Past and Present (part 1) by Thomas Carlyle

PAST AND PRESENT



BY

THOMAS CARLYLS



graft ift ba$ Seben.

©critter.



CHICAGO, NEW YORK, AND SAN FRANCISCO

BELFORD, CLARKE & CO.,
Publishers.



TROW'3

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK.



CO^TE^TS.



BOOK I. — Proem.

PAGE

Chap. I. Midas 5

II. Sphinx.... 10

III. Manchester Insurrection IB

IV. Morrison's Pill 2G

V. Aristocracy of Talent 30

VI. Hero- Worship 35

BOOK II.— The Ancient Monk.

Chap. I. Jocelin of Brakelond 41

II. St. Edmondsbnry 48

III. Landlord Edmund. 51

IV. Abbot Hugo 58

V. Twelfth Century 63

VI. Monk Samson 67

VII. The Canvassing 73

VIII. The Election 76

IX. Abbot Samson 83

X. Government 89

XL The Abbot's Ways < 93

XII. The Abbot's Troubles 98

XIII. In Parliament 103

XIV. Henry of Essex , 105

XV. Practical-Devotional , 109

XVI. St Edmund 116

XVII. The Beginnings 123

BOOK III. — The Modern Worker.

Chap. I. Phenomena 133

II. Gospel of Mammonism 141

III. Gospel of Dilettantism 146

IV. Happy 149



4 CONTENTS,

PAGE

Chap.V. The English. l9 . 153

VI. Two Centuries 161

VII. Over-Production 165

VIII. Un working Aristocracy 169

IX. Working Aristocracy 176

X. Plugson of Undershot 182

XI. Labour 189

XII. Reward 194

XIII. Democracy 202

XIV. Sir Jabesh Windbag 214

XV. Morrison Again 217

BOOK IV.— Horoscope.

Chap. I. Aristocracies 231

II. Bribery Committee 243

III. The One Institution 248

IV. Captains of Industry 260

V. Permanence 266

VI. The Landed 272

VII. The Gifted 0 277

VIII. The Didacti* eo 282



PAST AND PRESENT.



BOOK I.

PROEM.
CHAPTER I.

, MIDAS.

The condition of England, on which many pamphlets are
now in the course of publication, and many thoughts unpub-
lished are going on in every reflective head, is justly regarded
as one of the most ominous, and withal one of the strangest,
ever seen in this world. England is full of wealth, of multi-
farious produce, supply for human want in every kind ; yet
England is dying of inanition. With unabated bounty the
land of England blooms and grows ; waving with yellow har-
vests ; thick-studded with workshops, industrial implements,
with fifteen millions of workers, understood to be the strong-
est, the cunningest and the willingest our Earth ever had ;
these men are here ; the work they have done, the fruit they
have realised is here, abundant, exuberant on every hand of
us : and behold, some baleful fiat as of Enchantment has gone
forth, saying, " Touch it not, ye workers, ye master-workers,
ye master-idlers ; none of you can touch it, no man of you
shall be the better for it ; this is enchanted fruit ! " On the
poor workers such fiat falls first, in its rudest shape ; but on
the rich master-workers too it falls ; neither can the rich
master-idlers, nor any richest or highest man escape, but all are



6



PROEM.



like to be brought low with it, and made ' poor ' enough, in
the money sense or a far fataller one.

Of these successful skilful workers some two millions, it is
now counted, sit in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons ; or have
' out-door relief flung over the wall to them, — the workhouse
Bastille being filled to bursting, and the strong Poor-law
broken asunder by a stronger.* They sit there, these many
months now ; their hope of- deliverance as yet small. In work-
houses, pleasantly so named, because work cannot be done in
them. Twelve hundred thousand workers in England alone :
their cunning right-hand lamed, lying idle in their sorrowful
bosom ; their hopes, outlooks, share of this fair world, shut in
by narrow walls. They sit there, pent up, as in a kind of
horrid enchantment ; glad to be imprisoned and enchanted,
that they may not perish starved. The picturesque Tourist,
in a sunny autumn day, through this bounteous realm of Eng-
land, describes the Union Workhouse on his path. 6 Passing
' by the W'orkhouse of St. Ives in Huntingdonshire, on a bright
c day last autumn,' says the picturesque Tourist, ' I saw sitting
' on wooden benches, in front of their Bastille and within their
6 ring wall and its railings, some half -hundred or more of
c these men. Tall robust figures, young mostly or of middle
e age ; of honest countenance, many of them thoughtful and
' even intelligent-looking men. They sat there, near by one
' another ; but in a kind of torpor, especially in silence, which
' was very striking. In silence : for, alas, what word was to
6 be said ? An Earth all lying round, crying, Come and till
' me, come and reap me ; — yet we here sit enchanted ! In
' the eyes and brows of these men hung the gloomiest expres-
' sion, not of anger, but of grief and shame and manifold in-
' articulate distress and weariness ; they returned my glance
6 with a glance that seemed to say, "Do not look at us. We
' sit enchanted here, we know not why. The Sun shines and
c the Earth calls ; and, by the governing Powers and Impo-
c tences of this England, we are forbidden to obey. It is im-

* The return of Paupers for England and Wales, at Ladyday, 1842, is
4 In-door 221,687, Out-door 1,207,402, Total 1,429,089.'— (Official lie-
port.)



MIDAS.



7



* possible, they tell us ! " There was something that reminded
6 me of Dante's Hell in the look of all this ; and I rode swiftly
1 away.'

So many hundred thousands sit in workhouses : and other
hundred thousands have not yet got even workhouses ; and in
thrifty Scotland itself, in Glasgow or Edinburgh City, in their
dark lanes, hidden from all but the eye of God, and of rare
Benevolence the minister of God, there are scenes of woe and
destitution and desolation, such as, one may hope, the Sun
never saw before in the most barbarous regions where men
dwelt. Competent witnesses, the brave and humane Dr.
Alison, who speaks what he knows, whose noble Healing Art
in his charitable hands becomes once more a truly sacred one,
report these things for us : these things are not of this year,
or of last year, have no reference to our present state of com-
mercial stagnation, but only to the common state. Not in
sharp fever-fits, but a chronic gangrene of this kind is Scot-
land suffering. A Poor-law, any and every Poor-law, it may
be observed, is but a temporary measure ; an anodyne, not a
remedy : Rich and Poor, when once the naked facts of their
condition have come into collision, cannot long subsist to-
gether on a mere Poor-law. True enough : — and yet, human
beings cannot be left to die ! Scotland too, till something
better come, must have a Poor-law, if Scotland is not to be a
byword among the nations. Oh, what a waste is there ; of
noble and thrice-noble national virtues ; peasant Stoicisms,
Heroisms ; valiant manful habits, soul of a Nation's worth, —
which all the metal of Potosi cannot purchase back ; to which
the metal of Potosi, and all you can buy with it, is dross and
dust !

Why dwell on this aspect of the matter? It is too indis-
putable, not doubtful now to any one. Descend where you
will into the lower class, in Town or Country, by what avenue
you will, by Factory Inquiries, Agricultural Inquiries, by
Revenue Returns, by Mining-Labourer Committees, by open-
ing your own eyes and looking, the same sorrowful result
discloses itself : you have to admit that the working body of
this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a



s



PROEM.



state, to which, all sides of it considered, there was literally
never any parallel. At Stockport Assizes, — and this too has
no reference to the present state of trade, being of date prior
to that, — a Mother and a Father are arraigned and found guilty
of poisoning three of their children, to defraud a ' burial-so-
ciety ' of some 3/. 8s. due on the death of each child : they
are arraigned, found guilty ; and the official authorities, it is
whispered, hint that perhaps the case is not solitary, that
perhaps you had better not probe farther into that depart-
ment of things. This is in the autumn of 1841 ; the crime
itself is of the previous year or season. " Brutal savages, de-
graded Irish," mutters the idle reader of Newsrjapers ; hardly
lingering on this incident. Yet it is an incident worth linger-
ing on ; the depravity, savagery and degraded Irishism being
never so well admitted. In the British land, a human Mother
and Father, of white skin and professing the Christian re-
ligion, has done this thing ; they, with their Irishism and
necessity and savagery, had been driven to do it. Such in-
stances are like the highest mountain apex emerged into view ;
under which lies a whole mountain region and land, not yet
emerged. A human Mother and Father had said to them-
selves, What shall we do to escape starvation ? We are deep
sunk here, in our dark cellar ; and help is far. — Yes, in the
Ugolino Hunger-tower stern things happen ; best-loved little
Gaddo fallen dead on his Father's knees ! — The Stockport
Mother and Father think and hint : Our poor little starveling
Tom, who cries all day for victuals, who will see only evil and
not good in this world : if he were out of misery at once ; he
well dead, and the rest of us perhaps kept alive ? It is
thought, and hinted ; at last it is done. And now Tom being
killed, and all spent and eaten, Is it poor little starveling Jack
that must go, or poor little starveling Will ? — What a commit-
tee of ways and means !

In starved sieged cities, in the uttermost doomed ruin of
old Jerusalem fallen under the wrath of God, it was prophe-
sied and said, ' The hands of the pitiful women have sodden
their own children.' The stern Hebrew imagination could
conceive no blacker gulf of wretchedness ; that was the ulti-



MIDAS.



9



matum of degraded god-punished man. And we here, in
modern England, exuberant with supply of all kinds, besieged
by nothing *f it be not by invisible Enchantments, are we

reaching that ? How come these things ? Wherefore are

they, wherefore should they be ?

