226 PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 



Edward Ill s reign do we find mention of a secular song 

 writer Minot; and then we come to our first great poet, 

 Chaucer, who, whether or not &quot; of Cambridge, clerk/ 7 as 

 is suspected, became court-poet and occupied himself mainly 

 with secular poetry. After this the differentiation of the 

 secular vers-writer from the sacred verse-writer became 

 more marked, as we see in the case of Gower; but still, while 

 the subject-matter of the poems became secularized, as with 

 Langiand and as with Barbour, the ecclesiastical connexion 

 remained dominant. Lydgate was priest, orator arid poet; 

 Occleve, poet and civil servant; Henryson, schoolmaster 

 and poet ; Skelton, priest and poet laureate ; Dunbar, friar 

 and court poet; Douglas, bishop and secular poet; Barclay, 

 priest and poet; and so on. It should be added that one of 

 the functions of the clergyman has been the writing of 

 laudatory hymns hymns composed now by ordained eccle 

 siastics, now by dissenting ministers. These facts, joined 

 with facts of recent times, make it clear that as in pagan 

 societies, so in Christian societies, the priest-poet, appointed 

 eulogizer of the deity he serves, is the first poet; and that 

 the poets we distinguish as secular have gradually arisen 

 by differentiation from him. 



Along with the divergence of secular poets from sacred 

 poets there have arisen divergences within the assemblage 

 of secular poets themselves. There have come the mainly 

 epic, as Milton ; the didactic, as Pope ; the satiric, as Butler ; 

 the descriptive, as Wordsworth; the comic, as Hood. 



680. From those official praisers of the hero or god 

 whose laudations take the form of speech, non-rhythmical 

 or rhythmical, we pass to those whose laudations take the 

 form of mimetic actions who express the triumphs of the 

 deified ruler by imitations of his deeds. United as the two 

 originally were, they diverge and develop along their re-&quot; 

 spective lines. 



Existing savages yield illustrations of the primitive union 



