BIOGRAPHER, HISTORIAN, AND MAN OF LETTERS. 245 



a satire on tlie monks, as did also the Archdeacon Walter 

 Map, in addition to his volume of anecdotes. Under Rich 

 ard I there was Geoffrey de Vinsauf, an ecclesiastic who 

 was also a critic of poetry, and under King John Giraldus 

 Cambrensis, who wrote topography. In the reign of Henry 

 III came the monk Mathew Paris, who, in denouncing pope 

 and king, wove biographical matter into a satire. In subse 

 quent 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 ac 

 cumulate details. It is enough for us to recognize the ways 

 in which in early days the priest took the lead as man of let 

 ters. 



Of course along with the secularization of biography, 

 history, and literature at large, men of letters have become 

 more diversified in their kinds. History, at first predomi 

 nantly biographical, has divided itself. There is the un- 

 philosophical 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 ex 

 ample. Then biography, besides dividing into that kind 

 which is written by the man himself and that kind which is 

 written by another, has assumed unlike natures the nature 

 which is purely narrative, and that which is in large measure 

 analytical or reflective. And besides the various classes of 

 writers of fiction, laying their scenes among different ranks 

 and dealing with them in different ways now descriptive, 

 now sentimental, now satirical we have a variety of essay 

 ists didactic, humorous, critical, &c. 



687. There is little to add respecting the special unions 

 which have accompanied these general separations. Men of 

 letters, taken as a whole, have only in recent times tended 



