Note 7 — INTRODUCTION. GENERAL VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF ROMANTIC POETRY AND ELOQUENCE, IN THE KINGDOMS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

How sensibly the neglect of the Catalonian or Valencian tongue, after the union of the kingdoms of Arragon and Castile, was felt in the provinces which belonged to the former, may be seen from the passage quoted by Eichhorn, in his Allg. Gesch. der Cul. u. Litt. vol. i. page 129, from Scuolano’s History of Valencia. But the pleasing language of the Troubadours was doubtless very defective. It would otherwise have been difficult to have made the Catalonian poets so soon proselytes to the Castilian dialect, especially as, besides the difference of language, the natural jealousy between the Arragonian and Castilian provinces was strong enough to manifest itself by political effects even in the eighteenth century. The imperfection of the Troubadour phraseology may have been partly owing to its fluctuations, and the various forms it assumed, in the several dialects. The difference of the dialects appears particularly evident on comparing the real Provençal of the French Troubadours with the Valencian, called Lengua Vallenciana. The dialect of the Provençal Troubadours may, without much difficulty, be translated by conjecture, if the reader be acquainted with French and Italian; but the meaning of the Valencian cannot be so easily guessed at, even with the additional knowledge of Castilian. As a proof of this, it will be sufficient to peruse a passage of the Libre de los Dones, of Mosen, [that is, Monsieur, instead of the Castilian Don] Jaume [James] Roig, reprinted in Valencia, 1735, in 4to. The author is one of the last poets who wrote in the Valencian dialect, and the whole didactic poem, if so it may be called, is composed in short verses of the following description:

Owing to the difference of the dialects, a foreigner might, by a short residence in Madrid, learn to express himself in Castilian with more fluency than it is spoken by a great part of the inhabitants of the Arragonian provinces.