identified with his work. His personal habits and private vicissitudes of fortune excited little curiosity; Vincent of Beauvais and Godfrey of Viterbo are the names not so much of two men as of two books. Literature was regarded as the chief means of preserving and promulgating ancient truths and traditions; and authors were mechanical scribes, recorders, and compilers. The distinction between fact and fiction, which we all make to-day with so airy a confidence, was hardly known to the mediaeval writer. Even the bard who celebrated the exploits of Arthur, the Christian king, or of Fierabras, the Pagan giant, based his claim to credit on the historical truth of his narrative, and supported himself by the authority of the books from which he copied. Poet or historian, he would have been indignant to be refused the name of copyist. Whence should he derive his wisdom but from the old books whose lessons he desired to hand on to coming generations?—
While this was the dominant conception of art and of science, of history and of literature, authors were, in every sense of the word, a humble class. Where it was their function to instruct, they were conduit-pipes for the wisdom of the ages; where they set themselves to amuse, they held a rank not far above that of the professional jesters and minstrels who were attached as servitors to the household of some great lord or king.
With the revival of letters in the Sixteenth Century
G 2
