The high spirit of the Polish nation, and that glowing patriotism for which they are so distinguished, has induced them during the period of their unnatural partition and amalgamation with foreign nations, to devote more zeal than ever to the sole national tie which still binds together the subjects of so many different powers—­their language.  There have been numerous learned societies founded; among them, above all, the society of the friends of science at Warsaw, to which the most eminent men of the nation belong, must be distinguished.  Academies of arts and sciences have been established, and associations formed for various scientific purposes.  The influence of all these institutions, more especially that of the above-mentioned society at Warsaw, has been very favourably employed in limiting that of the French and German languages, naturally induced by political circumstances.

The French language indeed, independently of the political events of modern times, had already acted powerfully on the Polish at the close of the preceding period.  In poetry, the affected bombastic school of the Gongorists and Marinists had been supplanted throughout all Europe by the better taste of the cold, stiff, and formal French poets, whose defects it was much easier to imitate than their merits.  For more than half a century the French language reigned with an uncontrolled and unlimited sovereignty over all the literary world.  But its most absolute dominion was in Poland.  In the manners of the nobility of this country, French gracefulness and ease were, in a peculiar and interesting manner, blended with the daring heroism of the knight and the luxuriousness of the Asiatic despot.  French refinement and French witticism covered the rudeness and revelry characteristic of the middle ages.  French teachers and governesses had inundated the whole country, and a journey to France was among the requisite conditions of an accomplished education.  The Polish writers—­all of them belonging to the nobility—­to whom, from their youth, the French language was equally familiar with their own, unconsciously disfigured the latter by Gallicisms; since French forms of expression seemed to be the best adapted for the expression of French thoughts and French philosophy.  A modern Polish author calls the Polish literature of this period a second edition of the French with inferior types and on worse paper.[45] Long after the rest of literary Europe had shaken off the yoke, the Polish poets, although the genius of their rich, creative, and pliant language was decidedly opposed to such a slavery, continued to submit to French rules and laws, and do so partly still.