of that
refined language. It cannot here be denied, that as new ideas always
require new signs to express them, some foreign words, and perhaps
phrases, must necessarily, from time to time, have insinuated themselves
into the Romansh, by the military and some commercial intercourse of the
Grisons with other nations; and this accounts for several modern German
words which are now incorporated into the language of the Engadine.[AI]

The little connexion there is in mountainous countries between the
inhabitants of the different valleys, and the absolute independence of
each jurisdiction in this district, which still lessens the frequency of
their intercourse, also accounts, in a great measure, for the variety of
secondary dialects subsisting in almost every different community or
even village.

The oldest specimens of writing in this language are some dramatical
performances in verse upon scriptural subjects, which are extant only in
manuscript. The Histories of Susanna, of the Prodigal Son, of Judith and
Holofernes, and of Esther, are among the first; and are said to have
been composed about the year 1560. The books that have since been
printed are chiefly upon religious subjects; and among those that are
not so, the only I have ever heard of are a small code of the laws of
the country in the Cialover dialect, and an epitome of Sprecher's
Chronicle, by Da Porta, in the Ladin.

* * * * *

The language spoken in Gaul from the fifth to the twelfth centuries
being evidently a mixture of the same Roman and Celtic ingredients, and
partaking of the same name with those of the Grisons; it will, I hope,
not be thought foreign to the subject of this letter, if I enter into a
few particulars concerning it, as it seems to have been an essential
part, or rather the trunk, of the language, the history of which I am
endeavouring to elucidate.

One of the many instances how little the laboured researches of
philologists into the origin of languages are to be depended upon, is
the variety of opinions entertained by French authors concerning the
formation of the Gallic Romance. A learned Benedictine[AJ] first starts
the conjecture, and then maintains it against the attacks of an
anonymous writer, that the vulgar Latin became the universal language of
Gaul immediately after Caesar's conquest, and that its corruption, with
very little mixture of the original language of the country, gradually
produced th