Nor are they of the St. Ives workhouses, of the Glasgow
lanes, and Stockport cellars, the only unblessed among us.'
This successful industry of England, with its plethoric wealth,
has as yet made nobody rich ; it is an enchanted wealth, and
belongs yet to nobody. We might ask, Which of us has it en-
riched? We can spend thousands where we once spent
hundreds ; but can purchase nothing good with them. In
Poor and Rich, instead of noble thrift and plenty, there is idle
luxury alternating with mean scarcity and inability. We have
sumptuous garnitures for our Life, but have forgotten to live
in the middle of them. It is an enchanted wealth ; no man of
us can yet touch it. The class of men who feel that they are
truly better off by means of it, let them give us their name !

Many men eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors, — with
what advantage they can report, and their Doctors can : but
in the heart of them, if we go out of the dyspeptic stomach,
what increase of blessedness is there ? Are they better, beau-
tifuller, stronger, braver? Are they even what they call
£ happier ? 5 Do they look with satisfaction on more things
and human faces in this God's-Earth ; do more things and
human faces look with satisfaction on them ? Not so. Hu-
man faces gloom discordantly, disloyally on one another.
Things, if it be not mere cotton and iron things, are growing
disobedient to man. The Master Worker is enchanted, for
the present, like his Workhouse Workman ; clamours, in vain
hitherto, for a very simple sort of ' Liberty : ' the liberty ' to
buy where he finds it cheapest, to sell where he finds it dear-
est.' With guineas jingling in every pocket, he was no whit
richer ; but now, the very guineas threatening to vanish, he
feels that he is poor indeed. Poor Master Worker ! And
the Master Unworker, is not he in a still fataller situation ?
Pausing amid his game-preserves, with awful eye,— as he well



10



PROEM.



may ! Coercing fifty-pound tenants ; coercing, bribing, cajol-
ing ; doing what he likes with his own. His mouth full of
loud futilities, and arguments to prove the excellence of his
Corn-law ; and in his heart the blackest misgiving, a desperate
half consciousness that his excellent Corn-law is indefensible,
that his loud arguments for it are of a kind to strike men too
Hterally dumb.

To whom, then, is this wealth of England wealth ? "Who
is it that it blesses ; makes happier, wiser, beautifuller, in any
way better ? Who has got hold of it, to make it fetch and
carry for him, like a true servant, not like a false mock-ser-
vant ; to do him any real service whatsoever ? As yet no one.
We have more riches than any Nation ever had before ; we
have less good of them than any Nation ever had before.
Our successful industry is hitherto unsuccessful ; a strange
success, if we stop here ! In the midst of plethoric plenty,
the people perish ; with gold walls, and full barns, no man
feels himself safe or satisfied. Workers, Master Workers,
Unworkers, all men, come to a pause ; stand fixed, and cannot
farther. Fatal paralysis spreading inwards, from the extremi-
ties, in St. Ives workhouses, in Stockport cellars, through all
limbs, as if towards the heart itself. Have we actually got en-
chanted, then ; accursed by some god ? —

Midas longed for gold, and insulted the Olympians. He
got gold, so that whatsoever he touched became gold, — and
he, with his long ears, was little the better for it. Midas had
misjudged the celestial music-tones ; Midas had insulted
Apollo and the gods ; the gods gave him his wish, and a pair
of long ears, which also were a good appendage to it. What
a truth in these old Fables !



CHAPTER II.

THE SPHINX.

How true, for example, is that other old Fable of the
Sphinx, who sat by the wayside, propounding her riddle to
the passengers, which if they could not answer she destroyed



THE SPHINX.



11



them ! Such a Sphinx is this Life of ours, to all men and so-
cieties of men. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celes-
tial loveliness and tenderness ; the face and bosom of a god-
dess, but ending in claws and the body of a lioness. There
is in her a celestial beauty, — which means celestial order,
pliancy to wisdom ; but there is also a darkness, a ferocity,
fatality, which are infernal. She is a goddess, but one not
yet disimprisoned ; one still half -imprisoned, — the articulate,
lovely still encased in the inarticulate, chaotic. How true !
And does she not propound her riddles to us ? Of each man
she asks daily, in mild voice, yet with a terrible significance,
" Knowest thou the meaning of this Day ? What thou canst
do Today ; wisely attempt to do?" Nature, Universe, Des-
tiny, Existence, howsoever we name this grand unnameable
Fact in the midst of which w r e live and struggle, is as a heav-
enly bride and conquest to the wise and brave, to them who
can discern her behests and do them ; a destroying fiend to
them who cannot. Answer her riddle, it is well with thee.
Answer it not, pass on regarding it not, it will answer itself ;
the solution for thee is a thing of teeth and claws ; Nature is
a dumb lioness, deaf to thy pleadings, fiercely devouring.
Thou art not now her victorious bridegroom ; thou art her
mangled victim, scattered on the precipices, as a slave found
treacherous, recreant, ought to be and must.

With Nations it is as with individuals : Can they rede the
riddle of Destiny ? This English Nation, will it get to know
the meaning of its strange new Today ? Is there sense enough
extant discoverable anywhere or anyhow, in our united twen-
ty-seven million heads to discern the same ; valour enough in
our twenty-seven million hearts to dare and do the bidding
thereof ? It will be seen ! —

The secret of gold Midas, which he with his long ears never
could discover, was, That he had offended the Supreme Pow-
ers ; that he had parted company with the eternal inner Fact
of this Universe, and followed the transient outer Appear-
ances thereof ; and so was arrived here. Properly it is the
secret of all unhappy men and unhappy nations. Had they
known Nature's right truth, Nature's right truth would have



12



PROEM.



made them free. They have become enchanted ; stagger
spell-bound, reeling on the brink of huge peril, because they
were not wise enough. They have forgotten the right Inner
True, and taken up with the Outer Sham-true. They answer
the Sphinx's question wrong. Foolish men cannot answer it
aright ! Foolish men mistake transitory semblance for eternal
fact, and go astray more and more.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil
thing is delayed, there is no justice, but an accidental one,
here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times de-
layed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as
life, it is sure as death ! In the centre of the world -whirlwind,
verily now as in the oldest days, dwells and speaks a God,
The great soul of the world is just. O brother, can it be
needful now, at this late epoch of experience, after eighteen
centuries of Christian preaching for one thing, to remind thee
of such a fact ; which all manner of Mahometans, old Pagan
Romans, Jew^s, Scythians and heathen Greeks, and indeed
more or less all men that God made, have managed at one
time to see into ; nay which thou thyself, till 'redtape stran-
gled the inner life of thee, hadst once some inkling of : That
there is justice here below ; and even at bottom, that there is
nothing else but justice ! Forget that, thou hast forgotten
all. Success will never more attend thee : how can it now ?
Thou hast the whole Universe against thee. No more suc-
cess : mere sham-success, for a day and days ; rising ever
higher, — towards its Tarpeian Rock. Alas, how, in thy soft-
hung Longacre vehicle, of polished leather to the bodily eye,
of redtape philosophy, of expediencies, clubroom moralities,
Parliamentary majorities to the mind's eye, thou beautifully
rollest : but knowest thou whitherward ? It is towards the
road's end. Old use-and-wont ; established methods, habi-
tudes, once true and wise ; man's noblest tendency, his perse-
verance, and man's ignoblest, his inertia ; whatsoever of noble
and ignoble Conservatism there is in men and Nations, strong-
est always in the strongest men and Nations : all this is as a
road to thee, paved smooth through the abyss, — till all this end.
Till men's bitter necessities can endure thee no more. Till



THE SPHIN X.



13



Natures patience with thee is done ; and there is no road or
footing* any farther, and the abyss yawns sheer ! —

Parliament and the Courts of Westminster are venerable to
me ; how venerable ; grey with a thousand years of honourable
age ! For a thousand years and more, Wisdom and faithful
Valour, struggling amid much Folly and greedy Baseness, not
without most sad distortions in the struggle, have built them up ;
and they are as we see. For a thousand years, this English Na-
tion has found them useful or supportable ; they have served
this English Nation's want ; been a road to it through the abyss
of Time. They are venerable, they are great and strong. And
yet it is good to remember always that they are not the ven-
erablest, nor the greatest, nor the strongest ! Acts of Parlia-
ment are venerable ; but if they correspond not with the
writing on the 'Adamant Tablet,' what are they? Properly
their one element of venerableness, of strength or great-
ness, is, that they at all times correspond therewith as near
as by human possibility they can. They are cherishing de-
struction in their bosom every hour that they continue other-
wise.

Alas, how many causes that can plead well for themselves
in the Courts of Westminster ; and yet in the general Court
of the Universe, and free Soul of Man, have no word to utter !
Honourable Gentlemen may find this worth considering, in
times like ours. And truly, the din of triumphant Law-logic,
and all shaking of horse-hair wigs and learned-sergeant gowns
having comfortably ended, we shall do well to ask ourselves
withal, What says that high and highest Court to the verdict ?
For it is the Court of Courts, that same ; where the universal
soul of Fact and very Truth sits President ; — and thitherward,
more and more swiftly, with a really terrible increase of swift-
ness, all causes do in these days crowd for revisal, — for con-
firmation, for modification, for reversal with costs. Dost thou
know that Court ; hast thou had any Law-practice there ?
What, didst thou never enter ; never file any petition of re-
dress, reclaimer, disclaimer or demurrer, written as in thy
heart's blood, for thy own behoof or another's ; and silently
await the issue ? Thou knowest not such a Court ? Hast



14



PROEM.



merely heard of it by faint tradition as a thing that was or
had been ? Of thee, I think, we shall get little benefit.

