This poor blockhead too is born for uses: why, elevating him to
mastership, will you make a conflagration, a parish-curse or
world-curse of him?




Chapter X

Government


How Abbot Samson, giving his new subjects seriatim the kiss of
fatherhood in the St. Edmundsbury chapterhouse, proceeded with
cautious energy to set about reforming their disjointed
distracted way of life; how he managed with his Fifty rough
_Milites_ (Feudal Knights), with his lazy Farmers, remiss
refractory Monks, with Pope's Legates, Viscounts, Bishops, Kings;
how on all sides he laid about him like a man, and putting
consequence on premiss, and everywhere the saddle on the right
horse, struggled incessantly to educe organic method out of
lazily fermenting wreck,--the careful reader will discern, not
without true interest, in these pages of Jocelin Boswell. In
most antiquarian quaint costume, not of garments alone, but of
thought, word, action, outlook and position, the substantial
figure of a man with eminent nose, bushy brows and clear-flashing
eyes, his russet beard growing daily greyer, is visible, engaged
in true governing of men. It is beautiful how the chrysalis
governing-soul, shaking off its dusty slough and prison, starts
forth winged, a true royal soul! Our new Abbot has a right