so much
condemned 'persons given to murmur at their meat or drink,
especially Monks of that disposition. We remark, from the very
first, his strict anxious order to his servants to provide
handsomely for hospitality, to guard 'above all things that there
be no shabbiness in the matter of meat and drink; no look of
mean parsimony, in _novitate mea,_ at the beginning of my
Abbotship;' and to the last he maintains a due opulence of table
and equipment for others: but he is himself in the highest
degree indifferent to all such things.

'Sweet milk, honey, and other naturally sweet kinds of food, were
what he preferred to eat: but he had this virtue,' says Jocelin,
'he never changed the dish (_ferculum_) you set before him, be
what it might. Once when I, still a novice, happened to be
waiting table in the refectory, it came into my head' (rogue that
I was!) `to try if this were true; and I thought I would place
before him a _ferculum_ that would have displeased any other
person, the very platter being black and broken. But he, seeing
it, was as one that saw it not: and now some little delay taking
place, my heart smote me that I had done this; and so, snatching
up the platter (_discus_), I changed both it and its contents for
a better, and put down that instead; which emendation he was
angry at, and rebuked me for,'--the stoical monastic man! 'For
the first seven years he had commonly four sorts of dishes on his
table; afterwards only three, except it might be presents, or
venison from his own parks, or fishes from his ponds. And if, at
any time, he had guests living in his house at the request of
some great person, or of some friend, or had public messengers,
or had harpers (_citharoedos_), or any one of that sort, he took
the first opportunity of shifting to another of his Manor-houses,
and so got rid of such superfluous individuals,'--very prudently,
I think.

As to his parks, of these, in the general repair of buildings,
general improvement and adornment of the St. Edmund Domains, 'he
had laid out several, and stocked them with animals, retaining a
proper huntsman with hounds: and, if any guest of great quality
were there, our Lord Abbot with his Monks would sit in some
opening of the woods, and see the dogs run; but he himself never
meddled with hunting, that I saw.'

'In an opening of the woods;'--for the country was still dark
with wood in those days; and Scotland itself still rustled
shaggy