For the gowns of learned-sergeants are good : parchment
records, fixed forms, and poor terrestrial Justice, with or
without horse-hair, what sane man will not reverence these ?
And yet, behold, the man is not sane but insane, who con-
siders these alone as venerable. Oceans of horse-hair, conti-
nents of parchment, and learned-sergeant eloquence, were it
continued till the learned tongue wore itself small in the in-
defatigable learned mouth, cannot make unjust just. The
grand question still remains, "Was the judgment just ? If un-
just, it will not and cannot get harbour for itself, or continue
to have footing in this Universe, which was made by other
than One Unjust. Enforce it by never such statu ting, three
readings, royal assents ; blow it to the four winds with all
manner of quilted trumpeters and pursuivants, in the rear of
them never so many gibbets and hangmen, it will not stand,
it cannot stand. From all souls of men, from all ends of
Nature, from the Throne of God above, there are voices bid-
ding it : Away, away ! Does it take no warning ; does it stand,
strong in its three readings, in its gibbets and artillery -parks?
The more woe is to it, the frightfuller woe. It will continue
standing, for its day, for its year, for its century, doing evil all
the while ; but it has One enemy who is Almighty : dissolu-
tion, explosion, and the everlasting Laws of Nature incessantly
advance towards it ; and the deeper its rooting, more obstinate
its continuing, the deeper also and huger will its ruin and
overturn be.

In this God's-world, with its wild-whirling eddies and mad
foam-oceans, w T here men and nations perish as if without law,
and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost
thou think that there is therefore no justice ? It is what the
fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise, in all times,
were wise because they denied, and knew forever not to be.
I tell thee again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong
thing I find here below : the just thing, the true thing. My
riend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at
thy back in support of an unjust thing ; and infinite bonfires



THE HjfHINX.



15



visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy
victory 'on behalf of it, — I would advise thee to call halt, to
fling down thy baton, and say, "In God's name, No ! " Thy
' success ? ' Poor devil, what will thy success amount to ? If
the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded ; no, not though
bonfires blazed from North to South, and bells rang, and
editors wrote leading-articles, and the just thing lay trampled
out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated
thing. Success ? In few years thou wilt be dead and dark, —
all cold, eyeless, deaf ; no blaze of bonfires, ding-dong of bells
or leading-articles visible or audible to thee again at all for-
ever : "What kind of success is that ! —

It is true, all goes by approximation in this world ; with
any not insupportable approximation we must be patient.
There is a noble Conservatism as well as an ignoble. Would
to Heaven, for the sake of Conservatism itself, the noble alone
w r ere left, and the ignoble, by some kind severe hand, were
ruthlessly lopped .away, forbidden ever more to shew itself !
For it is the right and noble alone that will have victory in
this struggle ; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postpone-
ment and fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an
eternal centre of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all
this confusion tending. We already know whither it is all
tending ; what will have victory, what will have none ! The
Heaviest will reach the centre. The Heaviest, sinking through
complex fluctuating media and vortices, has its deflexions, its
obstructions, nay at times its resiliences, its reboun dings ;
whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating, " See,
your Heaviest ascends ! " — but at all moments it is moving
centreward, fast as is convenient for it ; sinking, sinking ; and,
by laws older than the World, old as the Maker's first Plan of
the World, it has to arrive there.

Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each
fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and
his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same.
He has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to all
his right he has prevailed. His very death is no victory over



16



PROEM.



him. He dies indeed ; but his work lives, very truly lives.
A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder
that his Scotland become, one day, a part of England : but he
does hinder that it become, on tyrannous unfair terms, a part
of it ; commands still, as with a gods voice, from his old Val-
halla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just real union
as of brother and brother, not a false and merely semblant one
as of slave and master. If the union with England be in fact
one of Scotland's chief blessings, we thank Wallace withal that
it was not the chief curse. Scotland is not Ireland : no, be-
cause brave men rose there, and said, " Behold, ye must not
tread us down like slaves ; and ye shall not, — find cannot ! "
Fight on, thou brave true heart, and falter not, through dark
fortune and through bright. The cause thou tightest for, so
far as it is true, no farther, yet precisely so far, is very sure of
victory. The falsehood alone of it will be conquered, will be
abolished, as it ought to be : but the truth of it is part of Na-
ture's own Laws, cooperates with the World's eternal Tenden-
cies, and cannot be conquered.

The dust of controversy, what is it but the falsehood flying
off from all manner of conflicting true forces, and making such
a loud dust- whirlwind, — that so the truths alone may remain,
and embrace brother-like in some true resulting-force ! It is
ever so. Savage fighting Heptarchies : their fighting is an
ascertainment, who has the right to rule over whom ; that
out of such waste -bickering Saxondom a peacefully cooperating
England may arise. Seek through this Universe ; if with
oLher than owl's eyes, thou wilt find nothing nourished there,
nothing kept in life, but what has right to nourishment and
life. The rest, look at it with other than owl's eyes, is not liv-
ing ; is all dying, all as good as dead ! Justice was ordained
from the foundations of the world ; and will last with the
world and longer.

From which I infer that the inner sphere of Fact, in this
present England as elsewhere, differs infinitely from the outer
sphere and spheres of Semblance. That the Temporary, here
as elsewhere, is too apt to carry it over the Eternal. That he



THE SPHINX.



17



who dwells in the temporary Semblances, and does not pene-
trate into the eternal Substance, will not answer the Sphinx-rid-
dle of To day, or of any Day. For the substance alone is sub-
stantial ; that is the law of Fact ; if you discover not that, Fact,
who already knows it, will let you also know it by and by !

What is Justice ? that, on the whole, is the question of the
Sphinx to us. The law of Fact is, that Justice must and will
be done. The sooner the better ; for the Time grows strin-
gent, frightfully pressing ! " What is Justice ? " ask many, to
whom cruel Fact alone will be able to prove responsive. It
is like jesting Pilate asking, What is Truth ? Jesting Pilate
had not the smallest chance to ascertain what was Truth. He
could not have known it, had a god shewn it to him. Thick
serene opacity, thicker than amaurosis, veiled those smiling
eyes of his to Truth ; the inner retina of them was gone
paralytic, dead. He looked at Truth ; and discerned her not,
there where she stood. " What is Justice ? " The ciotlied
embodied Justice that sits in Westminster Hall, with penalties,
parchments, tipstaves, is very visible. But the imembodied
Justice, whereof that other is either an emblem, or else is a
fearful indescribability, is not so visible ! For the unembodied
Justice is of Heaven ; a Spirit, and Divinity of Heaven, — in-
visible to all but the noble and pure of soul. The impure
ignoble gaze with eyes, and she is not there They will prove
it to you by logic, by endless Hansard Debatings, by bursts
of Parliamentary eloquence. It is not consolatory to behold !
For properly, as many men as there are in a Nation who can
withal see Heaven's invisible Justice, and know it to be on
Earth also omnipotent, so many men are there who stand be-
tween a Nation and perdition. So many, and no more.
Heavy-laden England, how many hast thou in this hour? The
Supreme Power sends new and ever new, all born at least with
hearts of flesh and not of stone ; — and heavy Misery itself 3
once heavy enough, will prove didactic ! —
%



18



PROEM.



CHAPTER III.

MANCHESTER INSURRECTION.

Blusterowski, Colacorde, and other Editorial prophets of
the Continental Democratic Movement, have in their leading-
articles shewn themselves disposed to vilipend the late Man-
chester Insurrection, as evincing in the rioters an extreme
backwardness to battle ; nay as betokening, in the English
People itself, perhaps a want of the proper animal- courage in-
dispensable in these ages. A million hungry operative men
started up, in utmost paroxysm of desperate protest against
their lot ; and, ask Colacorde and company, How many shots
were fired ? Very few in comparison ! Certain hundreds of
drilled soldiers sufficed to suppress this million-headed hydra,
and tread it down, without the smallest appeasement or hope of
such, into its subterranean settlements again, there to recon-
sider itself. Compared, with our revolts in Lyons, in Warsaw
and elsewhere, to say nothing of incomparable Paris City past
or present, what a lamblike Insurrection ! —

The present Editor is not here, with his readers, to vindicate
the character of Insurrections ; nor does it matter to us
whether Blusterowski and the rest may think the English a
courageous people or not courageous. In passing, however,
let us mention that, to our view, this was not an unsuccessful
Insurrection ; that as Insurrections go, we have not heard
lately of any that succeeded so well.

A million of hungry operative men, as Blusterowski says,
rose all up, came all out into the streets, and — stood there.
"What other could they do ? Their wrongs and griefs were
bitter, insupportable, their rage against the same was just :
but who are they that cause these wrongs, who that will hon-
estly make effort to redress them ? Our enemies are we know
not who or what ; our friends are we know not where ! How
shall we attack any one, shoot or be shot by any one ? Oh, if
the accursed invisible Nightmare, that is crushing out the
life of us and ours, would take a shape ; approach us like the



MANCHESTER INSURRECTION.



