It was only when he had raised himself above the influence of authors who had preceded him, that he soared into originality, and was proclaimed the Poet of the South.
Jasmin did not at first write in Gascon.

In fact, he had not yet mastered a perfect knowledge of this dialect.

Though familiarly used in ancient times, it did not exist in any written form.

It was the speech of the common people; and though the Gascons spoke the idiom, it had lost much of its originality.

It had become mixed, more or less, with the ordinary French language, and the old Gascon words were becoming gradually forgotten.
Yet the common people, after all, remain the depositories of old idioms and old traditions, as well as of the inheritances of the past.