[] The earliest Spanish that I remember to have seen is an instrument in Martenne, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, t. i. p. 263; the date of which is 1095. Persons more conversant with the antiquities of that country may possibly go further back. Another of 1101 is published in Marina's Teoria de las Cortes, t. iii. p. 1. It is in a Vidimus by Peter the Cruel, and cannot, I presume, have been a translation from the Latin. Yet the editors of Nouveau Tr. de Diplom. mention a charter of 1243, as the earliest they are acquainted with in the Spanish language. t. iv. p. 525.
Charters in the German language, according to the same work, first appear in the time of the emperor Rodolph, after 1272, and became usual in the next century. p. 523. But Struvius mentions an instrument of 1235, as the earliest in German. Corp. Hist. Germ. p. 457.
[t] An extract from this poem was published in 1808 by Mr. Southey, at the end of his "Chronicle of the Cid," the materials of which it partly supplied, accompanied by an excellent version by a gentleman, who is distinguished, among many other talents, for an unrivalled felicity in expressing the peculiar manner of authors whom he translates or imitates. M. Sismondi has given other passages in the third volume of his History of Southern Literature. This popular and elegant work contains some interesting and not very common information as to the early Spanish poets in the Provençal dialect, as well as those who wrote in Castilian.
[] Dissert. 32.
[x] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 340.
[y] Dante, in his treatise De vulgari Eloquentiâ, reckons fourteen or fifteen dialects, spoken in different parts of Italy, all of which were debased by impure modes of expression. But the "noble, principal, and courtly Italian idiom," was that which belonged to every city, and seemed to belong to none, and which, if Italy had a court, would be the language of that court. p. 274, 277.
Allowing for the metaphysical obscurity in which Dante chooses to envelop the subject, this might perhaps be said at present. The Florentine dialect has its peculiarities, which distinguish it from the general Italian language, though these are seldom discerned by foreigners, nor always by natives, with whom Tuscan is the proper denomination of their national tongue.
[z] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 309-377. Ginguené, vol. i. c. 6. The style of the Vita Nuova of Dante, written soon after the death of his Beatrice, which happened in 1290, is hardly distinguishable, by a foreigner, from that of Machiavel or Castiglione. Yet so recent was the adoption of this language, that the celebrated master of Dante, Brunetto Latini, had written his Tesoro in French; and gives as a reason for it, that it was a more agreeable and useful language than his own. Et se aucuns demandoit pourquoi chis livre est ecris en Romans, selon la raison de France, pour chose que nous sommes Ytalien, je diroie que ch'est pour chose que nous sommes en France; l'autre pour chose que la parleure en est plus delitable et plus commune a toutes gens. There is said to be a manuscript history of Venice down to 1275, in the Florentine library, written in French by Martin de Canale, who says that he has chosen that language, parceque la langue franceise cort parmi le monde, et est la plus delitable a lire et a oir que nulle autre. Ginguené, vol. i. p. 384.
Tu proverai si (says Cacciaguida to him) come sà di sale
Il pane altrui, e come è duro calle
Il scendere e 'l salir per altrui scale.
Paradis. cant. 16.