did there exist one influential institution to retard the progress of corruption; the philosophy of the East was extinguished, the literary genius of the Greeks was gone, the schools of Athens and of Alexandria were abolished, and the last expiring sparks of taste or learning had retired to the solitary dungeons of the monks.

Still, during the night of ignorance which prevailed from the sixth to the ninth century, there survived at Constantinople a few, who, whilst they deplored the corruption outspread around them, preserved the cultivation of their ancient language, and could enjoy in secret the exquisite productions of their immortal ancestors.* of this partial preservation one essential means was the influence of the church, which

transpositions and inversions which distinguish ancient Greek and Latin for elegance, expression, and harmony. Accent, the regulator of articulation among the barbarous conquerors, became that of the corrupted Greek and Latin, to the exclusion of quantity; and in poetry, the structure of ancient prosody was forgotten, and gave way to the accentual versification."-Leake.

* Dalzel, Lect. iv. "In their lowest servitude and depression," says Gibbon, "the subjects of the Byzantine throne were still possessed of a golden key that could unlock the treasures of antiquity—of a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy." c. lxvi.

in its liturgy and ceremonies retained the pure and early dialect of the nation.* The sacred orations, too, of its primitive fathers, Gregory of Nazianzum, Basil, Cyrillus, and Chrysostom, served to cherish a taste for the elegancies and strength of the ancient Greek. But, unfortunately, these impassioned homilies were early abandoned for polemics and theologic argument, in which the aim of the disputants was victory, not enlightenment; and their doctrines, fraught with new and doubtful terms, applicable only to their own subtilties, and unsatisfactory even as explanatory of these, were promulgated to the nation, not in the language of scholastic purity, but in the vulgar idiom of the period.†

"Tametsi apud hodiernos Græcos passim in usu sit lingua illa vulgaris de qua agimus, alia preterea apud eos viget, Græca scilicet antiqua et pura, cujus usus est in sacris celebrandis."-Ducange præf. p. x. Leake's Research. p. 52.

+ Rizo, Cours, &c. p. 17. "Avant d'avoir des ouvrages écrits en leur langue actuelle, les Grecs en eurent où leur langue ancienne avait subi des modifications remarquables par lesquelles elle tendait déja aux formes plus simples, et à l'allure moins hardie, mais plus aisée de l'idiome moderne. Les ouvrages destinés à l'instruction religieuse du peuple, les hymnes sacrés, les homélies, les vies des saints et des martyrs, furent en grande partie de ce nombre. * Il y a lieu de présumer que celui-ci existait des-lors comme un dialecte à part, détaché du Grec ancien."-Fauriel, Discours, P. xii.

The era of the Crusades and the dismemberment of Greece by the Latins in the 13th century, contributed at once to perpetuate her intellectual debasement, and to eradicate the last vestiges of original purity from her language, Her degenerate dialect was in some instances almost abandoned by particular districts;* and in all, where it prevailed, it assumed a fresh form from the example of the new settlers, and imbibed those figures, phrases, and modes of expression, which can still be traced in its constitution, and are referable to successive intermixtures with the French, the Italians, and Spaniards. In the interim between this event and the Ottoman conquest, we can find no symptoms of a revival: as a branch of literary or professional education, the ancient Greek was still studied by the Constantinopolitans; and those of the higher ranks who

* Raymond Montanero states that in his time (about the year 1300) French was spoken as perfectly at Athens as at Paris. "E parlavan axi belle Francis com dins en Paris." -Hist. Arragon. See Pref. to Ducange's Glossary of the Latinity of the Middle Ages.

+"Avec les croisés tous les dialectes de l'occident s'introduisirent de force en Grèce, une quantité de mots étrangers se nationalisèrent, la langue du peuple s'altera toujours plus," &c.-Rizo, Cours, &c. p. 17.

Filelfo in his epistle to Saxolus Pratensis, quoted in

aspired to refinement, affected in their writings and discourse a restoration of the pure Hellenic, by an admixture of its obsolete terms with the popular idiom of the time. But the effort was as abortive in execution as empty in design; and though the practice continued till the end of the seventeenth cen

Doctor Hody's Memoirs of the Illustrious Greeks who after the fate of Constantinople restored Greek learning in Europe, states, that at this period the popular dialect of the Morea was so base as to retain no trace of its ancient beauty or purity. "Lingua etiam ipsa adeo est depravata ut nihil omnino sapiat priscæ illius et sapientissimæ Græciæ. Mores vero barbarie omni barbariores." (Hodius de Græcis Illustrib. lib. ii. c. i. p. 190.) As to the popular dialect of Constantinople, it was equally degenerate; its words and phrases were totally distinct from those of the ancient Greek, and the construction, quantity, and accent of the original language were forgotten,-" neque de constructione grammatica orationis, neque de syllabarum quantitate, neque accentu, quicquam aut perfecti aut certi ex istorum præceptis haberi possunt (potest?) Nam lingua Æolica, quam et Homerus et Callimachus in suis operibus potissimùm sunt secuti, ignoratur istic prorsus." Idem ad Petrum Perleonem, ib. p. 188. With the higher orders, and especially the females, at the capital, however, it was still the mode to imitate as far as possible the ancient elegance of their national tongue. "Viri aulici," says Filelfo in another letter written in 1451, "veterem sermonis dignitatem atque elegantiam retinebant; in primis ipsæ nobiles mulieres, quibus, cum nullum esset omnino cum viris peregrinis commercium, merus ille ac purus Græcorum sermo servabatur intactus." (ib. p. 189.)

tury, it was productive of no permanent improvement.*

At the present day its dialects are as various as the causes which led to its corruption.↑ This peculiarity was noticed, as I have mentioned in a preceding chapter, by the early visitants of Greece; and though it may not now exist to the same extent as reported by Cabasylas and Zygomala,§ its variations are still sufficiently striking. They arise, of course, from the intercourse of the various districts with their respective conquerors and colonists; and in the existing idioms of each may be distinctly discerned the effects of their proximity

During those darkest periods which followed the fall of Constantinople, the mixo-barbarous was the mode of writing adopted by the few persons (chiefly ecclesiastics) who then received any kind of literary education. Their studies not being guided by taste or philosophy, they derived no other advantage from them than an unmeaning knowledge of the words and grammar of the ancient tongue, of which they made a pompous display in this style of pedantic ignorance; and thus the mixo-barbarous assumed a character different both from Hellenic and the common dialect. Since the corruption and effeminacy of the Turks, and the increasing weakness of their government, have unwillingly or unconsciously afforded an opening for the light of civilized Europe into Greece, this style has given way to those already mentioned, and is gradually falling into deserved contempt. Leake's Researches, p. 55. + Gesner, p. 47. Turco-Græcia, lib. vii.

Vol. i. p. 206.