DR. TH. NEUMANN. 139 



this natural process of development was French. Many 

 reasons account for this. When Latin still was the 

 language of diplomats, there was one group of society 

 which kept itself excliisive, the knighthood. The 

 knights, especially the French-Provincial knights, form- 

 ed a state of their own with distinctly fixed ceremonies, 

 with distinct ways of thinking and living, distinct aims, 

 intentions and occupations. Knighthood furnished the 

 material for chivalrous poetry and shaped it, and the 

 German, English, Italian and Spanish knights were 

 obliged to learn French and Provincial in order to be 

 able to understand and to perform that wonderful art of 

 minstrelsy, whose cradle was in Southern France, where 

 it also matured its tenderest, most brilliant, most ex- 

 quisite blossoms. What a power that chivalrous French 

 possessed may be seen from the fact that certain poetical 

 subjects, such as the story of King Arthur and his 

 knights, went from Great Britian to France and returned 

 to their mother-country in foreign, in French garment. 

 Here, in this circumstance, the French knights pro- 

 tecting and developing their own language, we find suffi- 

 cient reasons for the dominating position of the French 

 language, and this position was moreover splendidly 

 maintained by William of Normandy when he con- 

 quered England. The wars of the French kings in 

 Italy, which followed then, and which lasted many 

 centuries, the close relation between France and Eng- 

 land extended also over many generations, did more 

 to establish and to strenghten the universal dominion of 

 the French language. We must keep in mind, more- 

 over, that the political preponderance of France during the 

 the 15th, 16th and I7th centuries forced the other nations 

 who sought intercourse with her, to learn that language. 

 French became the universal language of diplomacy, and 

 it has retained this position up to date. And truly, few 

 other languages offer equal advantages in beauty, 



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