rmed) retort to his brother Apostle; and so are both the
Second and the Third of St. John. Indeed it is not fanciful to suggest
that the account of the voyage which finishes the "Acts," and other
parts of that very delightful book, are narratives much more of the kind
one finds in letters than of the formally historical sort.

However this may be, it is worth pointing out that the distrust of other
pagan kinds of literature which the Fathers manifested so strongly, and
which was inherited from them by the clergy of the "Dark," and to some
extent the Middle Ages, clearly could not extend to the practice of the
Apostles. If from the Dark Ages themselves we have not very many, it
must be remembered that from them we have little literature at all:
while from the close of that period and the beginning of the next we
have one of the most famous of all correspondences, the Letters of
Abelard and Heloise. Of the intrinsic merit of these long-and far-famed
compositions, as displaying character, there have been different
opinions--one of the most damaging attacks on them may be found in
Barbey d'Aurevilly's already mentioned book. But their influence has
been lasting and enormous: and even if it were to turn out that they are
forgeries, they are certainly early forgeries, and the person who forged
them knew extremely well what he was about. There is no room here to
survey, even in selection, the letter-crop of the Middle Ages; and from
henceforward we must speak mainly, if not wholly (for some glances
abroad may be permitted), of _English_ letters.[6] But the
ever-increasing bonds of union--even of such union in disunion as
war--between different European nations, and the developments of more
complex civilisation, of more general education and the like--all tended
and wrought in the same direction.

II

LETTERS IN ENGLISH--BEFORE 1700

Exceptions have sometimes been taken to the earliest collection of
genuine private letters, not official communications written in or
inspired by Latin--which we possess in English. "The Paston Letters"
have been, from opposite sides, accused of want of literary form and of
not giving us interesting enough details in substance. The objections in
either case[7] are untenable, and in both rather silly. In the first
place "literary form" in the fifteenth century was exceedingly likely to
be bad literary form, and we are much better off without it. Unless Sir
Thomas Malory had happened to b