THE Latin which gave birth to the Romance languages was vulgar Latin, that is, the Latin of the common people. It accompanied the soldiers of the legions, the colons, and the emigrants of every kind, from Italy into the provinces, and thus became the language of the people of all Western Europe—the spoken, not the written, language. We can reconstruct this language to a certain extent, with the aid of the hints let fall by different writers, but only in a most general way...