ABSTRACT
Allusion has already been made in the Introduction to the moderation shown by St. Augustine and his company of monks when they came in 597 to preach Christianity in England, and to the happy result of that moderation, as seen in their influence on English Literature. They wrote poems in the native alliterative metre, in which they substituted Bible events and Bible or Christian characters for the old heroes and their doings, and sometimes, it must be confessed, a good deal of the old pagan element was allowed to creep into the treatment. The first writer of these religious poems whose name has come down to us is Cædmon. Next in date to the poems of the Cædmon School comes almost certainly the Andreas. This is a poem of 1,722 lines dealing with legendary episodes in the life of St. Andrew which is in the Vercelli MS. in the Library of Vercelli near Milan.
