ssailed his old enemies, the
Donatists, with nearly the same arms that Commodianus had wielded
against heathenism. But as the refined and various music of hexameters
was unlikely to be relished by the vulgar, he prudently adopted a
different measure.[491] All the nations of Europe seem to love the
trochaic verse; it was frequent on the Greek and Roman stage; it is more
common than any other in the popular poetry of modern languages. This
proceeds from its simplicity, its liveliness, and its ready
accommodation to dancing and music. In St. Austin's poem he united to a
trochaic measure the novel attraction of rhyme.

As Africa must have lost all regard to the rules of measure in the
fourth century, so it appears that Gaul was not more correct in the next
two ages. A poem addressed by Auspicius bishop of Toul to count
Arbogastes, of earlier date probably than the invasion of Clovis, is
written with no regard to quantity.[492] The bishop by whom this was
composed is mentioned by his contemporaries as a man of learning.
Probably he did not choose to perplex the barbarian to whom he was
writing (for Arbogastes is plainly a barbarous name) by legitimate Roman
metre. In the next century Gregory of Tours informs us that Chilperic
attempted to write Latin verses; but the lines could not be reconciled
to any division of feet; his ignorance having confounded long and short
syllables together.[493] Now Chilperic must have learned to speak Latin
like other kings of the Franks, and was a smatterer in several kinds of
literature. If Chilperic therefore was not master of these distinctions,
we may conclude that the bishops and other Romans with whom he conversed
did not observe them; and that his blunders in versification arose from
ignorance of rules, which, however fit to be preserved in poetry, were
entirely obsolete in the living Latin of his age. Indeed the frequency
of false quantities in the poets even of the fifth, but much more of the
sixth century, is palpable. Fortunatus is quite full of them. This seems
a decisive proof that the ancient pronunciation was lost. Avitus tells
us that few preserved the proper measure of syllables in singing. Yet he
was bishop of Vienne, where a purer pronunciation might be expected than
in the remoter parts of Gaul.[494]

[Sidenote: Change of Latin into Romance.]

Defective, however, as it had become in respect of pronunciation, Latin
was still spoken in France during the sixth and seventh cen