31. M. Raynouard has asserted what will hardly bear dispute, that “there has never been composed any considerable work in any language, till it has acquired determinate forms of expressing the modifications of ideas according to time, number, and person,” or, in other words, the elements of grammar.[53] But whether the Provençal or Romance language were in its infancy so defective, he does not say; nor does the grammar he has given lead us to that inference. This grammar, indeed, is necessarily framed, in great measure, out of more recent materials. It may be suspected, perhaps, that a language formed by mutilating the words of another, could not for many ages be rich or flexible enough for the variety of poetic expression. And the more ancient forms would long retain their prerogative in writing: or, perhaps, we can only say, that the absence of poetry was the effect, as well as the evidence, of that intellectual barrenness, more characteristic of the dark ages than their ignorance. [53] Observations philogiques et grammaticales, sur le Roman de Rou (1829), p. 26. Two ancient Provençal grammars, one by Raymond Vidal in the twelfth century, are in existence. The language therefore must have had its determinate rules before that time. M. Raynouard has shown, with a prodigality of evidence, the regularity of the French or Romance language in the twelfth century, and its retention of Latin forms, in cases when it had not been suspected. Thus it is a fundamental rule, that, in nouns masculine, the nominative ends in s in the singular, but wants it in the plural; while the oblique cases lose it in the singular, but retain it in the plural. This is evidently derived from the second declension in Latin. As, for example-- Sing. Li princes est venus, et a este sacrez rois. Plur. Li evesque et li plus noble baron se sont assemble. Thus also the possessive pronoun is always _mes_, _tes_, _ses_, (meus, tuus, suus) in the nominative singular; _mon_, _ton_, _son_, (meum, &c.), in the oblique regimen. It has been through ignorance of such rules that the old French poetry has seemed capricious, and destitute of strict grammar; and, in a philosophical sense, the simplicity and extensiveness of M. Raynouard’s discovery entitle it to the appellation of beautiful. |Latin retained in use longer in Italy.|