Nothing, sayest thou! Then if not, 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,* 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!

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* _Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, de rebus gestis Samsonis
Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi: nunc primum typis mandata,
curante Johanne Gage Rokewood._ (Camden Society, London, 1840)
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