In Ammianus Marcellinus we have molna used for mola; whence the French moulin. At the same time appear many new forms in -mentum, that seem to have belonged to the language of the common people; as juramentum, in the Pandects, Ammianus, Sulpicius Severus, for juratio; which form is very prevalent through all the Neo-Latin tongues, thus Ital. giuramento, Walachian jurëmënt, Span. juramente, Fr. jurement. This is one of the forms which Raynouard adduces as the strongest proof of the existence of his imaginary "langue vulgare"; and the word salvamentum which he cites, bears precisely the same relation to salvatio which juramentum does to juratio. In the later Roman inscriptions we also find many of their popular words; thus we find in one the word exagium (žáylov) in the sense of an essay, risk, which is without doubt the French essai. In others we have fata in the sense of parca (fatis, i. e. diis manibus); it is the Ital. fata, the Span. hada, fada, the Prov. fada, the Fr. fée. So a kindred word, fatare, to enchant, became féer ; hence our modern word fairy, whose etymology has so long and so very unnecessarily puzzled our writers, on the interesting subject of popular mythology.

It is only in our days that general philology has begun to assume the shape and regularity of a system. Our forefathers were accustomed to open their eyes rather more widely when they met with strange words and forms, but they seldom gave themselves the trouble even to seek the reasons of such words and forms. Raynouard, whose name will long be remembered with gratitude by scholars, was certainly the first who led the way to something like an accurate study and arrangement of the Neo-Latin tongues. Before his time those who meddled with these languages treated them in a manner altogether cavalier-like, and the editors of the old French poetry, and some editors of old English poetry, have done much the same thing,-even expressed their surprise that the good old folks of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries should be so singular as to sin against the grammatical rules of the eighteenth. Raynouard pointed out the right way when every body else was in the dark; but he

only proceeded in the path he had discovered to a certain point; there was much ground still left to be traversed, and we fear that too many of the French scholars who have been initiated in his school, when they reach the place at which he halted, think that they have nothing more to do but to sit down and rest themselves. The completion of this great work seems to be reserved for German acuteness and industry, and the first volume of the Grammar of Diez, a name familiar to all scholars in the language and writings of the Troubadours, gives us good promise of its being completed with success. We think, however, that, with regard at least to the French and Anglo-Norman languages, Diez has published his work too soon, that is, before he could have materials in quantity and accuracy sufficient for his undertaking. Till very recently the monuments of the languages just mentioned have been edited from bad manuscripts, and in the most unsatisfactory manner; manuscripts of different ages and in different dialects have been mixed together without any discrimination; and the things themselves have thus been calculated rather to mislead than to guide. As far as we have had occasion to make verifications, the only printed monuments of early French and Norman to which we can assign any philological value are, with a few exceptions, those which have been so carefully and accurately edited by M. Francisque Michel. Among the exceptions we must give a very high place to the few volumes which have yet appeared under the care of M. Chabaille.

We consider as a grave error in Diez's book, and as one which arose entirely from this deficiency of good materials, the not separating into two distinct dialects the French and Anglo-Norman. The only printed monuments of the Anglo-Norman language of the twelfth century, when it was in its purity, are, in our opinion, the Chanson de Roland, which M. Michel has just given to the world, the most important of all his publications, and the visit of Charlemagne to Constantinople. There are still in MS. a few other monuments of the language of the same period, and particularly the curious metrical life of St. Brandan in the Cotton MS. The short poem of Charlemagne's Visit to Constantinople is printed from a MS. of the thirteenth century, in which however the orthography of the twelfth has been tolerably well preserved; that of the Chanson de Roland is, we have no doubt, of the latter part of the twelfth century. To these two poems our brief remarks on the philology of the Neo-Latin tongues shall be confined. The Anglo-Norman, as found in them, presents to us some striking marks of difference from the French, of which, however, we have no monuments of so early a date. We may cite as one of the most distinguishing marks of the former the use of the u, which had probably its German pronunciation, in place of o, ou, &c. as, pume (pomme), hunte (honte), umbre (ombre), mulin (moulin), and the like. The first of these characteristics shows difference of dialect; the other, antiquity of form. Another seems to be the constant adoption of al, &c. in place of the French au, &c. The scribes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were anything but accurate, and both our manu

scripts contain many errors, but in the more modern one of Charlemagne there are a greater number of inaccuracies which affect its grammar than in the MS. of Roland.*

It would not be difficult to point out the cause which hindered Raynouard from going further than he did in the discovery of the grammatical rules of the language of the Trouvères, for of that language only we are now speaking, including the two dialects of French and Anglo-Norman. We prefer giving the following passage in the original, because it is very clearly and accurately expressed; referring in the first "Choix" (tom.i. p. 50) to the language of the Troubadours, it is afterwards, in his Observations on the Roman de Rou (p. 28), applied to that of the Trouvères.

