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for a Charlemagne to direft ; and without going into the hiftory of that 

 extraordinary man, it is fufEcient to obfcrve that the dignity and great- 

 nefs of his mind, had no fooner conceived than it executed the grandeft 

 defigns, doing more in forty years than any fucceffion of Kings have been* 

 able to perform in four hundred. He wifely faw that France could never be 

 a great nation, till flie poffeffed a language of her own, and himfelf (for 

 who fo fit ?) compofed the firfl: grammar Ihe had witnefled. Her tongue 

 therefore may juftly be called Royal: indeed it had been the policy of 

 the wifefi; nation the world ever produced, to plant her language with her 

 ftandard ; and modern France has wifely profited by the great example. 

 But the belt grammar in the world without good writers to fuftain its 

 rules, and good poets to embellifh them, for it is poetry that both makes 

 and embalms a language, could of itfelf perform little : accordingly, we 

 find that great monarch not only erefting churches that were to meliorate 

 the world, and founding public fchools for its inflruftion, but liberally 

 rewarding all who excelled in thofe arts by which his country could 

 be benefited. Among thefe the poets and muficians had his chief regard. 

 But this ffira produced under its wife King thofe merry men that at firft 

 were called, not poets, but in the proven9al language, troubadours, or 

 inventors of ftories, moftly of a comic nature, fung to the harp, that 

 always accompanied the feaft. So well did this monarch underfland the 

 powers of mufic and poetry, fo fond was he of thefe arts, and fo en- 

 couraged their cultivation, that we find him in one of his journies over 

 the Alps, met by a Lombard troubadour (we Ihould now call thtm/avoyards^ 

 the degenerated race of miniftrels!) whom the King made his gueft, 

 fufpending for a night his cares in that cold and cheerlefs region with 

 the rhimes of this itinerant trouvaire. In Provence lay the fcene of thefe 

 fports ; and what land could the mufes with more propriety have chofen 

 for their refidence, than this infpiring country, whofe pure and delightful 

 air breathed the very .foul of harmony ? But the unhappy wars in which 

 France was plunged for two centuries after, gave a fevere check to the 

 language formed by Charlemagne, which at firfl: was called Romanefque, 

 being an admixture of tlie Roman and Francic tongues, whence the 



fucceeding 



