LATIN, GREEK, AND THE VERNACULARS
1. HUMANISTIC LATIN
The Middle Age had developed Latin style freely as a medium of
communication and variously as a medium of expression. On these terms
Latin had had a progressive history as the literary language of western
Europe. Latin remained the literary language for Erasmus and More in the
early, for Buchanan even in the late, sixteenth century. More habitually
composed in Latin, even when he meant to be printed in English; Erasmus
and Buchanan both composed and published in Latin exclusively. The
literary achievement of the vernaculars had challenged the Latin primacy.
But, thought the humanists, that rivalry had been possible only because
the primacy had been misused. Latin primacy to them was an article of
literary faith, a dogma. It must not lapse; and to restore its authority
all they needed was to restore its classical diction. No, says modern
linguistic science in retrospect, that was a delusion; it could only
segregate Latin farther. In fact Latin declined, slowly and as if
inevitably, from a primary language to a secondary. But those who now
mock the humanists for blindly hastening the decline of Latin to a “dead”
language should remember that throughout the Renaissance itself Latin was
active in every country and with almost every man of letters. It was far
from dead; but it was no longer primary.
Evidently the scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw in
the Latin literature of their time the revival of classical standards
after medieval decadence. Rejecting the medieval experience, they were
bent on restoring Latin to its classical eminence by reviving its
classical forms and style. They proposed a new Latin literature in
Augustan phrase.
Keeping its established place as the language of education, Latin
continued to be thought of as a norm of permanence. As late as 1586
Montaigne, remembering his boyhood, says (III. ii): “To me Latin is, as
it were, natural; I understand it better than French.” Later (1586-1588)
he adds (III. ix): “I am writing my book for a few men and a few years.
If there had been any idea of its lasting, I must have committed it to a
language of more stability.” In other words, the vernaculars of course
would continue to shift; not Latin. For by Latin the humanists meant the
Latin of Vergil, Caesar, Sallust, above all of Cicero, the Latin of the
great period. Renaissance humanism was a cult not merely of antiquity
in general, but specifically of Augustan Latin. It sought to revive not
only the ancient forms, but especially the ancient diction. The literary
preoccupation of the Renaissance was with style. For the highest literary
eminence, said the humanists, writing must be in Latin, that is in the
superior language, and in Augustan Latin, that is in the style of the
superior period.
The humanists demanded conformity, then, to Augustan diction. Lorenzo
Valla’s _Elegantiae linguae latinae_ (1476), reprinted again and again,
first of a long line of phrase books, and characteristic in its very
title, was a guide to conformity. Beyond conformity ranged imitation.
Humanistic Latin is imitative in theory, and in practice so various as
to furnish abundance of significant examples. These various degrees
and kinds will appear in subsequent chapters. Meantime the obvious
practical warrant for imitation is in exercises. Imitation in any art
is a recognized means of study by practice; it is not an end. But
Renaissance enthusiasm for revival often made elegant conformity a goal
in itself. An oration might seem an achievement by being Ciceronian, a
pastoral dialogue by being Vergilian. The subject, the idea, the message
of a speech, a letter, a poem might have little claim; nevertheless
publication might be warranted by the style. To exhibit the elegant
diction and the harmonious sentence-forms of the great period might
seem sufficient distinction. “Thus the whirligig of time brings in his
revenges.” Posterity, instead of continuing to read such humanistic
imitations, has long forgotten them. Few literary products have been less
permanent than those of the cult of permanence. A pervasive danger in
this classicism was its encouragement to a literature of themes.
2. GREEK
Even before the humanistic return to classical Latin another vista of
the ancient world had been opened by the revival of Greek. Generally
in abeyance through most of the Middle Age, Greek had been recovered
in the fourteenth century and was well established in the early
fifteenth. It was studied by both Boccaccio and Petrarch. It had its
professor at the Florence _studium_ (1396) in Chrysolaras, who went to
England in 1400. Guarino, his pupil at Constantinople, after bringing
Greek to Florence and Venice, settled (1431) at Ferrara, and attracted
among his many famous pupils the Englishmen Gray, Free, Gunthorpe,
and Tiptoft.[3] Bessarion was at the Council of Constance (1414). The
fall of Constantinople (1453), sending many Greek exiles to Italy,
merely increased opportunities already widely available. Even before
the establishment of printing there was increasing circulation of
manuscripts. Aurispa (1372-1460), for instance, besides being scholar
and professor, was an active dealer. Printing came in the nick of time
to spread the new vogue. There was a Florence text of Homer in 1488, an
Aldus in 1504. Aristotle, besides being translated anew, had a Greek
text in 1495 (Venice), another in 1503 (Paris). Sophocles was printed by
Aldus in 1502. Even the earliest sixteenth century commanded texts of a
considerable variety of Greek authors.