18



Hyrcanian tiger, the Behemoth of Chaos, the Archfiend him-
self ; in any shape that we could see, and fasten on ! — A man
can have himself shot with cheerfulness ; but it needs first
that he see clearly for what. Shew him the divine face of
Justice, then the diabolic monster which is eclipsing that : he
will fly at the throat of such monster, never so monstrous, and
need no bidding to do it. Woolwich grapeshot will sweep
clear all streets, blast into invisibility so many thousand men :
but if your Woolwich grapeshot be but eclipsing Divine Jus-
tice, and the God's-radiance itself gleam recognisable athwart
such grapeshot, — then, yes then is the time come for fighting
and attacking. All artillery-parks have become weak, and are
about to dissipate : in the God's-thunder, their poor thunder
slackens, ceases ; finding that it is, in all senses of the term, a
brute one ! —

That the Manchester Insurrection stood still, on the streets,
with an indisposition to fire and bloodshed, was wisdom for it
even as an Insurrection. Insurrection, never so necessary, is a
most sad necessity ; and governors who wait for that to instruct
them, are surely getting into the fatallest courses, — proving
themselves Sons of Nox and Chaos, of blind Cowardice, not
of seeing Valour ! How can there be any remedy in insurrec-
tion? It is a mere announcement of the disease, — visible
now even to Sons of Night. Insurrection usually ' gains '
little ; usually wastesxhow much ! One of its worst kinds of
waste, to say nothing of the rest, is that of irritating and ex-
asperating men against ,each other, by violence done ; which
is always sure to be injustice done, for violence does even
justice unjustly.

Who shall compute the waste and loss, the obstruction of
every sort, that was produced in the Manchester region by Pe-
terloo alone ! Some thirteen unarmed men and women cut
down, — the number of the slain and maimed is very count-
able : but the treasury of rage, burning hidden or visible in
all hearts ever since, more or less perverting the effort and
aim of all hearts ever since, is of unknown extent. " How ye
came among us, in your cruel armed blindness, ye unspeak-
able County Yeomanry, sabres flourishing, hoofs prancing,



20



PROEM,



and slashed us down at your brute pleasure ; deaf, blind to all
our claims and woes and wrongs ; of quick sight and sense
to your own claims only ! There lie poor sallow workworn
weavers, and complain no more now ; women themselves are
slashed and sabred, howling terror fills the air ; and ye ride
prosperous, very victorious, — ye unspeakable : give us sabres
too, and then come-on a little ! " Such are Peterloos. In all
hearts that witnessed Peterloo, stands written, as in fire-char-
acters, or smoke-characters prompt to become fire again, a
legible balance-account of grim vengeance : very unjustly bal-
anced, much exaggerated, as is the way with such accounts :
but payable readily at sight, in full with compound interest !
Such things should be avoided as the very pestilence !
For men's hearts ought not be set against one another ; but
set with one another, and all against the Evil Thing only.
Men's souls ought to be left to see clearly ; not jaundiced,
blinded, twisted all awry, by revenge, mutual abhorrence,
and the like. An Insurrection that can announce the disease,
and then retire with no such balance-account opened any-
where, has attained the highest success possible for it.

And this was what these poor Manchester operatives, with
all the darkness that was in them and round them, did man-
age to perform. They put their huge inarticulate question,
" What do you mean to do with us? " in a manner audible to
every reflective soul in this kingdom ; exciting deep pity in
all good men, deep anxiety in all men whatever ; and no con-
flagration or outburst of madness came to cloud that feeling
anywhere, but everywhere it operates unclouded. All Eng-
land heard the question : it is the first practical form of our
Sphinx-riddle. England will answer it ; or, on the whole,
England will perish ; — one does not yet expect the latter re-
sult !

For the rest, that the Manchester Insurrection could yet
discern no radiance of Heaven on any side of its horizon ; -but
feared that all lights, of the O'Connor or other sorts, hitherto
kindled, were but deceptive fish-oil transjoarencies, or bog
will-o'-wisp lights, and no dayspring from on high : for this
also we will honour the poor Manchester Insurrection, and



MANCHESTER INSURRECTION.



21



augur well of it. A deep unspoken sense lies in these strong
men,— inconsiderable almost stupid, as all they can articulate
of it is. Amid all violent stupidity of speech, a right nob]e
instinct of what is doable and what is not doable never for-
sakes them : the strong inarticulate men and workers, whom
Fact patronises ; of whom, in all difficulty and work whatso-
ever, there is good augury ! This work too is to be done :
Governors and Governing Classes that can articulate and ut-
ter, in any measure, what the law of Fact and Justice is, may
calculate that here is a Governed Class who will listen.

And truly this first practical form of the Sphinx-question,
inarticulately and so audibly put there, is one of the most
impressive ever asked in the world. "Behold us here, so
many thousands, millions, and increasing at the rate of fifty
every hour. We are right willing and able to work ; and on
the Planet Earth is plenty of work and wages for a million
times as many. We ask, If you mean to lead us towards
work ; to try to lead us, — by ways new, never yet heard of
till this new unheard-of Time ? Or if you declare that you
cannot lead us ? And expect that we are to remain quietly
unled, and in a composed manner perish of starvation ? What
is it you expect of us? What is it you mean to do with us?"
This question, I say, has been put in the hearing of all Brit-
ain ; and will be again put, and ever again, till some answer
be given it.

Unhappy Workers, unhappy Idlers, unhappy men and
women of this actual England ! We are yet very far from an
answer, and there will be no existence for us without finding
one. " A fair day's- wages for a fair day's-work : " it is as just
a demand as Governed men ever made of Governing. It is
the everlasting right of man. Indisputable as Gospels, as
arithmetical multiplication-tables : it must and will have itself
fulfilled ; — and yet, in these times of ours, with what enormous
difficulty, next-door to impossibility! For the times are
really strange ; of a complexity intricate with all the new
width of the ever-widening world ; times here of half-frantic
velocity of impetus, there of the deadest-looking stillness and
paralysis ; times definable as shewing two qualities, Dilettant-



22



PROEM.



ism and Mammonism ; — most intricate obstructed times!
Nay, if there were not a Heaven's radiance of Justice, pro-
phetic, clearly of Heaven, discernible behind all these con-
fused world-wide entanglements, of Landlord interests, Manu-
facturing interests, Tory-Whig interests, and who knows what
other interests, expediences, vested interests, established pos-
sessions, inveterate Dilettantisms, Midas-eared Mammonisms,
— it would seem to every one a flat impossibility, which
all wise men might as well at once abandon. If you do
not know eternal Justice from momentary Expediency, and
understand in your heart of hearts how Justice, radiant,
beneficient, as the all-victorious Light-element, is also in
essence, if need be, an all-victorious Fire-element, and melts
all manner of vested interests, and the hardest iron cannon,
as if they were soft w^ax, and does ever in the long-run rule
and reign, and allows nothing else to rule and reign, — you
also would talk of impossibility ! But it is only difficult, it
is not impossible. Possible ? It is, with whatever difficulty,
very clearly inevitable.

Fair day's-wages for fair day 5 s-work ! exclaims a sarcastic
man : Alas, in what corner of this Planet, since Adam first
awoke on it, was -that ever realised ? The day's-wages of John
Milton's day's-work, named Paradise Lost and Milton s Works,
w r ere Ten Pounds paid by instalments, and a rather close
escape from death on the gallows. Consider that : it is no
rhetorical flourish ; it is an authentic, altogether quiet fact, —
emblematic, quietly documentary of a whole world of such,
ever since human history began. Oliver Cromwell quitted
his farming ; undertook a Hercules' Labour and lifelong
wrestle w T ith that Lernean Hydra-coil, wide as England, hiss-
ing heaven-high through its thousand crowned, coroneted,
shovel-hatted, quack-heads ; and he did wrestle with it, the
truest and terriblest wrestle I have heard of ; and he wrestled
it, and mowed and cut it down a good many stages, so that
its hissing is ever since pitiful in comparison, and one can
walk abroad in comparative peace from it ; — and his wages,
as I understand, were burial under the gallows-tree near



MANCHESTER INSURRECTION.



23



Tyburn Turnpike, with his head on the gable of Westminster
Hall, and two centuries now of mixed cursing and ridicule
from all manner of men. His dust lies under the Edgeware
Koad, near Tyburn Turnpike, at this hour ; and his memory
i s — Nay, what matters what his memory is ? His memory, at
bottom, is or yet shall be as that of a god, a terror and horror
to all quacks and cowards and insincere persons ; an everlast-
ing encouragement, new memento, battle word, and pledge of
victory to all the brave. It is the natural course and history
of the Godlike, in every place, in every time. What god ever
carried it with the Tenpound Franchisers ; in Open Vestry,
or with any Sanhedrim of considerable standing ? When was
a god found * agreeable ' to everybody ? The regular way is
to hang, kill, crucify your gods, and execrate and trample
them under your stupid hoofs for a century or two ; till you
discover that they are gods, — and then take to braying over
them, still in a very long-eared manner ! — So speaks the sar-
castic man ; in his wild way, very mournful truths.

Day's- wages for day's-work ? continues he : The Progress
of Human Society consists even in this same, The better and
better apportioning of wages to work. Give me this, you
have given me all. Pay to every man accurately what he has
worked for, what he has earned and done . and deserved, — to
this man broad lands and honours, to that man high gibbets
and treadmills : what more have I to ask ? Heaven's King-
dom, which we daily pray for, has come ; God's will is done
on Earth even as it is in Heaven ! This is the radiance of
celestial J ustice ; in the light or in the fire of which all im-
pediments, vested interests, and iron cannon, are more and
more melting like wax, and disappearing from the pathways
of men. A thing ever struggling forward ; irrepressible, ad-
vancing inevitable ; perfecting itself, all days, more and more,
— never to be perfect till that general Doomsday, the ultimate
Consummation, and Last of earthly Days.

