PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 601 



is shown by the fact that at first these stories which, as exaggera- 

 tions of actual incidents, are partially believed in by the narrators 

 are wholly believed in by the listeners. In his Three Years in a 

 Levantine Family Mr. Bayle St. John tells us that when The Ara- 

 bian Nights were being read aloud, and when he warned those 

 around that they must not suppose the narratives to be true, they 

 insisted on believing them : asking Why should a man sit down 

 to write lies ? So that after fiction comes into existence it is still 

 classed as biography is not distinguished from it as among civ- 

 ilized nations. 



The early history of these civilized nations shows that in the 

 genesis of imaginary biography the priesthood at first took some 

 part. In Henry Fs time Wace, a reading clerk, was also a romance 

 writer. So, in the next reign, we have Walter Map, chaplain to 

 the king, who wrote religious and secular romances ; and there 

 are subsequently named romances which probably had clerical 

 authors though there is no proof. But the general aspect of the 

 facts appears to show that after that time in England, the telling 

 of tales of imagination became secularized. 



Meanwhile derivative forms of literature were showing them- 

 selves, mostly, however, having a biographical element. As a 

 writer on Church government the Saxon abbot Dunstan diverged 

 somewhat from the purely clerical sphere ; and after the Conquest 

 Sewulf, who, becoming a monk, wrote his travels, gives us a devi- 

 ation into an autobiographical, as well as a geographical, form of 

 literature. Then in Henry II's reign we have Nigel Wireker, a 

 monastic who wrote a satire on the monks, as did also the chap- 

 lain Walter Map, in addition to his volume of anecdotes. Under 

 Richard I there was Geoffrey de Vinsauf, an ecclesiastic who was 

 also a critic of poetry, and Giraldus Cambrensis, who wrote topog- 

 raphy. In the reign of Henry III came the monk Mathew Paris, 

 who, in denouncing pope and king, wove biographical matter into 

 a satire. In subsequent reigns Wiclif, John Trevisa, and others, 

 added the function of translator to their literary functions ; and 

 some, as Bromyard and Lydgate, entered upon various subjects 

 law, morals, theology, rhetoric. Here it is needless to accumulate 

 details. It is enough for us to recognize the ways in which in 

 early days the priest took the lead as man of letters. 



Of course along with the secularization of biography, history, 

 and literature at large, men of letters have become more diversi- 

 fied in their kinds. History, at first predominantly biographical, 

 has divided itself. There is the unphilosophical kind, such as that 

 written by Carlyle, who thought the doings of great men the only 

 subject-matter worth dealing with, and there is the philosophical 

 kind, which more and more expands history into an account of 

 national development : Green's Short History being an example. 



TOL. XLVII. 50 



