Arthur as in the Celtic lands. To be recorded on vellum, and laid up in libraries, was a fortune too high for the half-developed tongues in which mothers murmured over their children and masters ordered their servants—good enough for such everyday uses, but for nothing more. The stately Latin, the Catholic language, was the inheritance of all who knew; it had the advantage of reaching that oligarchy in all the corners of Europe, irrespective of the differences in their common dialects—and this unquestionable advantage gave a certain reasonableness to the preference of the learned for the language of learning, the only grammatical and regulated medium for their thoughts.
In the twelfth century, however, twitterings of native song began to rise over the common country, irrepressible—rising among the Provençal vineyards, echoing back from Teutonic wastes, and by the dim and stormy shores of ancient Bretagne, and caught up again among the Umbrian villages. "The use of the vulgar tongue in Italy," says Crescimbeni, while describing the beginning of Italian poetry, "was introduced for no other end than to please the beautiful women, who listened more willingly to the songs of their lovers when in their native tongue than in Latin." No doubt this was the motif of the troubadours, whose fantastic medieval worship of love and beauty caught like fire wherever they strayed, and became a fashion, like their embroidery and quaint jerkins, among all the golden youth. But other emotions were bursting into voice as well—religion as impassioned as earthly love, and more real. How could the awful Latin, language of highest rite and mystery, serve the eager purpose of Francis in