The variety, indeed, is striking. Evidently the humanistic cult of an
ideal period of Latin did not guide the selection of Greek. All was fish
that came to the Renaissance Greek net. Late Greek was as welcome as the
Greek of the great dramatists and orators; Alexandrian, as epic. With the
vogue of Plato in the fifteenth century came that of the neo-Platonists;
with the texts and translations of Aristotle, Hermes Trismegistus; with
Homer, the _Anthology_ and Apollonius Rhodius. Isocrates vied once more
with Demosthenes. Nor did Sophocles oust Seneca, or Thucydides prevail
against Livy. The wide and continued influence of sophistic appears
in the vogue of Athenaeus, Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and even Libanius.
Discrimination, indeed, was sometimes beyond Renaissance scholarship.
Henri Étienne, one of the best Greek scholars of the sixteenth century,
published (1554) a collection of Byzantine imitations which he supposed
to belong to the time of Anacreon. This was the Anacreon that inspired
Ronsard and was translated by Belleau. Since textual criticism was hardly
understood before the seventeenth century, hardly formulated before
the eighteenth, Renaissance printed texts are generally inaccurate.[4]
Nevertheless to have Greek authors, classical and decadent, at first
hand, to read the message in its own style, even imperfectly, was a
literary experience and had some excitement of exploration.
Thus was opened more widely a literature recommended alike by the praise
and by the imitation of the Augustan Romans. Habits of language and
style outside the Latin tradition, for the first time in centuries, were
made generally available. How far they availed, how far Greek operated
as language, especially on the widening vernacular literatures, can
better be gathered from the progress of this history than measured here
in advance. At first view the influence seems extensive. Renaissance
scholars as a matter of course at least professed to know Greek; and
most authors at least professed to be scholars. Poliziano was both; and
his knowledge of Greek seems to have been solid. In 1485 his _Oratio
in expositione Homeri_ thus compliments his university audience on its
command of Greek.
You are those Florentines in whose city all Greek learning,
long extinct in Greece itself, has so revived and flourished
that both your men expound Greek literature in public lectures
and the youths of your highest nobility, as never has happened
in Italy for a thousand years, speak Attic so purely, so easily
and smoothly, that Athens, instead of being sacked and seized
by barbarians, seems itself, of its own will wrenched away with
its own soil and, so to speak, with all its furniture, to have
immigrated to Florence and there entirely and intimately to
have founded itself anew (Gryphius edition, Lyon, 1537-1539,
III. 63-64).
The obvious exaggeration of an introductory public lecture does not lead
him to quote Homer in Greek. The abundant examples are given in his Latin
translation. Moreover this encomium of Homer relies not on specific
considerations of Greek language and style, but on such conventional
topics as could be derived equally well from a translation. The writing
of Greek, in spite of occasional published efforts, is probably measured
with his usual justice by Bembo. “We study Greek not to use it, except
for exercise, but the better to explore Latin.”[5] Poliziano, in spite
of his Greek and of his youthful achievement in Italian verse, wrote
the bulk of his work in Latin prose. Rabelais from his monastery at
Fontenay-le-Comte (1521) invoked the help of Budé toward procuring Greek
books; he translated a Greek author who had already been translated;
but how much Greek he achieved is hard to determine. Of Julius Caesar
Scaliger, whose Greek was one of his warrants for vanity, Egger says:
“though he knows much Greek, he seems to know it ill.”[6] The same critic
records of Henri Étienne: “From the age of fifteen he knew and spoke
Greek almost as his native language, and better than Latin.”[7] Ronsard’s
imitation of Greek verse is based on knowledge of the Greek language.
