(1) Such Latin literature, of classical or later date, as survived after the wreck of the empire and still formed part of, at least, the higher reading. (2) Such new productions in Latin as appeared before the new tongues were formed. (3) The matter and influence of the literature of the Church, comprising the Hebrew Scriptures, chiefly in the shape of the Vulgate, commentaries, moral works, and also religious legends, lives of saints, and the like. (4) The material and spirit brought in by the Teutons in the shape of their own old epics and sagas, with the myths which formed their basis. (5) The Celtic feeling, traditions, and compositions which made their way into the _répertoire_ of such countries as contained a Celtic population. (6) The learning, literary matter, and literary art of the Saracens, whether introduced by way of Spain or by that of Sicily, and whether derived from Oriental or from Greek sources. (7) Literary influences from the Greek world, including remnants of classical and post-classical compositions, mediaeval productions of Byzantium, and tales of the East which had been rendered into a Greek form. It is difficult to disentangle these various threads, which interlace each other in complex ways, but on the whole the most satisfactory procedure will be to make a note or two upon each. Such notes will necessarily be brief to the point of mere hinting. (1) It was, perhaps, to be expected that, with the decline of Latin culture, the “fittest” part of Latin literature to survive in the knowledge of the semi-barbarized west should be that which lacked the highest artistic qualities. It is only with the dawn of the first Renaissance, which led up to and was assisted by the great Tuscan trio, that the true classics began to reappear among the common reading of men of superior learning. Virgil, indeed, was not wholly forgotten, nor was Cicero, and in the age of Charlemagne there was promise of a much wider scope. But, unless with the piously inclined—and often even with them—the Dark Ages were more interested in scraps of miscellaneous information containing a spice of the wonderful, derived and garbled from Pliny, in stories with a similar spice of the marvellous and, by preference, of the licentious, such as are to be found in the _Satyricon_ of Petronius and the _Golden Ass_ of Apuleius, or in traditions of the art of love culled from Ovid and crudely transmitted. For those of a more serious turn there were the mild philosophizing of Boethius, the history of the Spaniard Orosius, and the encyclopaedic educational medley of Martianus Capella; and, for the religious, the hymns of Prudentius served as a model. Yet, though sparingly met, the reading of literary Latin never quite failed, and verses, for example, continued to be written as much in the style of Claudian as writers could command. Latin comedy was not unknown to the monasteries, since the German nun Hrotswith is found in the tenth