Note c — Chapter IX · [a] (continued 3)

Hist. Litt. de la France, t. vii. p. 58. Le Bœuf, according to these Benedictines, has published some poetical fragments of the tenth century; and they quote part of a charter as old as 940 in Romance. p. 59. But that antiquary, in a memoir printed in the seventeenth volume of the Academy of Inscriptions, which throws more light on the infancy of the French language than anything within my knowledge, says only that the earliest specimens of verse in the royal library are of the eleventh century au plus tard. p. 717. M. de la Rue is said to have found some poems of the eleventh century in the British Museum. Roquefort, Etat de la Poésie Françoise, p. 206. Le Bœuf's fragment may be found in this work, p. 379; it seems nearer to the Provençal than the French dialect.