Montaigne, saturated in Plutarch, tells us that he knows no Greek. His
Plutarch is the translation of Amyot; and from Amyot, not from the Greek
text of Longus, is derived the vogue of _Daphnis and Chloe_. Both the
extent and the character of Greek influence may more safely be estimated
thus from individual literary forms and even from individual authors.
One general influence may be guessed from the stimulus given by Greek
to the Renaissance vogue of mythology. Boccaccio had already, in his
_Genealogia deorum gentilium_[8] ranged beyond Ovid; and in the sixteenth
century such manuals as Natale Conti’s (Natalis Comes) _Mythologiae_
(1580) were in active demand. Mythology equipped the poetry not only
of printed books, but also of pageants and solemn entries. It was so
widely pervasive as to seem almost obligatory. But how much of this
vogue was due to Greek? Greek mythology had been in ancient times
largely taken over into Latin. The distinctively Greek habit, that
is the earlier mythological habit, is to feel and treat the myth not
merely as a conventional allusion, but as a perennial story. For the
literary use of mythology is twofold. Either it is decorative, one of
the ornaments of style, or it is itself a form of poetry. The latter,
the perennial recreation of Prometheus or Medea, was less conspicuous
in Latin poetry than in Greek. How far the revival of Greek brought it
back may here and there be divined. It never quite dies. The widespread
medieval story of Mélusine is essentially identical with Medea, though
it did not come through Greek. On the other hand, Ariosto’s Angelica
bound to the rock directly suggests Andromeda, though the myth reappears
also in the popular ballad of _Kemp Owen_. Such myth-making gives a
clue to Boccaccio’s _Ameto_. There is something of it in Poliziano’s
_Orfeo_. It is carefully imitated from Pindar by Ronsard. It somewhat
vaguely animates Spenser. But it is not common in the Renaissance.
For the Renaissance generally, regarding mythology in the more usual
way as a mine of stylistic ornament, was merely more anxious to have
it standardized, to be sure that gods and goddesses wore the correct
classical costumes. Diana in the _Venatio_ (1512) of Adrian, Cardinal
Corneto, is such a figure; and her attendant nymphs are as much part
of the decoration as the chased bowls. Indeed, the Middle Age, frankly
adapting ancient cults to its own time, had been nearer to the Greek
habit. Chaucer had made the temple in his _Troilus and Criseyde_ a
cathedral, and called the Palladion a relic. While Renaissance painting
was handling mythology in this free way, Renaissance literature often
used it merely as archaistic decoration.
Thus it appears in Francesco Colonna’s fantastic allegory
_Hypnerotomachia_ (1467), and in its abundant woodcuts. The main figures,
though they have Greek names, are allegorical in the fashion of the
_Roman de la Rose_. The guide Logistica, for instance, is Reason; the
other guide, Thelemia,[9] Desire or Will. The nymphs met at every turn
serve for erotic suggestion; the Greek inscriptions, for decoration.
Colonna’s diction is studiously deformed by such Greek coinage as
_lithoglypho_, _hypaethrio_, _chariceumati_. The precious style thus
becomes a dilated pedantic jargon. In the whole preposterous book there
is nothing Greek below the surface.
How far did Greek influence Renaissance thought? Aristotle had
dominated the Middle Age in the Latin translations of Boethius and
in Latin versions of the Arabs. The Renaissance retranslated him and
published the Greek text. It restored him to challenge him. Were the
Renaissance translations superior to those of Boethius, who was scholar
and philosopher as well as poet? Did the Renaissance texts convey him
more truly? Renaissance texts are often questionable; and Aristotle’s
_Poetic_, at least, was understood very slowly. The Renaissance welcomed
Plato. Was it Plato? Why is Renaissance Platonism peculiarly difficult
to measure, or even to define? Such questions are relevant here only
to the revival of the Greek language. How far did this revival guide
philosophy? The question comes up incidentally in one of Sperone
Speroni’s earlier dialogues, _Dialogo delle lingue_ (about 1540); and the
answer is so unusual as to be startling. Philosophy has not been advanced
by our study of Latin and Greek; it has been deviated. This sharp turn,
in a dialogue discussing the superiority of Latin and Greek to the
vernaculars, comes as a reminiscence of the teaching of Peretto.
