Note 431 — Chapter VI

The habit thus acquired, long survives the circumstances which made it necessary. During many centuries, the love of versification was so widely diffused, that works in rhyme were composed on nearly all subjects, even in Europe; and this practice, which marks the ascendency of the imagination, is, as I have shown, a characteristic of the great Indian civilization, where the understanding was always in abeyance. On early French historians who wrote in rhyme, see Monteil, Hist. des divers Etats, vol. vi. p. 147. Montucla (Hist. des Mathémat. vol. i. p. 506) mentions a mathematical treatise, written in the thirteenth century, ‘en vers techniques.’ Compare the remarks of Matter (Hist. de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, vol. ii. pp. 179–183) on the scientific poetry of Aratus; and on that of Hygin, p. 250. Thus, too, we find an Anglo-Norman writing ‘the Institutes of Justinian in verse;’ Turner's Hist. of England, vol. vii. p. 307: and a Polish historian composing ‘his numerous works on genealogy and heraldry mostly in rhyme.’ Talvi's Language and Literature of the Slavic Nations, 8vo. 1850, p. 246. Compare Origines du Droit Français, in Œuvres de Michelet, vol. ii. p. 310.