Note 406 — Chapter V
Reading edition
The statistics of this sort of literature would prove a curious subject for inquiry. No one, I believe, has thought it worth while to sum them up; but M. Guizot has made an estimate that the Bollandist collection contains more than twenty-five thousand lives of saints; ‘à en juger par approximation, ils contiennent plus de 25,000 vies de saints.’ Guizot, Histoire de la Civilisation en France, vol. ii. p. 32. It is said (Ledwich's Antiquities of Ireland, p. 62) that of St. Patrick alone, there were sixty-six biographers before Joceline.