Peretto (p. 121) used to say that the time spent on learning
Latin and Greek actually hinders learning and developing
philosophy. No language (p. 123) has in itself any peculiar
value. Aristotle, therefore, not only may be studied in Latin,
but might be studied in Italian. In fact (p. 126), language
studies may be illusory, as we see around us. “I grieve at
the wretched condition of these modern times, in which study
is spent not in being, but in seeming wise.... We think we
know something well enough when, without comprehending its
nature, we are able to give it the name given by Cicero,
Pliny, Lucretius, Vergil, or Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes,
Aeschines.”[10]
Hardly more than a parenthesis, this stands out as a challenge both
of the superiority of Greek as a language and, more generally, of
Renaissance confidence in language studies as a means of education.
Such challenges are rare. Bembo, in Speroni’s dialogue, will not
admit any such heresy as the equality of languages; nor, we may well
assume, would Sperone himself admit that language study was hindering
philosophy. For the Renaissance generally agreed that education should
normally proceed through the study of languages. Of this the “new
learning” was no less persuaded than the old. The newness consisted in
revising the traditional Latin and in adding other languages, especially
Greek. Louvain established (1518) the College of the Three Languages
(Latin, Greek, and Hebrew); and the same name was at first commonly
applied to the Collège de France (1530). Though this royal foundation
was effectually new in other aspects that now may seem more important,
its idea and inception came in great part from the movement for Greek
in education. Nor did the movement stop with the individual college.
Nothing more vividly exemplifies Renaissance preoccupation with language
studies than the addition of Greek to the university curriculum.
Thwarted, in a time of bitter controversy, by the association of Greek
with Protestantism, the cause was won before the end of the century. The
prescription promulgated officially in 1600, and the educational theory
behind it, held substantially for three hundred years. There, at least,
is a permanent result of the Renaissance.
3. THE VERNACULARS
(_a_) _Italian_
The humanist assertion of the literary superiority of Latin did not pass
unchallenged even in the fifteenth century. Alberti (1404-1472), scholar
and philosopher, insisted that actual communication, the conveying of
a message, should be in the vernacular, and set an example by writing
many of his learned works in Italian. Though humanists might disparage
even so great a succession as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and in the
languid period some promising ambitions might be deviated into Latin,
by the sixteenth century the literary rights of the vernacular were both
recovered in practice and acknowledged in theory. The shift of opinion
is significantly recorded by Bembo. Elegant Latinist, accomplished poet
in the vernacular, judicious critic, he posed in an Italian literary
dialogue (_Prose_, Venice, 1525), Giuliano de’ Medici, Federigo Fregoso,
and Hercole Strozza discussing the capacity of Italian style:
I. Our vernacular, most explored and perfected at Florence, is
more intimate to us than Latin, as to the Romans Latin was than
Greek (i-iv). Yes, but as Greek was then superior, so Latin
is now. Answer (v): if that implied that the superior should
always be cultivated, nobody would ever have written well in
his own language. As Cicero sought to augment the authority
of his own Latin, so did Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio for
Italian. Greek (vi) we may dismiss, since it is not a medium
for us; we study it not to use it, but the better to explore
Latin. Provençal (vii-xi), though once an important language of
literature and very influential in our early poetry, has been
superseded by Italian.
But if we are to use the vernacular for literature, _which_
vernacular? (xii) Italian is not uniform. Shall we adopt the
language of the Papal Court? No; it has not writers enough to
constitute literary authority. Tuscan (xiii-xv) is best, as
having shown amplest capacity, and as actually holding the
literary leadership.
Shall we incline, then, to its older usage, or to current
popular speech? Answer (xvi-xvii): we are not limited to this
dilemma. We may cultivate a diction that remains acceptable.
Cicero or Demosthenes made himself entirely intelligible to the
populace without speaking as the populace would have spoken to
him.
II. An historical review (xx) of Italian poetry to and from
Dante finds all its graces united in Petrarch. So (xxi)
all previous prose writers were surpassed by Boccaccio. No
subsequent writers have equalled these two. Meantime Latin has
been so freed from the rust of ignorant centuries that today it
has regained its ancient splendor and charm.
In an analysis (xxiii-xxviii) of style under the classical
headings, Dante (xxiv) is rebuked for base words. He might
better have left out the things.
