penny, to say a mass for him; and so departed,--like a shabby
Lackland as he was! 'Thirteen pence sterling,' this was what the
Convent got from Lackland, for all the victuals he and his had
made away with. We of course said our mass for him, having
covenanted to do it,--but let impartial posterity judge with what
degree of fervour!

And in this manner vanishes King Lackland; traverses swiftly our
strange intermittent magic-mirror, jingling the shabby thirteen
pence merely; and rides with his hawks into Egyptian night
again. It is Jocelin's manner with all things; and it is men's
manner and men's necessity. How intermittent is our good
Jocelin; marking down, without eye to _us,_ what _he_ finds
interesting! How much in Jocelin, as in all History, and indeed
in all Nature, is at once inscrutable and certain; so dim, yet
so indubitable; exciting us to endless considerations. For King
Lackland was there, verily he; and did leave these _tredecim
sterlingii_ if nothing more, and did live and look in one way
or the other, and a whole world was living and looking along
with him! There, we say, is the grand peculiarity; the
immeasurable one; distinguishing, to a really infinite degree,
the poorest historical Fact from all Fiction whatsoever. Fiction,
'Imagination,' 'Imaginative Poetry,' &c. &c., except as the
vehicle for truth, or _fact_ of some sort,--which surely a man
should first try various other ways of vehiculating, and
conveying safe,--what is it? Let the Minerva and other Presses
respond!--But it is time we were in St. Edmundsbury Monastery,
and Seven good Centuries off. If indeed it be possible, by any
aid of Jocelin, by any human art, to get thither, with a reader
or two still following us?