6oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



monk and biographer. The Anglo Saxon chronicle was a year- 

 book of events recorded by monks from the 8th to the 12th cen- 

 tury. After the Conquest the chief authors were still ecclesiastics, 

 and their works were usually chronicles or lives of saints. Among 

 them were Marianus Scotus, Florence of Worcester, Eadmer, Or- 

 dericus Vitalis, William of Malmsbury, Wace, Geoffrey Gaimar, 

 Henry of Huntington, Fitzstephen, Thomas of Ely, and so on 

 through subsequent reigns, in which the relationship continues 

 for a long time to be marked, but during which the rise of secu- 

 lar competitors in the sphere of literature becomes gradually 

 manifest. 



Even without specification of such facts we might safely infer 

 that since, during mediaeval days, there was scarcely any culture 

 save that of ecclesiastics, the writing of biography and history 

 was, by the necessities of the case, limited to them. 



That fiction has developed out of biography scarcely needs 

 proof. Unless a biographer is accurate, which even modern biog- 

 raphers rarely are and which ancient biographers certainly were 

 not, it inevitably happens that there is more or less of fancy 

 mingled with his fact. The same tendencies which in early times 

 developed anecdotes of chiefs into mythological stories of them as 

 gods, operated universally, and necessarily produced in narratives 

 of men's lives exaggerations which greatly distorted them. If we 

 remember the disputes among the Greeks respecting the birthplaces 

 of poets and philosophers we see how reckless were men's state- 

 ments and how largely the actual was perverted by the imaginary. 

 So, too, on coming down to Christian times it needs but to name 

 the miracles described in the lives of the saints to have abundant 

 proof of such vitiations. As in our own days the repeater of an 

 anecdote, or circulator of a scandal, is tempted to make his or her 

 story interesting by making much of the striking points ; so, still 

 more in early days, when truth was less valued than now, were 

 stories step by step perverted as they passed from mouth to 

 mouth. 



Of course the narrator who gave the most picturesque version 

 of an adventure or achievement was preferred by listeners ; and, 

 of course, ever tempted to increase the imaginary additions, 

 passed insensibly into a maker of tales. Even children, at first 

 anxious to know whether the stories told them are true, by and 

 by become ready to accept untrue stories ; and then some of them, 

 thus taught by example, invent wonderful tales to interest their 

 companions. With the uncivilized or semi-civilized a like genesis 

 naturally occurs among adults. Hence the established class of 

 story-tellers in the East authors of oral fictions. And how 

 gradually by this process fiction is differentiated from biography, 



