446 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1800. 



Romans to disregard the writings of 

 their ancestors, to deviate frona the 

 original spirit of their language, and 

 rendered them incapable of discern- 

 ing the genuine words and phrases 

 from those that were interpolated. 



The Latin language being thus 

 left at the mercy of the populace, 

 it could not but become highly vi- 

 tiated, especially as Rome continued 

 to be inundated by numerous crowds 

 of foreigners, who flocked to the 

 capital and the Italian provinces. 

 This conflux of foreigners now con- 

 sisted no longer of nations, who had 

 one language in common, but of 

 Gauls, Britons, Germans, Bohe- 

 mians, Illyrians, Pannonians, Da- 

 cians, and other conquered nations, 

 whose languages were essentially 

 different from each other, and who, 

 by the superiority of their number, 

 and their incapacity of learning the 

 Latin language properly, naturally 

 must have occasioned the greatest 

 corruption. 



This evil increased rapidly when 

 the Roman provinces, from the time 

 of the emperor Probus, were garri- 

 soned with foreign auxiliaries. — 

 Amongst these the Heiailians and 

 Goths, who had settled in Italy in 

 considerable numbers since the go- 

 vernment of Valens, undoubtedly 

 caused the greatest mischief. 



The Herulians and Goths were 

 the first of all foreign nations that 

 usurped a dominion over Italy, di- 

 vided the lands with the natives, 

 lived according to their own laws 

 or rather customs and religions, and 

 learnt the language of the country 

 only as far as they wanted it, in or- 

 der to converse with the ancient 

 inhabitants. They gradually be- 

 came better acquainted with the 

 language of the country, and ima- 

 gined to speak elegantly when they 



expressed the phrases of their own 

 languaj^e by mutilated Latin words, 

 or even gave to the words of their 

 mother*-tongue Latin terminations. 

 The Italians, havingalready greatly 

 deviated from the correctness of 

 their language, and caring little or 

 nothing for its purity, they became 

 accustomed to foreign expressions 

 and words, adopted them as a cur- 

 rent coin, and at last could not dis- 

 cern any longer the foreign impres- 

 sion. 



Thence arose, towards the close 

 of the fifth century, a language 

 which by the learned was called 

 Lingua Bomatin Rustica. This pe- 

 riod might be called the first epocha 

 of the Italian language. 



During the ruinous wars between 

 the Greeks and the Goths, and the 

 invasions of the Longobards, all 

 means of i-estoring the language to 

 its original purity were totally lost ; 

 the schools became deserted, the 

 teachers, were suffered to starve, 

 a great number of libraries were 

 consumed by the flames, and books 

 became extremely scarce. There 

 were, indeed, few people who 

 could either read or write ; there- 

 fore the language of the people could 

 not but necessarily difier still more 

 from the genuine Latin under the 

 Longobards, than it had under the 

 Goths. 



It can, however, be proved that 

 the common people in Italy under- 

 stood the genuine Latin language 

 till the ninth century. This ap- 

 pears clearly by the Latin sermons 

 which were at that time publicly 

 preached, and are still extant, as 

 well as by the Latin laws framed 

 by the Longobard and Franconian 

 kings, and the performance of 

 public worship in the Latin lan- 

 guage. 



