Note 24 — INTRODUCTION.

On reading Dante’s treatise De Vulgari Eloquio, it will be found that the distinction which he intends here is not between one language, or dialect, and another; but between “vulgar speech” (that is, the language handed down from mother to son without any conscious use of grammar or syntax), and language as regulated by grammarians and the laws of literary composition, and which Dante calls simply “Grammar.” A great deal might be said on the bearings of the present passage, but it is no part of my plan to enter on such questions.