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.
[455] All the documents containing the privileges granted by St. Ferdinand to Seville, on the capture of the city, are in the vernacular of the time, the Romance. Ortiz y Zuñiga, Anales de Sevilla, fol., 1677, p. 89.
Quiero fer una prosa en Roman paladino,
En qual suele el pueblo fablar a su vecino,
Car non so tan letrado por fer otro latino, etc.
Vida de S. Domingo de Silos, St. 2.