The qualities of vowels and of consonants (xxvii-xxviii), and
the three kinds of rhyme (xxix), with examples from Petrarch,
lead to a discussion of rhythm (_numero_, xxxii-xxxiii),
quantity (_tempo_, xxxv), and variation. The conclusion
reaffirms the preëminence of Petrarch and Boccaccio.
III. The noble works of Michael Angelo and of Raphael should
spur us to a like achievement in literature. This final section
discusses Tuscan in detail: word-forms, inflection, syntax, and
especially usage.
The dialogue opens a vista into contemporary thought about style. The
objection to Dante’s base words, startling to us now, was made frequently
then. No less characteristic of the time is the homage to Petrarch as
great poet and as master of style. Giraldi Cinthio expressed the common
view in a flowery simile.
But the law is not so strict for romances as not to permit more
license in words than is customary for sonnets and canzoni.
Long and serious subjects, if the conception is not to be
warped, need such latitude, which must nevertheless be limited.
Petrarch shows this clearly in his _Trionfi_. I will not cite
Dante; for whether through the fault of his age, or because
of his own nature, he took so many liberties that his liberty
became a fault. Therefore I find quite judicious that painter
who, to show us in a fair scene the literary value of the one
poet and the other, imagined both in a green and flowery mead
on the slopes of Helicon, and put into Dante’s hand a scythe,
which, with his gown tucked up to his knees, he was wielding
in circles, cutting every plant that the scythe struck. Behind
Dante he painted Petrarch, in senatorial robe, stooping to
select the noble plants and the well-bred flowers—all this to
show us the liberty of the one and the judgment and observance
of the other (_Discorsi_, Venice, 1554, pp. 133-134).
What Bembo calls Tuscan was at once a fact and an ideal. It is the
current name not only for the diction of Tuscany, but for the literary
diction increasingly practiced by all writers in Italian. Castiglione
feels himself bound to defend certain Lombard words. Ariosto anxiously
revises to conform. Tasso has a dispute with the _Accademia della
Crusca_. The most distinct dialect was in Naples. To conform to Tuscan
was for Neopolitans most nearly like acquiring another language. But even
there, and much more readily in other parts of Italy, Tuscan was accepted
and increasingly practiced as literary Italian. Used by scholars who
also wrote Latin, Italian naturally learned from Cicero and Vergil more
logical and rhythmical sentence habits, more adroit shaping of verse.
Thus the best result of humanism, perhaps, was the one least sought by
the humanists, the refinement of the vernacular.
Lodovico Dolce’s _Observations on the Vernacular_ (Venice, 1550) is an
Italian grammar addressed to educated readers and using the classical
headings. A section (157-186) on punctuation shows both the new emphasis
demanded by printing and a shift of control from rhythm toward logic.
Nearly fifty pages are devoted to Italian verse forms. Though there are
many examples from Boccaccio and a few from other authors, the great
exemplar throughout is Petrarch. Petrarch, then, was a model for Italian
poetry, Boccaccio for prose. As humanist Latin had its thesaurus, so
the cult of native models should have wherewith to guide both study and
imitation. Francesco Alunno’s _Observations on Petrarch_ (1539) is a
concordance plus a text of the sonnets and canzoni. His concordance of
Boccaccio’s _Decameron_ (1543) has the significant title _The Riches of
the Vernacular_. Finally _The Frame of the World_ (_Della fabrica del
mondo_, 1546-1548) is entitled further “ten books containing the words
of Dante, Petrarch, Bembo, and other good authors, by means of which
writers may express with ease and eloquence all man’s conceptions of any
created thing whatsoever.” The ten divisions are God, heaven, the world,
the elements, the soul, the body, man, quality, quantity, and hell. On
this grandiose scale the thesaurus carried out for mature writers in the
vernacular the idea of contemporary schoolbooks for Latin themes. It was
indeed a _copia_.
(_b_) _French_
Italian theory of the vernacular being typical generally, and being
moreover quickly known in France, the progress of French thought need not
be detailed. Jean Lemaire allegorized _La Concorde des deux langages_
(about 1512) to urge Frenchmen and Italians together from lower to
higher poetry. No less than Italy France saw its literary future in
the vernacular. But France had not so compelling a literary past. Its
fourteenth century had no such mighty succession as Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio. Its medieval greatness was more remote; its medieval
survivals, generally languid. So the more ardent of coming French poets
were ready to repudiate not only medieval Latin for classical Latin,
but also medieval French verse for a new, classical French poetry. The
promotion of this is the movement called the Pléiade; and its manifesto
is Joachim du Bellay’s _Deffense et illustration de la langue française_
(1549).
