DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62267#0166
156 CLASSICAL TOUR Dis.
prising in four emphatic words its eventful annals,
he represents it as,
Gravidam imperils, belloque frementem.
JEneid iv. 229.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF
MODERN ITALY.
IV. That a country subject to so many vicissi-
tudes, colonized by so many different tribes, and
convulsed by so many destructive revolutions,
should have not only varied its dialects but some-
times totally changed its idiom, must appear
natural and almost inevitable: we are only sur-
prized when we find that in opposition to the in-
fluence of so many causes, Italy has retained, for
so long a series of ages, so much of one language#
and preserved amidst the influx of so many bar-
barous nations uttering such discordant jargons,
the full harmonious sounds of its native Latin.
I have elsewhere made some observations on the
origin and progress of this language*, and I
need only add that it remained long in a state of
infancy and imperfection; that, in the short space
Vol. ii. Ch. xii.
prising in four emphatic words its eventful annals,
he represents it as,
Gravidam imperils, belloque frementem.
JEneid iv. 229.
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF
MODERN ITALY.
IV. That a country subject to so many vicissi-
tudes, colonized by so many different tribes, and
convulsed by so many destructive revolutions,
should have not only varied its dialects but some-
times totally changed its idiom, must appear
natural and almost inevitable: we are only sur-
prized when we find that in opposition to the in-
fluence of so many causes, Italy has retained, for
so long a series of ages, so much of one language#
and preserved amidst the influx of so many bar-
barous nations uttering such discordant jargons,
the full harmonious sounds of its native Latin.
I have elsewhere made some observations on the
origin and progress of this language*, and I
need only add that it remained long in a state of
infancy and imperfection; that, in the short space
Vol. ii. Ch. xii.