Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/104

100 there came the first serious attempt to put on record such facts as could be recovered concerning the great writers who had flourished in these islands. The dissolution of the monasteries caused the destruction of so large a mass of valuable material that it was impossible for scholars to stand by without making an effort to save some remnants. Leland, Bale, and Pits, whose joint activity covers the whole of the Sixteenth Century, each of them made a collection of the lives and works of the writers of Great Britain. Three of the most conspicuous features of later antiquarian learning are exemplified in their work, as it is estimated by Fuller: 'J. Leland,' he says, 'is the industrious bee, working all: J. Bale is the angry wasp, stinging all: J. Pits is the idle drone, stealing all.' But these three men made no new departure in method. The bulk of the writers whom they commemorated were monks and friars, concerning whom biographical details were wholly to seek. Their works, which were compounded, with large additions, into a single folio volume by Bishop Tanner, can hardly be said to exhibit the faint beginnings of modern biography.

It is difficult to persuade man that his contemporaries are valuable and important persons. The industrious scholar bars his doors and windows, and shuts himself up in his room, that he may bequeath to future ages his views on the Primitive Church or the Egyptian Dynasties. His works, too often, go to swell the dust-heap of learning. And what is passing in the street, on the other side of his shutter, is what future ages will probably desire, and desire in vain, to know. At the time of the Renaissance, when writers of knowledge and power were Latinists and scholars, who