True, as to 'perfection' and so forth, answer we; true
enough ! And yet withal we have to remark, that imperfect
Human Society holds itself together, and finds place under
the Sun, in virtue simply of some approximation to perfection



24



PROEM.



being actually made and put in practice. We remark farther,
that there are supportable approximations, and then likewise
insupportable. With some, almost with any, supportable ap-
proximation men are apt, perhaps too apt, to rest indolently
patient, and say, It will do. Thus these poor Manchester
manual workers mean only, by day's-wages for day's- work,
certain coins of money adequate to keep them living ; — in re-
turn for their work, such modicum of food, clothes and fuel
as will enable them to continue their work itself ! They as
yet clamour for no more ; the rest, still inarticulate, cannot
shape itself into a demand at all, and only lies in them as a
dumb wish : perhaps only, still more inarticulate, as a dumb,
altogether unconscious want. This is the supportable approx-
imation they would rest patient with, That by their w 7 ork
they might be kept alive to work more! — This once grown
unattainable, I think your approximation may consider itself
to have reached the insupportable stage ; and may prepare,
with whatever difficulty, reluctance and astonishment, for one
of two things, for changing or perishing ! With the millions
no longer able to live, how can the units keep living? It is
too clear the Nation itself is on the way to suicidal death.

Shall we say then, The world has retrograded in its talent
of apportioning w r ages to work, in late days ? The world had
always a talent of that sort, better or worse. Time was when
the mere handworker needed not announce his claim to the
world by Manchester Insurrections ! — The world, w T ith its
Wealth of Nations, Supply-and-demand and such like, has of
late days been terribly inattentive to that question of work
and wages. We will not say, the poor world has retrograded
even here : we will say rather, the world has been rushing on
with such fiery animation to get work and ever more work
done, it has had no time to think of dividing the wages ; and
has merely left them to be scrambled for by the Law of the
Stronger, law of Supply-and-demand, law of Laissez-faire, and
other idle Laws and Un-laws, — saying, in its dire haste to
get the work done, That is well enough !

And now, the world will have to pause a little, and take up
that other side of the problem, and in right earnest strive for



MANCHESTER INSURRECTION.



25



some solution of that. For it has become pressing. What is
the use of your spun shirts ? They hang there by the million
unsaleable ; and here, by the million, are diligent bare backs
that can get no hold of them. Shirts are useful for covering
human backs ; useless otherwise, an unbearable mockery
otherwise. You have fallen terribly behind with that side of
the problem ! Manchester Insurrections, French Kevolutions,
and thousandfold phenomena great and small, , announce
loudly that you must bring it forward a little again. Never
till now, in the history of an Earth which to this hour no-
where refuses to grow corn if you will plough it, to yield
shirts if you will spin and weave in it, did the mere manual
two-handed worker (however it might fare with other work-
ers) cry in vain for such c w T ages' as he means by c fair
wages,' namely, food and warmth! The Godlike could not
and cannot be paid ; but the Earthly always could. Gurth,
a mere swineherd, born thrall of Cedric the Saxon, tended
pigs in the wood, and did get some parings of the pork.
"Why, the four-footed worker has already got all that this
two-handed one is clamouring for ! How often must I remind
you ? There is not a horse in England, able and willing to
work, but has clue food and lodging ; and goes about sleek-
coated, satisfied in heart. And you say, It is impossible.
Brothers, I answer, if for you it be impossible, what is to
become of you ? It is impossible for us to believe it to be
impossible. The human brain, looking at these sleek Eng-
lish horses., refuses to believe in such impossibility for
English men. Do you depart quickly ; clear the ways soon,
lest worse befal. We for our share do purpose, with full
view of the enormous difficulty, with total disbelief in the im-
possibility, to endeavour while life is in us, and to die en-
deavouring, we and our sons, till we attain it or have all died
and ended.

Such a Platitude of a World, in which all working horses
could be well fed, and innumerable working men should die
starved, were it not best to end it ; to have done with it, and
restore it once for all to the Jotuns, Mud-giants, Frost-
giants, and Chaotic Brute-gods of the Beginning ? For the



26



PROEM.



old Anarchic. Brute-gods it may be well enough ; but it is a
Platitude which Men should be above countenancing by their
presence in it. We pray you, let the word impossible disap-
pear from your vocabulary in this matter. It is of awful
omen ; to all of us, and to yourselves first of all.



CHAPTER IV.

Morrison's pill.

What is to be done, what would you have us do? asks
many a one, with a tone of impatience, almost of reproach ;
and then, if you mention some one thing, some two things,
twenty things that might be done, turns round with a satirical
tehee, and, "These are your remedies!" The state of mind
indicated by such question, and such rejoinder, is worth re-
flecting on.

It seems to be taken for granted, by these interrogative phi-
losophers, that there is some 'thing,' or handful of 'things/
which could be done ; some Act of Parliament, 6 remedial
measure ' or the like, which could be passed, whereby the
social malady were fairly fronted, conquered, put an end to ;
so that, with your remedial measure in your pocket, you could
then go on triumphant, and he troubled no farther. " You
tell us the evil," cry such persons, as if justly aggrieved, " and
do not tell us how it is to be cured ! "

How it is to be cured ? Brothers, I am sorry I have -got no
Morrison's Pill for curing the maladies of Society. It were
infinitely handier if we had a Morrison's Pill, Act of Parlia-
ment, or remedial measure, which men could swallow, one
good time, and then go on in their old courses, cleared from
all miseries and mischiefs ! Unluckily we have none such ;
unluckily the Heavens themselves, in their rich pharma-
copoeia, contain none such. There will no 'thing' be done
that will cure you. There will a radical universal alteration
of your regimen and way of life take place ; there will a
most agonizing divorce between you and your chimeras,
luxuries and falsities, take place ; a most toilsome, all-but



MORRISON '8 PILL.



27



'impossible* return to Nature, and her veracities and her in-
tegrities, take place : that so the inner fountains of life may
again begin, like eternal Light-fountains, to irradiate and
23urify your bloated, swollen foul existence, drawing nigh, as
at present, to nameless death ! Either death or else all this
will take place. Judge if, with such diagnosis, any Morrison's
Pill is like to be discoverable !

But the Life-fountain within you once again set flowing,
what innumerable ' things/ whole sets and classes and conti-
nents of 6 things/ year after year, and decade after decade, and
century after century, will then be doable and done ! Not
Emigration, Education, Corn Law Abrogation, Sanitary Regu-
lation, Land Property -Tax ; not these alone, nor a thousand
times as much as these. Good Heavens, there will then be
light in the inner heart of here and there a man, to discern
what is just, what is commanded by the Most High God, what
must be done, jrere it never so ' impossible/ Vain jargon in
favour of the palpably unjust will then abridge itself within
limits. Vain jargon, on Hustings, in Parliaments or wherever
else, when here and there a man has vision for the essential
God's-Truth of the things jargoned of, will become very vain
indeed. The silence of here and there such a man, how elo-
quent in answer to such jargon ! Such jargon, frightened at
its own gaunt echo, will unspeakably abate ; nay, for a while,
may almost in a manner disappear, — the wise answering it in
silence, and even the simplest taking cue from them to hoot
it down wherever heard. It will be a blessed time ; and
many 'things ' will become doable, — and when the brains are
out, an absurdity will die ! Not easily again shall a Corn-
Law argue ten years for itself ; and still talk and argue,
when impartial persons have to say with a sigh that, for so
long back, they have heard no ' argument ' advanced for it
but such as might make the angels and almost the very jack-
asses weep ! —

Wholly a blessed time : when jargon might abate, and here
and there some genuine speech begin. When to the noble
opened heart, as to such heart they alone do, all noble things
began to grow visible ; and the difference between just and



28



PROEM.



unjust, between true and false, between work and sham -work,
between speech and jargon, was once more, what to our
happier Fathers it used to be, infinite, — as between a Heavenly
thing and an Infernal : the one a thing which you were not to
do, which you were wise not to attempt doing ; which it were
better for you to have a millstone tied round your neck, and
be cast into the sea, than concern yourself with doing ! —
Brothers, it will not be a Morrison's Pill, or remedial meas-
ure, that will bring all this about for us.

And yet, very literally, till, in some shape or other, it be
brought about, we remain cureless ; till it begin to be
brought about, the cure does not begin. For Nature and
Fact, not Eed-tape and Semblance, are to this hour the basis
of man's life ; and on those, through never such strata of
these, man and his life and all his interests do, sooner or
later, infallibly come to rest, — and to be supported or be
swallowed according as they agree with those. The question
is asked of them, not, How do you agree with Downing-street
and accredited Semblance? but, How do you agree with
God's Universe and the actual Reality of things ? This Uni-
verse has its Laws. If we walk according to the Law, the
Law-Maker will befriend us ; if not, not. Alas, by no Re-
form Bill, Ballot-box, Five-point Charter, by no boxes or
bills or charters, can you perform this alchemy : ' Given a
world of Knaves, to produce an Honesty from their united
action ! ' It is a distillation, once for all, not possible. You
pass it through alembic after alembic, it comes out still a
Dishonesty, with a new dress on it, a new colour to it. ' While
we ourselves continue valets, how can any hero come to
govern us ? ' We are governed, very infallibly, by the ' sham-
hero,' — whose name is Quack, whose work and governance is
Plausibility, and also is Falsity and Fatuity ; to which Nature
says, and must say when it comes to her to speak, eternally
No ! Nations cease to be befriended of the Law-Maker, when
they walk not according to the Law. The Sphinx-question
remains unsolved by them, becomes ever more insoluble.

