Page:The Compleat Linguist 1719-08 Issue One - A Grammar of Spanish.djvu/8

iv liberation along with it. So that what in our Tongue, and some others, is express'd in one or two Syllables, the Spanish extends sometimes to five or fix; as, Nacimiento, Birth; Levantamiento, an Uproar.

The best and most usual Dialect of it is the Castilian. We are told, That the present King Philip has, in Imitation of the Body set up at Paris by the late Monarch his Grandfather, and the better to court the Affections of the Spanish Nation, who doat upon their Tongue to an extravagant degree, erected an Academy for the Refinement of it.

In the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who was likewise King of Spain,it was thought the most Polite Language in Europe.

It has been sometimes call'd Romanza, from the Latin, which is the Foundation of it: And hence the Legends of Chivalry, which have been most practis'd in this Country, and ridicul'd so well by