32. In Italy, where we may conceive the corruption of language to have been less extensive, and where the spoken patois had never acquired a distinctive name, like _lingua Romana_ in France, we find two remarkable proofs, as they seem, that Latin was not wholly unintelligible in the ninth and tenth centuries, and which therefore modify M. Raynouard’s hypothesis as to the simultaneous origin of the Romance tongue. The one is a popular song of the soldiers, on their march to rescue the Emperor Louis II. in 881, from the violent detention in which he had been placed by the duke of Benevento; the other, a similar exhortation to the defenders of Modena in 924, when that city was in danger of siege from the Hungarians. Both of these were published by Muratori, in his fortieth dissertation on Italian Antiquities; and both have been borrowed from him by M. Sismondi, in his Littérature du Midi.[54] The former of these poems is in a loose trochaic measure, totally destitute of regard to grammatical inflections. Yet some of the leading peculiarities of Italian, the article and the auxiliary verb, do not appear. The latter is in accentual iambics, with a sort of monotonous termination in the nature of rhyme; and in very much superior Latinity, probably the work of an ecclesiastic.[55] It is difficult to account for either of these, especially the former, which is merely a military song, except on the supposition that the Latin language was not grown wholly out of popular use. [54] Vol. i. pp. 23, 27. [55] I am at a loss to know what Muratori means by saying, “Son versi di dodici sillabe, ma computata la ragione de’ tempi, vengono ad essere uguali a gli endecasillabi.” p. 551. He could not have understood the metre, which is perfectly regular, and even harmonious, on the condition only, that no “ragione de’ tempi” except such as accentual pronunciation observes, shall be demanded. The first two lines will serve as a specimen:-- “O tu, qui servas armis ista mænia, Noli dormire, moneo, sed vigila.” This is like another strange observation of Muratori in the same dissertation, that, in the well-known lines of the emperor Adrian to his soul, “Animula vagula, blandula,” which could perplex no schoolboy, he cannot discover “un’esatta norma di metro;” and therefore takes them to be merely rhythmical. |French of eleventh century.|