184 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. II. 



charming to see, but our enquiries were checked- — we did not understand 

 the jargon of the markets — and it slowly dawned upon us that we were 

 among those who still used the Langue d'oc. Here let it be permitted 

 to take a rapid glance at the origin and growth of the Romance language 

 generally, that we may the better understand the position of Provencal 

 and kindred dialects. 



We have in Toronto a society for the study of the Romance languages, 

 and it would not surprise me were some of its members to say that the 

 French, Italian, Spanish, etc., which they aim to become conversant 

 with, have developed directly and independently from the Latin of Livy 

 and Virgil, Cicero and Caesar. Yet this is scarcely the case. The Latin 

 speech of the Romans was, I imagine, at no time the common language 

 of all Italy. In the Latinity even of Cicero traces are found of a lapse 

 from the earlier idioms ; for instance, in the use oi habeo as an auxiliary 

 in conjugating the verb. In Plautus we find, in every page, evidences 

 that the standard of ordinary conversation differed much from the 

 written lines of say Horace or Tacitus. The terrible work in the 

 continuity of the literary record, made by the Christians,* the tribes 

 of northern Europe, the Tartars, and the Mussulmen, who were instru- 

 mental in the decline of the Roman Empire, prevents our following step 

 by step the degradation of the old and the development of the new 

 language : we therefore have to accept and reason from such traces as 

 are left, just as from fossils we must, despite the imperfections of the 

 Geologic Record, try to write in full the history of the development of 

 organic life. 



The earliest statement to which the authorities attach much weight 

 relates to a very short speech indeed. A little before 600 A.D. the 

 Greek Emperor Maurice, having made a treaty with the Franks, with the 

 object of attacking the Chagan of the Avars, entrusted the conduct of 

 the war to Commentiolus, who had previously been successful against 

 the Goths in Spain, taken Carthagena and lived there for some time. 

 We cannot tell whether the soldiery who followed him were chiefly Goths 

 or Franks, but on the march a sumpter mule fell down, and the men who 

 saw the accident shouted to the muleteer, who was a long way in 

 advance : — 



T;/ Trarpcja cpui-'y. T6pva, Topva, (ppdrpe. 



— Theophanes. Chronographia. 



''Ercixupiu TE }'?MTTi]. . . .a?.?.og a/iTiUj ptropi^a. 



— Theophylact, His. lib. 2, cap. 15. 



The shouts produced a panic among the troops of Commentiolus, who fled 



* e.g., Gregory the Great had all the copies of Livy burned which could be any where dis- 

 vered — an action which St. Antonine describes as honorable to his memory ! 



