What would the world not have lost if the Romance languages had never been deemed worthy of becoming vehicles of literary expression? Men of letters would doubtless, have continued to attain a certain celebrity, according to the purity of their Latin, their mastery of Ciceronian eloquence, or their happiness of Horatian wit. Men like Scaliger and Salmasius would have set the standard of literary excellence. But no Dante would have inspired the Italian people, Spain would not have laughed and wept alternately over the adventures of Don Quixote, Portugal would not have sighed over the epic of Camoens, nor France been delighted by the plays of Moliere.
Apparently the writers of Egypt do not aspire to the fame and influence of a Dante or a Cervantes. They prefer the satisfaction of knowing that their works can be read by a narrow circle of the educated at Cairo, Beyrout, Algiers or Bagdad. They do not, it seems, covet the position of national writers, addressing their own people in the living language of their country. The task of edifying and amusing the masses is still to be left undisputed to the unknown authors of Antar of Abu Zeid, and of El Zahir Beibars.13
How long the present contempt for the spoken language will continue. We cannot tell. Of one thing we may be certain - that the day on which the common sense of the nations rebels against this attitude will see a great Renaissance, a great development of knowledge and literature among the Egyptian people. 1395 Minute of Dissent
