It Takes Its Name From Patavium, Or Padua, Which Was The
Birthplace Of Livy, Who, With All His Merit As A Writer, Has
Admitted Into His History, Some Provincial Expressions Of His Own
Country.
The Patois, or native tongue of Nice, is no other than
the ancient Provencal, from which the Italian, Spanish and
French languages, have been formed.
This is the language that
rose upon the ruins of the Latin tongue, after the irruptions of
the Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Burgundians, by whom the Roman
empire was destroyed. It was spoke all over Italy, Spain, and the
southern parts of France, until the thirteenth century, when the
Italians began to polish it into the language which they now call
their own: The Spaniards and French, likewise, improved it into
their respective tongues. From its great affinity to the Latin,
it was called Romance, a name which the Spaniards still give to
their own language. As the first legends of knight-errantry were
written in Provencal, all subsequent performances of the same
kind, have derived from it the name of romance; and as those
annals of chivalry contained extravagant adventures of knights,
giants, and necromancers, every improbable story or fiction is to
this day called a romance. Mr. Walpole, in his Catalogue of royal
and noble Authors, has produced two sonnets in the antient
Provencal, written by our king Richard I. surnamed Coeur de Lion;
and Voltaire, in his Historical Tracts, has favoured the world
with some specimens of the same language.
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