cowl has looked out on that narrow section of the world in a
really _human_ manner; not in any _simial,_ canine, ovine, or
otherwise inhuman manner,--afflictive to all that have humanity!
The man is of patient, peaceable, loving, clear-smiling nature;
open for this and that. A wise simplicity is in him; much
natural sense; a _veracity_ that goes deeper than words.
Veracity: it is the basis of all; and, some say, means genius
itself; the prime essence of all genius whatsoever. Our
Jocelin, for the rest, has read his classical manuscripts, his
Virgilius, his Flaccus, Ovidius Naso; of course still more, his
Homilies and Breviaries, and if not the Bible, considerable
extracts of the Bible. Then also he has a pleasant wit; and
loves a timely joke, though in mild subdued manner: very amiable
to see. A learned grown man, yet with the heart of a good
child; whose whole life indeed has been that of a child,--St.
Edmundsbury Monastery a larger kind of cradle for him, in which
his whole prescribed duty was to _sleep_ kindly, and love his
mother well! This is the Biography of Jocelin; 'a man of
excellent religion,' says one of his contemporary Brother Monks,
_'eximiae religionis, potens sermone et opere.'_

For one thing, he had learned to write a kind of Monk or Dog-
Latin, still readable to mankind; and, by good luck for us, had
bethought him of noting down thereby what things seemed 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