lacing, in these
times;--how far from that, in any province whatsoever! Readers and men
generally are getting into strange habits of asking all persons and
things, from poor Editors' Books up to Church Bishops and State
Potentates, not, By what designation art thou called; in what wig and
black triangle dost thou walk abroad? Heavens, I know thy designation
and black triangle well enough! But, in God's name, what _art_ thou?
Not Nothing, sayest thou! Then, How much and what? This is the thing I
would know; and even _must_ soon know, such a pass am I come to!--What
weather-symptoms,--not for the poor Editor of Books alone! The Editor
of Books may understand withal that if, as is said, 'many kinds are
permissible,' there is one kind not permissible, 'the kind that has
nothing in it, _le genre ennuyeux_;' and go on his way accordingly.

* * * * *

A certain Jocelinus de Brakelonda, a natural-born Englishman, has left
us an extremely foreign Book,[3] which the labours of the Camden
Society have brought to light in these days. Jocelin's Book, the
'Chronicle,' or private Boswellean Notebook, of Jocelin, a certain old
St. Edmundsbury Monk and Boswell, now seven centuries old, how remote
is it from us; exotic, extraneous; in all ways, coming from far
abroad! The language of it is not foreign only but dead: Monk-Latin
lies across not the British Channel, but the ninefold Stygian Marshes,
Stream of Lethe, and one knows not where! Roman Latin itself, still
alive for us in the Elysian Fields of Memory, is domestic in
comparison. And then the ideas, life-furniture, whole workings and
ways of this worthy Jocelin; covered deeper than Pompeii with the
lava-ashes and inarticulate wreck of seven hundred years!

Jocelin of Brakelond cannot be called a conspicuous literary
character; indeed few mortals that have left so visible a work, or
footmark, behind them can be more obscure. One other of those
vanished Existences, whose work has not yet vanished;--almost a
pathetic phenomenon, were not the whole world full of such! The
builders of Stonehenge, for example:--or, alas, what say we,
Stonehenge and builders? The writers of the _Universal Review_ and
_Homer's Iliad_; the paviors of London streets;--sooner or later, the
entire Posterity of Adam! It is a pathetic phenomenon; but an
irremediable, nay, if well meditated, a consoling one.

By his dialect of Monk-Latin, and indeed by his name, this Jocelin
se