The main idea is so to _enrich_ French diction as to establish an
equality with Greek and Latin. This is the meaning of _illustration_ in
the title. More than a century later Dryden used the same Latin root for
the same idea when he said that medieval English poetry lacked _lustre_.
Greek or Latin, Du Bellay urges, has no such linguistic superiority as
to compel our using it as our own literary medium. Cultivation of the
classics as languages leads to pedantry. Philosophy is not a language
study. Those who so pursue it seem more anxious to show learning
than to have it. For a literary career, indeed, one must know Latin
and preferably Greek also, but not as an end and not as a medium of
expression. Latin and Greek, then, have their value in the writer’s
education, not in his writing; but Du Bellay does not draw this inference
explicitly, and seems not to see the further inference that the real
enriching is not of one’s language, but of oneself. For he proposes that
French be improved by classical grafts, and further by imitation of
classical style. Let us enhance French literature, he urges, by making
French language more classical.
Thus to reduce the treatise to its lowest terms is quite unjust to
its suggestiveness. But its intrinsic value at best is less than its
historical. Ignoring a French medieval achievement already forgotten or
misunderstood, it turns humanist imitation toward giving French poetry
classical lustre.
Such manipulation was unchecked by any considerable knowledge of the
actual development of language. Even the learned Benedictine, Périon,
derived French from Greek (_Ioachimi Perionii Benedictini ... dialogorum
de linguae gallicae origine, eiusque cum graeca cognatione, libri
quatuor_, Paris, 1555; dedication dated 1554).
Périon is cautious in his conclusions, as in his title. He has unusual
grasp of phonetic cognates: b, f, p, v (p. 54); t, d, th (p. 107 verso);
c, ch, g, k (p. 125). He admits, of course, the large influence of Latin.
But he seems to think that Gallic derived directly from Greek, and
added its abundant Latin later. What he cites in his parallels is not
Celtic, but French. Though the historical introduction is negligible,
the linguistic proof, even where it is in error, shows both awareness of
language processes and some scientific knowledge.
French is like Greek, he finds, in the habit of articles (p. 107), in
accent (p. 111), in nouns ending -on and te, in having an aorist (p.
134), in using the infinitive as a verbal noun (p. 135). Thus though his
theory and many of his particular derivations are unsound, his method of
observing language habits is ahead of his time. Citing Budé, Baif, and a
few Latin authors, he seems in the main to have worked independently from
his own observations.
That so much knowledge of detail should reach so little grasp of the
whole shows the prevailing ignorance of linguistic science.
The last quarter of the sixteenth century raised among the vernaculars
the question of rank. Enthusiasm for the theory and the achievement of
Italian had led some Frenchmen, in spite of the triumphs of Ronsard, to
disparage their own. In 1579, thirty years after Du Bellay’s manifesto,
Henri Étienne (Henricus Stephanus), scholar and editor, sought not only
to vindicate French rights, but to demonstrate French superiority, in
his book on the _Preëminence of the French Language_ (_Project du livre
entitulé De la précellence du langage françois_).[11]
Under the headings weight (_gravité_, p. 196), charm (_grace_, p. 217),
and range (_richesse_, p. 246) he proposes to prove (p. 176) that
“our French language surpasses all the other vernaculars.” Spanish he
dismisses (p. 179) as evidently inferior to Italian, and hence to French.
English is not even mentioned. The demonstration is of French superiority
to Italian.
First (p. 181), French is more stable. We have never needed “grands
personnages” to tell Frenchmen how to use French. Where they have
occasionally done so for pleasure, they have not left us in the dark with
their disputes. The objection that we are not agreed as to which part
of France has standard French, nor as to how it should be spelled, is
rebutted. French and Italian translations of the same original (p. 204)
are put side by side. It is noteworthy that Ronsard (pp. 207-208) in each
case dilates.
In detail, Italian inflectional endings lead to monotony (p. 218); and
Italian word-forms are not consistently adapted from the Latin. French
is richer in diminutives (p. 241), in its legacy (p. 260) from medieval
romances and crafts, and (p. 314) in proverbs. Its facility in adaptation
(p. 280) appears especially in compounds.