"La nouvelle langue créa une methode aussi simple qu'ingénieuse, qui produisit le même effet que les déclinaisons Latines.

"Au singulier, le s ajouté ou conservé à la fin de la plupart des substantifs, surtout des masculins, désigna le sujet; et l'absence du s`désigna le régime, soit direct, soit indirect.

"Au pluriel, l'absence du s indiqua le sujet, et sa présence les régimes.

"D'où vint l'idée d'une telle méthode? de la langue Latine même. La seconde déclinaison en us suggéra ce moyen.

"Le nominatif en us a le s au singulier, tandis que les autres cas consacrés à marquer les régimes sont terminés ou par des voyelles ou par d'autres consonnes ; et le nominatif en 1 au pluriel ne conserve pas le s, tandis que cette consonne termine la plupart des autres cas affectés aux régimes.

"Peut-on assez admirer cette industrie grammaticale, qui n'a existé dans aucune langue, industrie qui ensuite permit et facilita aux troubadours la grâce et la multitude des inversions à la fois les plus hardies et les plus claires?"

The writer of the foregoing passage was evidently labouring under a most false idea of the nature of the process of formation of one language from another. Who ever head of such a thing as the creation of methods in the formation of a language to answer the purpose of others which existed in the mother language? of ingenuity

* We are tempted to give a specimen of these inaccuracies. In the MS. the first line of the following passage was deficient in number of syllables, and M. Michel, who generally makes his emendations with much judgment, has completed it by adding a word at the end.

"De ses paien veiat quinze [milies];

Chaucuns portout une branche d'olive;

Nuncèrent vos ces paroles méisme.”—Roland, xiv. 10.

We object to this emendation, because the word quinze is in assonance, and seems to have been properly the last word of the line, and because fifteen thousand messengers carrying olive branches seems to us too many, when ten only were sent on the important message which introduced the subject of the present poem. But if we look back, we find the word paien, which must have lost a final s, and the next word is evidently deficient at the beginning by the loss of the syllable en, for it is the only instance in the poem of veier for enveier. It is here then that the scribe has left something out, and we propose to supply the deficiency thus

"De ses paien[s vos en]veiat quinze ;"

We here see clearly how the mistake arose, for the scribe, having written the en in paiens, in looking to his copy, took it for the en in enveiut, and so went on with the latter part of this word.

being used in the process? of a deliberate suggestion of the method? and of all this being peculiar to one language only? The natural consequence of this unfortunate notion was, that M. Raynouard, instead of comparing diligently and arranging words to discover all the different grammatical forms of each of the Romanic languages, having taken it for granted that they invented one form to represent all, or nearly all those belonging to the Latin original; and observing that the foregoing distinction of the cases of substantives, by the presence or absence of the final s, was a very common one, took it equally for granted that this was the only regular distinction of forms which belonged to the derived languages, and therefore never sought for any others. The process of the formation of the Romanic tongues from the Latin was not a substitution of certain forms in the place of other forms, but it was a moulding down of the old forms, and that in many different ways; so that in the earlier stage of each new language it had quite as many different distinctions of forms as the language to which it owed its origin. The only active agents in this change were natural ones; the difference of organization which God had given to different races of men, so that at any given period of these progressing languages it was impossible, by natural laws, which God had created, that people could use any other form than that they did use. In fact, the two Anglo-Norman poems which we have mentioned afford us abundant evidence that the form mentioned by Raynouard is only one of those which belonged to the substantives of the language of the Trouvères even in the twelfth century. After, however, the period of transition had passed, during the period of their reduction to their final and settled form, these languages were influenced by a tendency (which was equally felt in the later stages of the English, when so many of what are termed the strong forms were thrown into the class of the weak ones) to throw words, which belonged to the less regular forms, into the more general and comprehensive In the Latin language the most general and comprehensive forms of substantives were the masculines in us, and the feminines in a; the most general ones in the derived languages were naturally the representatives of those forms, and to them the other forms were continually deserting. In this manner many words which occur in our Anglo-Norman of the twelfth century, with declensions answering to other declensions in Latin, are found in manuscript a century later figuring in the ranks of those formed from the Latin declensions in us and a.

ones.

The most curious class of Neo-Latin substantives, and one which requires the most careful examination, is that formed from the Latin nouns of the third declension, which increase in the genitive. The condensation of the syllables in the increasing cases has sometimes produced forms in the French and Anglo-Norman which scarcely resemble their own nominatives. Let us take, for an example, the Latin word homo: our Anglo-Norman of the twelfth century presents us with the nom. sing. hom, sometimes hoem, invariably