exclusion of secular literature, and a too credulous and favourable
disposition towards Christian legends. This was the time when the
secondary apocryphal literature reached its maturity, and was grouped in
collections. An active labourer in this pious work was Gregory of
Tours. He contributed the "Miracles of St. Andrew," and possibly other
pieces. This period, from the middle of the sixth into the early part of
the seventh century, is the period of the greatest literary activity of
the monasteries of Gaul, and the apocryphal collections seem to have
been made in some of these[8] If the Christianised Latin literature
reached its highest excellence in the time of Augustine, it discovered
its extremest tendency in the time of the two Gregories.

There is yet one form of literature that claims our attention. The Greek
romances of love and marvellous adventure were probably discountenanced
in Christian families, and we may regard the secondary Apocrypha as a
kind of pious substitute for such entertaining works of fiction. But
there was one of these old heathen novels that held its ground, that can
be traced in more than one early monastic library, and that was
translated into every vernacular--Anglo-Saxon first. This was the
Romance of Apollonius of Tyre, from which comes the story of that
Shakespearean play, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre."

The books which we have noticed between the second and the seventh
centuries may be allowed to represent that Christianised Latin
literature which is the historical bridge between the ancient classical
and the modern vernacular literatures. The latter had as yet no
existence. In Mœsia, on the shores of the Danube, a Gothic dialect had
been immortalised by Scripture translations from the Greek as early as
the fourth century; but nothing of the kind had as yet appeared under
the Latin influence in the West. The Merovingian Franks left no