An Italian of equal learning could readily counter on each of these
points. Could he disprove the whole? Could he prove the superiority of
Italian? Can any language be proved superior to all others? As between
two modern languages, the preference, many would say, is grounded not
on demonstration, but on taste and habit. Italian cannot be proved
superior or inferior to Spanish, French to English. Each writer naturally
prizes the language that he knows best above another that he knows less.
Étienne’s thesis is not susceptible of proof. Perhaps; but what of Greek
and Latin? Some men even today, far more in the Renaissance, would offer
to prove that Greek is a superior language. For Étienne’s treatise
raises in a new quarter an old question that even now is not answered
unanimously.
Whatever one’s attitude toward this larger question, and however
unconvincing Étienne may seem, his treatise is not absurd; nor is it a
Renaissance _tour de force_. It is both serious and learned. Latinist and
Hellenist, exact in the fine tradition of his house, he had the right to
speak on language. His citing (p. 288) of historical consonant change
shows some inkling, most uncommon in his time, of linguistic science.
But in 1579 he could not know linguistic sufficiently. He assumes, as
Du Bellay does, that processes of language are largely conscious, even
deliberate choice (pp. 224, 400). His assumption that Provençal is
French (Bembo had assumed that it was Italian) is not mere begging of
the question. No one of his time could know the historical processes
by which Provençal, Tuscan, Spanish, northern French, not to mention
other tongues, had evolved from Latin. Even so, some of his citations of
forms still have linguistic value. The larger value is in the literary
discrimination of his wide reading, in the ingenious device of parallel
translations, and in the significance of a dispute that was bound to
recur as each vernacular came to represent more and more a national
self-consciousness.
(_c_) _English_
National self-consciousness became notorious in England with the
Elizabethans. Even with them lingers a certain nervousness as to
the capacity of the English language. Such doubts arose not only
from humanistic exaltation of Latin, but even more from ignorance of
linguistic history. The barren fifteenth century had at least established
the language of London as the English literary norm. The northern speech
indiscriminately called Scotch, though its literary use persisted through
the sixteenth century, came to be regarded as a dialect. The language of
Malory’s _Morte d’Arthur_, and generally of Caxton’s publications, is
substantially the same as that of the _Canterbury Tales_. By the time
of Surrey, England had its Tuscan. Sixteenth-century literary usage in
England, though its emergence from the barren period may seem slower than
in Italy and France, is hardly more lax. The recklessness of Skelton,
as the later recklessness of Rabelais, was individual extravagance. The
vagaries of Spenser are not reckless; they are deliberate archaism.
Where they violate the language of Chaucer, they show merely that a
Renaissance poet who knew Latin and Greek, as well as French and Italian,
might remain unaware of linguistic history, even in his own language. If
the printed texts that he used had been more accurate, he might still
have been too bent on following the lead of the Pléiade in manipulating
language toward a new poetry to notice the difference between an
infinitive and a preterit. For him Chaucer’s words were color and sound,
not forms. But though he misread Middle English, he felt too deeply what
Ascham missed altogether, the tradition of English poetry, to dally long
with classicizing metric. There had been no one to do for Chaucer what
Alunno had done for Petrarch. Nevertheless, even without the help of good
lexicons and grammars, Renaissance English shows a sufficient continuity
of literary acceptance.
Prose, of course, lingered behind verse. Chaucer’s prose rendering of
Boethius, in sharpest contrast to his verse, had been groping. Malory’s
prose was sufficient for narrative, though not for such philosophical
discussion. Prose control in both narrative and discussion seems assured
first in Sir Thomas More; but as late as John Lyly the progress of prose
was still uncertain. The brief vogue of “Euphuism” shows an attempt to
“enrich” the vernacular by Latin sentence figures. Lyly came to recognize
that the vernacular had its own literary ways and its own literary
rights. Finally from being a court writer he turned to whole-hearted
pursuit of the actual vernacular in order to win the larger audience.
For the idea of changing one’s native language by classical grafts or
other literary manipulation, though it was unchecked by any accurate or
extensive linguistic science,[12] gradually gave way before the facts of
literary experience.