The beginning of every language is necessarily obscure; all speech is oral before it is written, and rude before it is polished.1 Words not committed to writing are lost with the breath that formed them; and the first rude essays are despised and neglected when a stile nearer to perfection is once attained. It is therefore impossible to fix the time at which one language ceased and another begun, or to mark exactly the gradations by which the change proceeded: it is at least impossible to a native of Italy to say when the present language had its first formation, amidst the confusion of war, and the incursions of barbarians, who for a time suspended all attention to literature, and left behind them no other memorials but mischief and desolation.