Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/272

 applies to the works of Wyclif amongst others. More than seventy distinct English works, over and above the Latin documents and treatises which are historically connected with him, have at different times been ascribed to him. Indeed Bishop Bale brought up the number of his Latin and English works to something like three hundred; but he did not claim to have seen them all, and still less did he insist on their authenticity.

The fact of the matter seems to have been that the attempts which were made to suppress the writings of Wyclif and the Lollards, and which in some instances succeeded, led to the concealment of many manuscripts by their possessors, whether in England or across the seas, without preserving any detailed account of their origin or authorship. When the age of sense or freedom returned, and it became possible to bring these treasures to the light, there would naturally be a disposition to claim them all as Wyclif's, whereas a considerable number may have been the works of Nicholas Hereford, of Purvey, John Aston, and other Wycliffites. There are, indeed, comparatively few cases in which the original manuscript bears an inscription of such a kind as to settle its authorship beyond dispute.

If we were to proceed strictly and sceptically in regard to these works, and especially if we were to refuse Wyclif the credit of any which are not his by unquestionable evidence, he would in fact be left with a somewhat meagre array. But on that plan we should certainly lose some of his genuine produc tions; and of the two-score English works which