But music continued to prosper in Germany; it abounded in songs.  Some were amatory, (muennelier); some were satirical, (cantica in malitiam); some heroic, (cantica in honorem,); some diabolical, (cantica diabolica.) These consisted of incantations, and of narratives of the feats of evil spirits.

[Sidenote:  800-911.]

Vernacular poetry, and vernacular composition, of every kind, were almost wholly left to the vulgar; all, who aimed at literary eminence, wrote in the Latin language.  Some discerning spirits became sensible that the German language was susceptible of great improvement, and excited their countrymen to its cultivation.  Among these was Otfroid; he translated the Gospel into German verse.  He describes, in strong terms, the difficulties which he had to encounter:  “The barbarousness of the German language is,” he says, “so great, and its sounds are so incoherent and strange, that it is very difficult to subject them to the rules of grammar, to represent them by syllables, or to find in the alphabet letters which correspond to them.”  It is however remarkable, that, although he complains of the dissonance of the German language, he never accuses it of poverty.

While France and Germany continued subject to the same monarch, German was the language of the court, and generally used in every class of society.  When the treaty of Verdun divided the territories of Charlemagne, the Romande, or Romance language, a corruption of the Latin, superseded the German in every part of France:  it was insensibly refined into the modern French, but the German continued to be the only language spoken in Germany.

Great progress was made in architecture:  the churches and palaces constructed by the direction of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, the Basilisc at Germani, the church of St. Recquier at Ponthieu, and many other monuments of great architectural skill and expense, belong to the age of Charlemagne, and bear ample testimony to the well-directed exertions of the monarch, and of some of his descendants, and to their wise and splendid magnificence.

I. 3.

Decline of Literature under the Descendants of Charlemagne.

[Sidenote:  800-911]

[Sidenote:  I. 3.  Decline of Literature under the Descendants of Charlemagne.]

That literature began to decline immediately after the decease of Charlemagne, in every part of his extensive dominions, and that its decline was principally owing to the wars among his descendants, which devastated every portion of his empire, seems to be universally acknowledged; yet there are strong grounds for contending that it was not so great as generally represented. Abbe le Beuf,[003] in an excellent dissertation on the state of the sciences in the Gauls during the period which elapsed between the death of Charlemagne and the reign of Robert, king of France, attempts