!>L\\M0t3ril LNiTllLllON. 47 



near Narbonne ; Trogus Pcmpeius, historian, bom near Vaison, 

 40 — 50. B. C; Eutropius, historian, born near Bordeaux, 

 towards the end oft'ie third century * 



Besides military conquest, there was another means by which the 

 Roman language was diffused in Gaul, viz., through the medium 

 of the teachers of the Chiistian reii^iou, as Latin was the only 

 language of its preachers in the VV est. In the 5th century Rome 

 was unable to protect (kiuI any lonuer from the incursions of the 

 German tribes, but tlie latter coulrl uoi obliterate the civilization 

 imported by the Homans, nor could tiiey substilate their own 

 language tor tiie Latin, wliicli had supplanted the Celtic ; circum- 

 stances \Ayic\i were attributa])ie to the hiiih civilization of the Ro- 

 nians, and the barbaiism of the (Termans. 



'1 he lecturer showed that two causes of the corruption of the 

 Latin language, were tlie preaching of the Gospel, whiv;h diffused 

 it, and subsequently tiie invasion of the barbarians. A third 

 cause was to be found in the language itself, whicii, from its 

 delicate and complex structure, was acquired with difficulty by 

 the Romans, and would of course be far more difficult to be 

 acquired by foreigners; they ahso in their endeavours to master 

 it would most surely deteriorate it by suiting it to their own 

 necessities, and introducing their own native words and idioms; 

 in this opinion the lecturer was borne out by Schlegel. 



In this way the Latin language was corrupted by the Gauls, 

 and in the 7th and 8th centuries the confusion must have been 

 incredible; the terminations of verbs and nouns were forgotten, 

 and in the records which remain of that period the words seem to 

 be placed at random, prepositions were made to serve for the for- 

 gotten terminations of nouns, and the auxiliaries habere and esse 

 were substituted for the lost inflexions of verbs ; and, in order to 

 distinguish gender and number, they found an article and from 

 Ille made Le. Thus was formed in France, from the Latin, a 

 popular idiom called Roman vulgaire, the remains of it [842. 

 A. D.] strongly resemble the Proven9al of the 11th century. 



In the 11th century the Roman branched into two dialects- 

 Roman Provencal and Roman Wallon, as different as the men 

 who made use of them. The lecturer proceeded to give an ac- 

 count of some of the productions in these two dialects, beginning 

 with the songs of troubadours. 



ROMAN PROVENCAL. 



He observed that in the middle ages there were two sorts of 

 civilization, one which subsisted on religious contemplation, 

 another which was the civilization of mirth and excitement, in 

 which the troubadours were the agents. This latter civilization 

 obtained in the south of France, towards the end of the 9ji cen- 

 tury, from its being more peaceful and better governed than the 



* Vossiu'? says of Evitropius — "cum auctor breviarii, Constantin; ejusque 

 Ijberorum, Juliani, Joviani et Valentis temporibus vixerit." Ed. 



