Epitome of the Progress of Natural Science, 195 



guage, and new dialects arose out of the mixture of the barba- 

 rous with the civilized. Such was the origin of the Italian, the 

 Spanish, and French languages. Muratori, in his antiquities of 

 Italy, informs us, that as early as the end of the twelfth century, 

 when Godfred, patriarch of Aquileia, pronounced a homily in the 

 Latin tongue, the bishop of Padua, explained it to the people in 

 the lingua volgare, or dialect spoken by the mass of the people, 

 meaning the nascent Italian. This, as Tiraboschi, in his History 

 of Italian Literature, observes, probably was spoken long before 

 it was written, as the learned would disdain to write in a dialect 

 only spoken by the vulgar. 



But the Italian tongue had already been preceded by the Pro- 

 vencal, a language in which modern poetry, at the dawning of 

 letters in Europe, first appeared. It was then, that poetry pro- 

 duced its usual effect : from the moment of its cultivation, the 

 darkness of the barbarous ages began to disperse ; under its in- 

 fluence men began again to draw together, as the beasts are said 

 to have assembled, charmed by the lyre of Orpheus. We must 

 go back one step in history, to glance at the very interesting cir- 

 cumstances under which the Provencal poetry arose, and from a 

 source too much overlooked in the history of the revival of 

 learning. 



The empire of the Arabs is dated from the Hegira, or flight 

 of Mahomet, A. D. 622. An empire of this vast extent, and 

 which, within the period of a century from its origin, compre- 

 hended Egypt, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Africa, and the greater 

 part of Spain, depended for its existence upon the fanaticism 

 and military spirit, which had inspired the arms of Caled and 

 Amrou. These impulses being wanting, the causes of the dis- 

 memberment of this great empire began to operate. Luxury^ 

 the schism of Ali and Omar, factions, the civil wars between the 

 followers of these chiefs, and the excommunications of the caliphs 

 of Bagdad, Cairo, and Cordova, fulminated against each other 

 like those of the popes and anti-popes of Rome, present anothei 

 historical picture of the instability of empires founded by the sword. 

 But in the comparatively short duration of the dominion of tlie 

 caliphs, the zeal which had led this hot-blooded race to conquest, 

 had, as has been stated at page 156, been directed to the culti- 

 vation of the learning of antiquity ; and their extraordinary at- 

 iainmentis were destined to have a powerful and leading influ- 