If thou ask again, therefore, on the Morrison's Pill hypoth-



MORRISON'S PILL.



29



esis, What is to be done ? allow me to reply : By thee, for
the present, almost nothing. Thou there, the thing for thee
to do is, if possible, to cease to be a hollow sounding-shell 01
hearsays, egoisms, purblind dilettantisms ; and become, were
it on the infinitely small scale, a faithful discerning soul,
Thou shalt descend into thy inner man, and see if there be any
traces of a soul there ; till then there can be nothing done !
O brother, we must if possible resuscitate some soul and con-
science in us, exchange our dilettantisms for sincerities, our
dead hearts of stone for living hearts of flesh. Then shall we
discern, not one tiling, but, in clearer or dimmer sequence, a
whole endless host of things that can be done. Do the first
of these ; do it ; the second will already have become clearer,
doabler ; the second, third, and three-thousandth will then
have begun to be possible for us. Not any universal Mor-
rison's Pill shall we then, either as swallowers or as venders,
ask after at all ; but a far different sort of remedies : Quacks
shall no more have dominion over us, but true Heroes and
Healers !

Will not that be a thing worthy of c doing ; ' to deliver our-
selves from quacks, sham-heroes ; to deliver the whole world
more and more from such! They are the one bane of the
world. Once clear the world of them, it ceases to be a Devil's-
world, in all fibres of it wretched, accursed ; and begins to be a
God's world, blessed, and working hourly towards blessedness !
Thou for one wilt not again vote for any quack, do honour to
any edge-gilt vacuity in man's shape : cant shall be known to
thee by the sound of it ; — thou wilt fly from cant with a shud-
der never felt before ; as from the opened litany of Sorcerers'
Sabbaths, the true Devil worship of this age, more horrible
than any other blasphemy, profanity, or genuine blackguardism
elsewhere audible among men. It is alarming to witness, — ■
in its present completed state ! And Quack and Dupe, as we
must ever keep in mind, are upper-side and under of the self-
same substance ; convertible personages : turn up your dupe
into the proper fostering element, and he himself can become
a quack ; there is in him the due prurient insincerity, open



so



PROEM.



voracity for profit, and closed sense for truth, whereof quacks
too, in all their kinds, are made.

Alas, it is not to the hero, it is to the sham -hero that, of
right and necessity, the Valet-world belongs. ' What is to be
done ? ' The reader sees whether it is like to be the seeking
and swallowing of some ' remedial measure ! '



CHAPTEK V.

ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.

When an individual is miserable, what does it most of all
behove him to do ? To complain of this man or of that, of
this thing or of that ? To fill the world and the street with
lamentation, objurgation ? Not so at all ; the reverse of so.
All moralists advise him not to complain of any person or of
any thing, but of himself only. He is to know of a truth that
being miserable he has been unwise, he. Had he faithfully
followed Nature and her Laws, Nature, ever true to her Laws,
would have yielded fruit and increase and felicity to him :
but he has followed other than Nature's Laws ; and now Na-
ture, her patience with him being ended, leaves him desolate ;
answers with very emphatic significance to him : No. Not
by this road, my son ; by another road shalt thou attain well-
being : this, thou perceivest, is the road to ill being ; quit
this ! — So do all moralists advise : that the man penitently say
to himself first of all, B ahold I was not wise enough ; I
quitted the laws of Fact, which are also called the Laws of
God, and mistook for them the Laws of Sham and Semblance,
which are called the Devil's Laws ; therefore am I here.

Neither with Nations that become miserable is it funda-
mentally otherwise. The ancient guides of Nations, Prophets,
Priests, or whatever their name, w r ere well aware of this ; and,
down to a late epoch, impressively taught and inculcated it.
The modern guides of Nations, who also go under a great v
riety of names, Journalists, Political Economists, Politician
Pamphleteers, have entirely forgotten this, and are ready to
deny this. But it nevertheless remains eternally undeniable ,?



ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.



31



nor is there any doubt but we shall all be taught it yet, and
made again to confess it : we shall all be striped and scourged
till we do learn it ; and shall at last either get to know it, or
be striped to death in the process. For it is undeniable !
When a Nation is unhappy, the old Prophet was right and
not wrong in saying to it : Ye have forgotten God, ye have
quitted the ways of God, or ye would not have been un-
happy. It is not according to the laws of Fact that ye have
lived and guided yourselves, but according to the laws of De-
lusion, Imposture, and wilful and unwilf ul Mistake of Fact ;
behold therefore the Unveracity is worn out ; Nature's long-
suffering with you is exhausted ; and ye are here !

Surely there is nothing very inconceivable in this, even to
the Journalist, to the Political Economist, Modern Pamphlet-
eer, or any two-legged animal without feathers ! If a coun-
try finds itself wretched, sure enough that country has been
misguided : it is with the wretched Twenty-seven Millions,
fallen wretched, as with the Unit fallen wretched : they as he
have quitted the course prescribed by Nature and the Su-
preme Powers, and so are fallen into scarcity, disaster, infe-
licity ; and pausing to consider themselves, have to lament
and say : Alas, we were not wise enough ! We took transient
superficial Semblance for everlasting central Substance ; we
have departed far away from the Laws of this Universe, and
behold now T lawless Chaos and inane Chimera is ready to de-
vour us! — 'Nature in late centuries," says Sauerteig, ' was
* universally supposed to be dead ; an old eight-day clock,
' made many thousand years ago, and still ticking, but dead
4 as brass, — which the Maker, at most, sat looking at, in a
1 distant, singular, and indeed incredible manner : but now I
6 am happy to observe, she is everywhere asserting herself to
6 be not dead and brass at all, but alive and miraculous, ce-
tf lestial-in-fernal, with an emphasis that will again penetrate
' the thickest head of this Planet by and by ! ' — —

Indisputable enough to all mortals now, the guidance of
this country has not been sufficiently wise : men too foolish
have been set to the guiding and governing of it, and have
guided it hither : we must find wiser, — wiser, or else we



PROEM.



perisii ! To this length of insight all England has now ad-
vanced ; but as yet no farther. All England stands wringing
its hands, asking itself, nigh desperate, What farther? Re-
form Bill proves to be a failure ; Benthamee Radicalism, the
gospel of 'Enlightened Selfishness,' dies out, or dwindles into
Five-point Chartism, amid the tears and hootings of men :
what next are we to hope or try ? Five-point Charter, Free-
trade ; Church-extension, Sliding-scale ; what, in Heaven's
name, are we next to attempt, that we sink not in inane Chi-
mera, and be devoured of Chaos? — The case is pressing, and
one of the most complicated in the world. A God's-message
never came to thicker-skinned people ; never had a God's-
message to pierce through thicker integuments, into heavier
ears. It is Fact, speaking once more, in miraculous thunder-
voice, from out of the centre of the world ; — how unknown
its language to the deaf and foolish many ; — how distinct, un-
deniable, terrible and yet beneficent, to the hearing few:
Behold, ye shall grow wiser, or ye shall die ! Truer to Na-
ture's Fact, or inane Chimera will swallow you ; in whirlwinds
of fire, you and your Mammonisms, Dilettantisms, your Midas-
eared philosophies, double-barrelled Aristocracies, shall dis-
appear ! — Such is the God's-message to us, once more, in
these modern days.

We must have more Wisdom to govern us, we must be
governed by the Wisest, we must have an Aristocracy of Tal-
ent ! cry many. True, most true ; but how to get it ? The
following extract from our young friend of the Iloundsdilch
Indicator is worth perusing: 'At this time,' says he, 'while
' there is a cry everywhere, articulate or inarticulate, for an
'"Aristocracy of Talent," a Governing Class namely which
< did govern, not merely which took the wages of govern-
' ing, and could not with all our industry be kept from mis-
' governing, corn-la wing, and playing the very deuce with us, —
6 it may not be altogether useless to remind some of the
' greener-headed sort what a dreadfully difficult affair the
' getting of such an Aristocracy is ! Do you expect, my
' friends, that your indispensable Aristocracy of Talent is to



ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.



33



f be enlisted straightway, by some sort of recruitment afore-
' thought, out of the general population ; arranged in supreme
( regimental order ; and set to rule over us ? That it will be
' got sifted, like wheat out of chaff, from the Twenty-seven
' Million British subjects ; that any Ballot-box, Keform Bill,
' or other Political Machine, with Force of Public Opinion
' never so active on it, is likely to perform said process of

* sifting ? Would to Heaven that we had a sieve ; that we
6 could so much as fancy any kind of sieve, wind-fanners, or ne-
( plus-ultra of machinery, devisable by man, that would do it !

