Note 187 — Chapter IX

I have not thought it proper, considering the system of excluding mere hypothesis which I have adopted, to give much place here to that interesting theory of modern "Romanists" which will have it that Latin classical literature was never much more than a literary artifice, and that the modern Romance tongues and literatures connect directly, through that famous lingua romana rustica and earlier forms of it, vigorous though inarticulate, in classical times themselves, with primitive poetry—"Saturnian," "Fescennine," and what not. All this is interesting, and it cannot be said, in the face of inscriptions, of the scraps of popular speech in the classics, &c., to be entirely guesswork. But a great deal of it is.