ed notablest to him. Hence
gradually resulted a _Chronica Jocelini_; new Manuscript in the _Liber
Albus_ of St. Edmundsbury. Which Chronicle, once written in its
childlike transparency, in its innocent good-humour, not without
touches of ready pleasant wit and many kinds of worth, other men liked
naturally to read: whereby it failed not to be copied, to be
multiplied, to be inserted in the _Liber Albus_; and so surviving
Henry the Eighth, Putney Cromwell, the Dissolution of Monasteries, and
all accidents of malice and neglect for six centuries or so, it got
into the _Harleian Collection_,--and has now therefrom, by Mr.
Rokewood of the Camden Society, been deciphered into clear print; and
lies before us, a dainty thin quarto, to interest for a few minutes
whomsoever it can.

Here too it will behove a just Historian gratefully to say that Mr.
Rokewood, Jocelin's Editor, has done his editorial function well. Not
only has he deciphered his crabbed Manuscript into clear print; but he
has attended, what his fellow editors are not always in the habit of
doing, to the important truth that the Manuscript so deciphered ought
to have a meaning for the reader. Standing faithfully by his text, and
printing its very errors in spelling, in grammar or otherwise, he has
taken care by some note to indicate that they are errors, and what the
correction of them ought to be. Jocelin's Monk-Latin is generally
transparent, as shallow limpid water. But at any stop that may occur,
of which there are a few, and only a very few, we have the comfortable
assurance that a meaning does lie in the passage, and may by industry
be got at; that a faithful editor's industry had already got at it
before passing on. A compendious useful Glossary is given; nearly
adequate to help the uninitiated through: sometimes one wishes it had
been a trifle larger; but, with a Spelman and Ducange at your elbow,
how easy to have made it far too large! Notes are added, generally
brief; sufficiently explanatory of most points. Lastly, a copious
correct Index; which no such Book should want, and which unluckily
very few possess. And so, in a word, the _Chronicle of Jocelin_ is, as
it professes to be, unwrapped from its thick cerements, and fairly
brought forth into the common daylight, so that he who runs, and has a
smattering of grammar, may read.

* * * * *

We have heard so much of Monks; everywhere, in real and fictitious
History, from