Raphael comparatively little. Even Plutarch, who wrote the lives
of others: so well, has no biography, none of the eminent Roman
writers who were his contemporaries having so much as mentioned
his name. And so of Correggio, who delineated the features of
others so well, there is not known to exist an authentic portrait.

There have been men who greatly influenced the life of their
time, whose reputation has been much greater with posterity
than it was with their contemporaries. Of Wickliffe, the
patriarch of the Reformation, our knowledge is extremely small.
He was but as a voice crying in the wilderness. We do not
really know who was the author of 'The Imitation of Christ'
--a book that has had an immense circulation, and exercised
a vast religious influence in all Christian countries. It
is usually attributed to Thomas a Kempis but there is reason
to believe that he was merely its translator, and the book that
is really known to be his, (10) is in all respects so inferior,
that it is difficult to believe that 'The Imitation' proceeded
from the same pen. It is considered more probable that the
real author was John Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris,
a most learned and devout man, who died in 1429.

Some of the greatest men of genius have had the shortest
biographies. Of Plato, one of the great fathers of moral
philosophy, we have no personal account. If he had wife and
children, we hear nothing of them. About the life of Aristotle
there is the greatest diversity of opinion. One says he was a
Jew; another, that he only got his information from a Jew: one
says he kept an apothecary's shop; another, that he was only the
son of a physician: one alleges that he was an atheist; another,