Note 454 — APPENDIX.
Reading edition
The most striking proof, perhaps, that can be given of the number of Latin words and constructions retained in the modern Spanish, is to be found in the many pages of verse and prose that have, from time to time, been so written that they can be read throughout either as Latin or as Spanish. The first instance of this sort that I know of is by Juan Martinez Siliceo, Archbishop of Toledo and preceptor to Philip II., who, when he was in Italy, wrote a short prose dissertation that could be read in both languages, in order to prove to some of his learned friends in that country that the Castilian of Spain was nearer to the Latin than their Italian;—a jeu-d’esprit, which he printed in his treatise on Arithmetic, in 1514. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 737.) Other examples occur afterwards. One may be found in a Spanish Grammar, published at Louvain in 1555, and entitled “Util y Breve Institution para aprender Lengua Hespañola”; a curious book, which treats the Castilian as only one of several languages then spoken in the Spanish Peninsula, and says of it, “no es otra cosa que Latin corrupto,”—adding that many letters had been written in Spanish words that were yet Latin letters, one of which he proceeds to give in proof. Other examples occur in a Dialogue by Fern. Perez de Oliva, and an Epistle of Ambrosio Morales, the historian, printed in 1585, with the works of the first; in a Sonnet published by Rengifo, in his “Arte Poética,” in 1592; and, finally, in an excessively rare volume of terza rima, by Diego de Aguiar, printed in 1621, and entitled “Tercetos en Latin congruo y puro Castellano,” of which the following is a favorable specimen:—
Scribo historias, graves, generosos Spiritus, divinos Heroes puros, Magnanimos, insignes, bellicosos; Canto de Marte, defensores duros Animosos Leones, excellentes, De rarâ industriâ, invictos, grandes muros, Vos animas illustres, præeminentes Invoco, etc.
Much cannot be said for the purity of either the Castilian or the Latin in verses like these; but they leave no doubt of the near relationship of the two. For the proportions of all the languages that enter into the Spanish, see Sarmiento, Memorias, 1775, p. 107;—Larramendi, Antiguedad y Universalidad del Bascuence, 1728, c. xvi., apud Vargas y Ponce, Disertacion, 1793, pp. 10-26;—Rosseeuw de St. Hilaire, Etudes sur l’Origine de la Langue et Romances Espagnoles, Thèse, 1838, p. 11;—W. von Humboldt, Prüfung, already cited;—Marina, Ensayo, in Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. IV., 1805;—and an article in the British and Foreign Review, No. XV., 1839.