^ I have not thought it proper, considering the system of excluding
mere hypothesis which I have adopted, to give much place here to
that interesting theory of modem "Romanists" which will have it
that Latin classical literature was never much more than a literary
artifice, and that the modern Romance tongues and literatures connect
directly, through that famous lingua romana rustica and earlier forms
of it, vigorous though inarticulate, in classical times themselves, with
primitive poetry — " Satumian," *' Fescennine," and what not. All
this is interesting, and it cannot be said, in the face of inscriptions, of
the scraps of popular speech in the classics, &c., to be entirely guess-
work. But a great deal of it is.
THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. 385

But two Other strains — one of which has long been
asserted with the utmost positiveness, while the latter
has been a favourite subject of Italian patriotism since
the political unification of the country — are much more
dubious. Because it is tolerably certain that Italian
poetry in the modern literary sense arose in Sicily,
and because Sicily was beyond all doubt almost more
Saracen than Frank up to the twelfth century, it was
long, and has not quite ceased to be, the fashion to
assign a great, if not the greatest, part to Arabian
literature. Not merely the sonnet (which seems to
have arisen in the two Sicilies), but even the entire
system of rhymed lyrical verse, common in the modern
languages, has been thus referred to the East by some.