' Done nevertheless, sure enough, it must be ; it shall and
' will be. We are rushing swiftly on the road to destruction ;

* every hour bringing us nearer, until it be, in some measure,
'done. The doing of it is not doubtful ; only the method and
' the costs ! Nay I will even mention to you an infallible sift-
f ing-process whereby he that has ability will be sifted out to
c rule among us, and that same blessed Aristocracy of Talent
6 be verily, in an approximate degree, vouchsafed us by and

* by : an infallible sifting-process ; to which, however, no soul
' can help his neighbour, but each must, with devout prayer
' to Heaven, endeavour to help himself. It is, O friends, that
' all of us, that many of us, should acquire the true eye for

■ talent, which is dreadfully wanting at present ! The true
' eye for talent presupposes the true reverence for it, — O
1 Heavens, presupposes so many things !

' For example, you Bobus Higgins, Sausage-maker on the
' great scale, who are raising such a clamour for this Aristoc-
' racy of Talent, what is it that you do, in that big heart of

■ yours, chiefly in very fact pay reverence to ? Is it to talent,
? intrinsic manly worth of any kind, you unfortunate Bobus ?
' The manliest man that you saw going in a ragged coat, did
c you ever reverence him ; did you so much as know that he
f was a manly man at all, till his coat grew better ? Talent !
\ 1 understand you to be able to worship the fame of talent,

■ the power, cash, celebrity or other success of talent ; but the
1 talent itself is a thing you never saw with eyes. Nay what is
6 it in yourself that you are proudest of, that you take most
' pleasure in surveying meditatively in thoughtful moments ?

3



34



PROEM.



* Speak now, is it the bare Bobus stript of his very name and
' shirt, and turned loose upon society, that you admire and
' thank Heaven for ; or Bobus with his cash-accounts and

* larders dropping fatness, with his respectabilities, warm gar-
' nitures, and pony-chaise, admirable in some measure to cer-
' tain of the flunkey species ? Your own degree of worth and
£ talent, is it of infinite value to you ; or only of finite, — meas-
4 urable by the degree of currency, and conquest of praise or
4 pudding, it has brought you to ? Bobus, you are in a vicious
4 circle, rounder than one of your own sausages ; and will
4 never vote for or promote any talent, except what talent or
4 sham-talent has already got itself voted for ! ' — We here cut
short the Indicator; all readers perceiving whither he now
tends.

4 More Wisdom ' indeed : but where to find more Wisdom ?
We have already a Collective Wisdom, after its kind, — though
' class-legislation,' and another thing or two, affect it some-
what ! On the whole, as they say, Like people like priest ;
so we may say, Like people like king. The man gets himself
appointed and elected who is ablest — to be appointed and
elected. What can the incorruptiblest Bobuses elect, if it be
not some Bobissimus, should they find such ?

Or, ugain, perhaps there is not, in the whole Nation, Wis-
dom enough, ' collect ' it as we may, to make an adequate Col-
lective ! That too is a case which may befal : a ruined man
staggers down to ruin because there was not wisdom enough
in him ; so, clearly also, may Twenty-seven Million collective
men ! — But indeed one of the infalliblest fruits of Unwisdom
in a Nation is that it cannot get the use of what Wisdom is
actually in it : that it is not governed by the wisest it has,
who alone have a divine right to govern in all Nations ; but by
the sham-wisest, or even by the openly not-so-wise if they are
handiest otherwise ! This is the infalliblest result of Unwis-
dom ; and also the balefullest, immeasuraWest, — not so much
what we can call a poison : /Wu£, as a universal death-disease,
and poisoning of the w T hole tree. For hereby are fostered,
fed into gigantic bulk, all manner of Unwisdoms, poison-



HERO' WORSHIP.



35



fruits ; till, as we say, the life-tree everywhere is made a
upas-tree, deadly Unwisdom overshadowing all things ; and
there is done what lies in human skill to stifle all Wisdom
everywhere in the birth, to smite our poor world barren of
Wisdom, — and make your utmost Collective Wisdom, were it
collected and elected by Rhadamanthus, iEacus and Minos,
not to speak of drunken Tenpound Franchisers with their
ballot-boxes, an inadequate Collective ! The Wisdom is not
now there : how will you ' collect ' it ? As well wash Thames
mud, by improved methods, to find more gold in it.

Truly, the first condition is indispensable, That Wisdom be
there : but the second is like unto it, is properly one with it ;
these two conditions act and react through every fibre of
them, and go inseparably together. If you have much Wis-
dom in your Nation, you will get it faithfully collected; for
the wise love Wisdom, and will search for it as for life and
salvation. If you have little Wisdom, you will get even that
little ill-collected, trampled under foot, reduced as near as
possible to annihilation ; for fools do not love Wisdom ; they
are foolish, first of all, because they have never loved Wisdom,
— but have loved their own appetites, ambitions, their cor-
oneted coaches, tankards of heavy-wet. Thus is your candle
lighted at both ends, and the progess towards consummation
is swift. Thus is fulfilled that saying in the Gospel : To him
that hath shall be given ; and from him that hath not shall be
taken away even that which he hath. Very literally, in a very
fatal manner, that saying is here fulfilled.

Our £ Aristocracy of Talent ' seems at a considerable distance
yet ; does it not, O Bobus ?



CHAPTER VI

HERO-WORSHIP.

To the present Editor, not less than to Bobus, a Govern-
ment of the Wisest, what Bobus calls an Aristocracy of Talent,
seems the one healing remedy : but he is not so sanguine as
Bobus with respect to the means of realising it. He thinks
that we have at once missed realising it, and come to need it



PROEM,



so pressingly, by departing far from the inner eternal Laws
and taking up with the temporary outer semblances of Laws.
He thinks that ' enlightened Egoism/ never so luminous,
is not the rule by which man's life can be led. That 'Lais'
sez-faire,' ' Supply-and-demand/ ' Cash-payment for the sole
nexus/ and so forth, were not, are not, and will never be, a
practicable Law of Union for a Society of Men. That Poor
and Rich, that Governed and Governing, cannot long live to-
gether on any such Law of Union. Alas, he thinks that man
has a soul in him different from the stomach in any sense of
this word ; that if said soul be asphyxied, and lie quietly for-
gotten, the man and his affairs are in a bad w T ay. He thinks
that said soul will have to be resuscitated from its asphyxia ;
that if it prove irresuscitable, the man is not long for this
world. In brief, that Midas-eared Mammonism, double-bar-
relled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corolla-
ries, are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed
this his Universe to go. That, once for all, these are not the
Law : and then farther that we shall have to return to what is
the Law, — not by smooth flowery paths, it is like, and with
' tremendous cheers' in our throat ; but over steep untrodden
places, through stormclad chasms, waste oceans, and the bosom
of tornadoes ; thank Heaven, if not through very Chaos and
the Abyss! The resuscitating of a soul that has gone to
asphyxia is no momentary or pleasant process, but a long and
terrible one.

To the present Editor, 'Hero-worship/ as he has elsewhere
named it, means much more than an elected Parliament, or
stated Aristocracy, of the Wisest ; for, in his dialect, it is the
summary, ultimate essence, and supreme practical perfection
of all manner of 'worship/ and true worthships and noble-
nesses whatsoever. Such blessed Parliament and, were it
once in perfection, blessed' Aristocracy of the Wisest, god-
honoured and man-honoured, he does look for, more and
more perfected, — as the topmost blessed practical apex of a
whole world reformed from sham-worship, informed anew
with worship, with truth and blessedness ! He thinks that
Hero-worship, done differently in every different epoch of the



HERO- WORSHIP.



31



world, is the soul of all social business among men ; that the
doing of it well, or the doing of it ill, measures accurately
what degree of well-being or of ill-being there is in the
world's affairs. He thinks that we, on the whole, do our
Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world ever did it
before : that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a Literary
Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser and
falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a
prophet of God. It is this Editor's clear opinion, accord-
ingly, that we must learn to do our Hero-worship better ;
that to do it better and better, means the awakening of the
Nation's soul from its asphyxia, and the return of blessed
life to us, — Heaven's blessed life, not Mammon's galvanic ac-
cursed one. To resuscitate the Asphyxied, apparently now
moribund, and in the last agony if not resuscitated : such
and no other seems the consummation.

4 Hero-worship,' if you will, — yes, friends ; but, first of all,
by being ourselves of heroic mind. A whole world of He-
roes ; a world not of Flunkeys, where no Hero-King can
reign : that is what we aim at ! We, for our share, will put
away all Flunkeyism, Baseness, Unveracity from us ; we shall
then hope to have Noblenesses and Veracities set over us ;
never till then. Let Bobus and Company sneer, "That is
your Reform ! " Yes, Bobus, that is our Reform ; and ex-
cept in that, and what will follow out of that, Ave have no
hope at all. Reform, like Charity, O Bobus, must begin at
home. Once well at home, how will it radiate outwards, ir-
repressible, into all that we touch and handle, speak and
work ; kindling ever new light, by incalculable contagion,
spreading in geometric ratio, far and wide, — doing good only,
wheresoever it spreads, and not evil.

