taste or general
elegance of style was likely to subsist in so imperfect a condition of
society. These qualities seem to require a certain harmonious
correspondence in the tone of manners before they can establish a
prevalent influence over literature. A more real evil was the diverting
of studious men from mathematical science. Early in the twelfth century
several persons, chiefly English, had brought into Europe some of the
Arabian writings on geometry and physics. In the thirteenth the works of
Euclid were commented upon by Campano,[850] and Roger Bacon was fully
acquainted with them.[851] Algebra, as far as the Arabians knew it,
extending to quadratic equations, was actually in the hands of some
Italians at the commencement of the same age, and preserved for almost
three hundred years as a secret, though without any conception of its
importance. As abstract mathematics require no collateral aid, they may
reach the highest perfection in ages of general barbarism; and there
seems to be no reason why, if the course of study had been directed that
way, there should not have arisen a Newton or a La Place, instead of an
Aquinas or an Ockham. The knowledge displayed by Roger Bacon and by
Albertus Magnus, even in the mixed mathematics, under every disadvantage
from the imperfection of instruments and the want of recorded
experience, is sufficient to inspire us with regret that their
contemporaries were more inclined to astonishment than to emulation.
These inquiries indeed were subject to the ordeal of fire, the great
purifier of books and men; for if the metaphysician stood a chance of
being burned as a heretic, the natural philosopher was in not less
jeopardy as a magician.[852]

[Sidenote: Cultivation of the new languages.]

[Sidenote: Division of the Romance tongue into two dialects.]

[Sidenote: Troubadours of Provence.]

A far more substantial cause of intellectual improvement was the
development of those new languages that sprang out of the corruption of
Latin. For three or four centuries after what was called the Romance
tongue was spoken in France, there remain but few vestiges of its
employment in writing; though we cannot draw an absolute inference from
our want of proof, and a critic of much authority supposes translations
to have been made into it for religious purposes from the time of
Charlemagne.[853] During this period the language was split into two
very separate dialects, the regions of which may be