correct and improve his style by the study of the works of the rising school of landscape. To gain a living he painted marine pieces for Palser the print seller, received pupils, and published many drawing books for learners. He was likewise one of the first who turned to account in his profession the newly-invented art of lithography. It was not however until about 1818 that Prout discovered his proper sphere. Happening at that time to make his first visit to the Continent, and to study the quaint streets and market-places of continental cities, he suddenly found himself in a new and enchanting province of art. All his faculties, having found their congenial element, sprung into unwonted power and activity. His eye readily caught the picturesque features of the architecture, and his hand recorded them with unsurpassed felicity and fine selection of line. The composition of his drawings was exquisitely natural; their colour exhibited “ the truest and happiest association in sun and shade”; the picturesque remnants of ancient architecture were rendered with the happiest breadth and largeness, with the heartiest perception and enjoyment of their time-worn ruggedness; and the solemnity of great cathedrals was brought out with striking effect. At the time of his death, on the 10th of February 1852, there was scarcely a nook in France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands where his quiet, benevolent, observant face had not been seen searching for antique gables and sculptured pieces of stone. In Venice especially there was hardly a pillar which his eye had not lovingly studied and his pencil had not dexterously copied.
See a memoir of Prout, by John Ruskin, in Art Journal for 1849, and the same author's Notes on the Fine Art Society's Loan Collection of Drawings by Samuel Prout and William Hunt (1879–1880).
PROUT, WILLIAM (1785-1850), English chemist and physician, was born at Horton, Gloucestershire, on the 15th of
January 1785, and died in London on the oth of April 1850.
His life was spent as a practising physician in London, but he
also occupied himself with chemical research. He was an active
worker in physiological chemistry, and carried out many analyses
of the products of living organisms, among them being one of the
gastric juice which, at the end of 1823, resulted in the notable
discovery that the acid contents of the stomach contain hydrochloric
acid which is separable by distillation. In 1815 he
published anonymously in the Annals of Philosophy a paper
“ On the relation between the specific gravities of bodies in their
gaseous state and the weights of their atoms, ” in which he
calculated that the atomic weights of a number of the elements
are multiples of that of hydrogen; and in a second paper published
in the same periodical the following year he suggested
that the irptbfr; i5)'r; of the ancients is realized in hydrogen,
from which the other elements are formed by some process of
condensation or grouping. This view, generally known as
“ Prout's hypothesis, ” at least had the merit of stimulating
inquiry, and many of the most careful determinations of atomic
weights undertaken since its promulgation have been provoked
by the desire to test its validity.
PROVENÇAL LANGUAGE. The name Provencal is used to
comprehend all the varieties of Romanic speech formerly spoken and written, and still generally used by country people in the
south of France. The geographical limits of this infinitely
varied idiom cannot be defined with precision, because it is
conterminous on the north, south and east with idioms of the
same family, with which almost at every point it blends by
insensible gradations. Roughly speaking it may be said to be
contained between the Atlantic on the west, the Pyrenees and
Mediterranean on the south, and the Alps on the east, and to be
bounded on the north by a line proceeding from the Gironde to
the Alps, and passing through the departments of Gironde,
Dordogne, Haute Vienne, Creuse, Allier, Loire, Rhone, Isére and
Savoie. These limits are to some extent conventional. True,
they are fixed in accordance with the mean of linguistic characters;
but it is self-evident that according to the importance
attached to one character or another they may be determined
differently.
1. Dwerent Names.-Though the name Provengal is generally 4-91
adopted to designate the Romanic idiom of this region, it must not be supposed that this name has been imposed by general consensus, or that it rests upon any very firm historical basis. In the southern part of Gaul, Romanic developed itself, so to say, in the natural state of language. Contrary to what took place in other Romanic countries, no local variety here raised itself to the rank of the literary idiom par excellence. While in Italy the Florentine, in France the French dialect proper (that is to say, the dialect of the Ile de France), succeeded little by little in monopolizing literary use, to the exclusion of the other dialects, we do not find that either the Marseillais or the Toulousain idiom was ever spoken or written outside of Marseilles or Toulouse. In consequence of this circumstance, no name originally designating the language of' a town or of a small district came to be employed to designate the language of the whole of southern France; and on the other hand the geographical region described above, having never had any special name, was not able to give one to the idiom.
In the middle ages the idiom was spoken of under various appellations: Romans or lenga romana was that most generally used. The name was employed by the authors of the Leys d'amors, a treatise on grammar, poetry and rhetoric, composed at Toulouse in the 14th century. But while it is capable of being applied and in fact, has been applied, to each of the Romanic languages individually, the term is too general to be retained in a particular case; though it was revived in the beginning of the 19th century by Raynouard, the author of the Lexique roman. Roman or langue romane is no longer in use among scholars to design the Romanic language of the south of France. In the 13th century a poet born in Catalonia, on the southern slope of the Pyrenees, Raimon Vidal of Besalu, introduced the name of Limousin language, probably on account of the great reputation of some Limousin troubadours, but he took care to define the expression, which he extended beyond its original meaning, by saying that in speaking of Limousin he must be understood to include Saintonge, Quercy, Auvergne, &c. (Rasos de lrobar, ed. Stengel, p. 70). This expression found favour in Spain, and especially in Catalonia, where the little treatise of Raimon Vidal was extensively read. The most ancient lyric poetry of the Catalans (13th and 14th centuries), composed on the model of the poetry of the troubadours, was often styled in Spain poesia lemosina, and in the same country lengua lemosina, long designated at once the Provencal and the old literary Catalan. The name Provencal as applied to language is hardly met with in the middle ages, except in the restricted sense of the language of Provence proper, i.e. of the region lying south of Dauphiné on the eastern side of the Rhone. Raimon Feraut, who composed about 1300, a versified life of St Honorat, uses it, but he was himself a native of Provence. We can also cite the title of a grammar, the Donalz proensals, by Hugh Faidit (about 12 5o); but this work was composed in north Italy, and we may conceive that the Italians living next to Provence employed the name Provencal somewhat vaguely without inquiring into the geographical limits of the idiom so called. In fact, the name Provencal became traditional in Italy, and in the beginning of the 16th century Bembo could write, “ Era per tutto il Ponente la favella Prooenzale, ne tempi ne quali ella fiori, in prezzo et in istima molta, et tra tutti gli altri idiomi di quelle parti, di gran lunga primiera. Conciosiacosa che ciascuno, o F rancese, o Fiamingo, o Guascone, o Borgognone, 0 altramente di quelle nationi che egli si fosse, il quale bene scrivere e specialmente verseggiar volesse, quantunque egli Provenzale non fosse, lo faceva Provenzalmente” (Prose, ed. 1529, fol. viii.).1 This passage, in which the primacy of the Provencal tongue is manifestly exaggerated, is interesting as showing the name Provengal employed, though with little precision, in the sense in which we now apply it.
1 “ The Provengal speech in the times in which it flourished was prized and held in great esteem all over the West, and among all the other idioms of that region was by far the foremost; so that every one, whether Frenchman, Fleming, Gascon, Burgundian, or of what nation soever, who wished to write and versify well, although he was not a Provengal, did it in the Provengal language.”
