poetry. Indeed, the English language became more and more a vehicle for
the reproduction of French literature. This continued to the middle of
the fourteenth century, when the plague, which altered so many things,
altered also this. The supremacy of the French language was broken, the
native language was again heard in legal pleadings, and the poetry of
Chaucer laid the permanent foundation of modern English literature.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] A translation of these writings is given in Clark's "Ante-Nicene
Library," vol. xvi. Among the "Acts of Pilate" are contained the so
called "Gospel of Nicodemus," which is the fountain of that favourite
mediæval subject, "The Harrowing of Hell."

[2] North Pinder, "Less Known Latin Poets," p. 486.

[3] Donatus was Jerome's teacher. His name grew into a proverb, insomuch
that an elementary treatise of any sort might in the fourteenth century
be called a "donat." Priscian was a contemporary of Boethius. His
grammar was epitomised by Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century.

[4] Other Latin poets who touched this subject are--Ovid, "Metam.," xv.,
402; Martial, "Epigrams," v., 7; Claudian's First Idyll, a poem of 110
hexameters, is entirely devoted to it.

[5] Clemens Romanus; Tertullian, "De Resurrectione Carnis," c. 13. See
Adolf Ebert, "Christlich-Laternische Literatur," vol. i., p. 95.

[6] Siever's "Der Heliand," p. 18, and references: Guizot, "Histoire de