By Reform Bills, Anti Corn-Law Bills, and thousand other
bills and methods, we will demand of our Governors, with
emphasis, and for the first time not without effect, that they
cease to be quacks, or else depart ; that they set no quacker-
ies and blockheadisms anywhere to rule over us, that they
utter or act no cant to us, — it will be better if they do not.
For we shall now know quacks when we see them ; cant 3



ss



PROEM.



when we hear it, shall be horrible to us ! We will say, with
the poor Frenchman at the Bar of the Convention, though
in wiser style than he, and ' for the space ' not ' of an hour 9
but of a lifetime : " Je demande Varrestalion des coguins et des
laches." x Arrestment of the knaves and dastards : ' ah, we
know what a work that is ; how long it will be before they
are all or mostly got ' arrested :' — but here is one ; arrest him
in God's name ; it is one fewer ! We will, in all practicable
ways, by word and silence, by act and refusal to act, energeti-
cally demand that arrestment — "je demande cette arrestation-
1 1 ! " — and by degrees infallibly attain it. Infallibly : for
light spreads ; all human souls, never so bedarkened, love
light ; light once kindled spreads, till all is luminous ; till the
cry, " Arrest your knaves and dastards " rises imperative from
millions of hearts, and rings and reigns from sea to sea. Nay,
how many of them may we not 'arrest' with our own hands,
even now ; we ! Do not countenance them, thou there : turn
away from their lackered sumptuosities, their belauded soph-
istries, their serpent graciosities, their spoken and acted cant,
with a sacred horror, with an Apage Satanas. — Bobus and
Company, and all men will gradually join us. We demand
arrestment of the knaves and dastards, and begin by arrest-
ing our own poor selves out of that fraternity. There is no
other. reform conceivable. Thou and I, my friend, can, in the
most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one
hero, if we like : that will be two heroes to begin with : —
Courage ! even that is a whole world of heroes to end with,
or what we poor Two can do in furtherance thereof !

Yes, friends : Hero -kings and a whole world not unheroic,
— there lies the port and happy haven, towards which,
through all these stormtost seas, French Revolutions, Chart-
isms, Manchester Insurrections, that make the heart sick in
these bad days, the Supreme Powers are driving us. On the
whole, blessed be the Supreme Powers, stern as they are !
Towards that haven will we, O friends ; let all true men, with
what of faculty is in them, bend valiantly, incessantly, with
thousandfold endeavour, thither, thither ! There, or else in
the Ocean-abysses, it is very clear to me, we shall arrive.



HERO- WORSHIP.



39



Well ; here truly is no answer to the Sphinx-question ; not
the answer a disconsolate Public, inquiring at the College of
Health, was in hopes of ! A total change of regimen, change
of constitution and existence from the very centre of it ; a
new body to be got, with resuscitated soul, — not without con-
vulsive travail- throes ; as all birth and new-birth presupposes
travail ! This is sad news to a disconsolate discerning Pub-
lic, hoping to have got off by some Morrison's Pill, some
Saint John's corrosive mixture and perhaps a little blistery
friction on the back ! — We were prepared to part with our Corn-
Law, with various Laws and Unlaws : but this, what is this ?

Nor has the Editor forgotten how it fares with your ill-
boding Cassandras in Sieges of Troy. Imminent perdition is
not usually driven away by words of warning. Didactic Des-
tiny has other methods in store ; or these would fail always.
Such w T ords should, nevertheless, be uttered, when they dwell
truly in the soul of any man. Words are hard, are importu-
nate ; but how much harder the importunate events they fore-
shadow ! Here and there a human soul may listen to the
words, — who knows how many human souls ? whereby the im-
portunate events, if not diverted and prevented, will be ren-
dered less hard. The present Editor's purpose is to himself
full of hope.

For though fierce travails, though wide seas and roaring
gulfs lie before us, is it not something if a Loadstar, in the
eternal sky, do once more disclose itself ; an everlasting light,
shining through all cloud-tempests and roaring billows, ever
as we emerge from the trough of the sea : the blessed beacon,
far off on the edge of far horizons, towards which we are to
steer incessantly for life ? Is it not something ; O Heavens,
is it not all ? There lies the Heroic Promised Land ; under
that Heaven's-light, my brethren, bloom the Happy Isles, —
there, O there ! Thither will we ;

1 There dwells the great Acliilles whom we knew.' *

There dwell all Heroes, and will dwell : thither, all ye heroic-
minded ! — The Heaven's Loadstar once clearly in our eye 3
* Tennyson's Poems (Ulysses).



40



PROEM.



how will each true man stand truly to his work in the ship ;
how, with undying hope, will all things be fronted, all be
conquered. Nay, with the ship's prow once turned in that
direction, is not all, as it were, already well? Sick wasting-
misery has become noble manful effort with a goal in our eye.
1 The choking Nightmare chokes us no longer ; for we stir
under it ; the Nightmare has already fled.' —

Certainly, could the present Editor instruct men how to
know Wisdom, Heroism, when they see it, that they might
do reverence to it only, and loyally make it ruler over them,
— yes, he were the living epitome of all Editors, Teachers,
Prophets, that now teach and prophesy ; he were an Apollo-
Morrison, a Trismegistus and effective Cassandra! Let no
Able Editor hope such things. It is to be expected the
present laws of copyright, rate of reward per sheet, and other
considerations, will save him from that peril. Let no Editor
hope such things : no ;— and yet let all Editors aim towards
such things, and even towards such alone ! One knows not
what the meaning of editing and writing is, if even this be not
it.

Enough, to the present Editor it has seemed possible some
glimmering of light, for here and there a human soul, might
lie in these confused Paper-Masses now intrusted to him ;
wherefore he determines to edit the same. Out of old Books,
new Writings, and. much Meditation not of yesterday, he will
endeavour to select a thing or two ; and from the Past, in a
circuitous way, illustrate the Present and the Future. The
Past is a dim indubitable fact : the Future too is one, only
dimmer ; nay properly it is the same fact in new dress and
development. For the Present holds in it both the whole
Past and the whole Future ; — as the Life-tkee Igdkasil, wide-
waving, many toned, has its roots down deep in the Death-
kingdoms, among the oldest dead dust of men, and with its
boughs reaches always beyond the stars ; and in all times and
places is one and the same Life-tree !



BOOK II.



TEE ANCIENT MONK.



CHAPTER I.

JOCELIN OF BRAKELOND.

We will, in this Second Portion of our Work, strive to pene-
trate a little, by means of certain confused Papers, printed and
other, into a somewhat remote Century ; and to look face to
face on it, in hope of perhaps illustrating our own poor
Century thereby. It seems a circuitous way ; but it may
prove a way nevertheless. For man has ever been a striving,
struggling, and, in spite of wide-spread calumnies to the con-
trary, a veracious creature : the Centuries too are all lineal chil-
dren of one another ; and often, in the portrait of early grand-
fathers, this and the other enigmatic feature of the newest
grandson shall disclose itself, to mutual elucidation. This
Editor will venture on such a thing.

Besides, in Editors' Books, and indeed everywhere else in
the world of Today, a certain latitude of movement grows
more and more becoming for the practical man. Salvation
lies not in tight lacing, in these times ; — how far from that, in
any province whatsoever ! Readers and men generally are
getting into strange habits of asking all persons and things,
from poor Editors' Books up to Church Bishops and State
Potentates, not, By what designation art thou called ; in what
wig and black triangle dost thou walk abroad ? Heavens, I
know thy designation and black triangle well enough ! But,
in God's name, what art thou ? Not Nothing, sayest thou !
Then, How much and what ? This is the thing I would know ;



»

42 THE ANCIENT MONK

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, i many kinds are permissible,' there is one kind not
permissible, ' the kind that has nothing in it, le genre ennuy-
eux;' and go on his way accordingly.

A certain Jocelinus de Brakelonda, a natural-born English-
man, has left us an extremely foreign Book,* which the la-
bours of the Camden Society have brought to light in these
days. Jocelin's Book, the c 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 !

Jocelin of Brakelond cannot be called a conspicuous liter-
ary character ; indeed few mortals that have left so visible a
work, or footmark, behind them can be more obscure. One
other of those vanished Existences, whose work has not yet
vanished ; — almost a pathetic phenomenon, were not the
whole world full of such ! The builders of Stonehenge, for ex-
ample : — or alas, what say we, Stonehenge and builders ? The
writers of the Universal Review and Homer's Iliad ; the paviers
of London streets ; — sooner or later, the entire Posterity of
Adam ! It is a pathetic phenomenon ; but an irremediable,
-nay, if well meditated, a consoling one.

By his dialect of Monk-Latin, and indeed by his name, this
Jocelin seems to have been a Norman Englishman ; the sur-
name de Brakelonda indicates a native of St. Edmundsbury

* Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, de rebus gestis Samsonis Ab-
batis MonasteHi Sancti Edmundi: nunc primum funis mandata, curanU
Johanne Gage Rokewood. (Camden Society, London, lb 40.)



JOCELIN OF BRAKE L OND.



43



itself, Brakelond being the known old name of a street or
quarter in that venerable Town. Then farther, sure enough,
our Jocelin was a Monk of St. Edmundsbury Convent ; held
some ' obediential subaltern officiality there, or rather, in suc-
cession several ; was, for one thing, ' chaplain to my Lord
Abbot, living beside him night and day for the space of six
years ; ' — which last, indeed, is the grand fact of Jocelin's ex-
istence, and properly the origin of this present Book, and of
the chief meaning it has for us now. He was, as we have
hinted, a kind of born Boswell, though an infmitesimaHy small
one ; neither did he altogether want his Johnson even there
and then. Johnsons are rare ; yet, as has been asserted, Bos-
wells perhaps still rarer, — the more is the pity on both sides !
This Jocelin, as we can discern w T ell, was an ingenious and
ingenuous, a cheery-hearted, innocent, yet withal shrewd, no-
ticing, quick-witted man ; and from under his monk's cowl
has looked out on that narrow section of the world in a really
human manner ; not in any simial, canine, ovine, or otherwise
mEuman 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. Ve-
racity : it is the' basis of all ; and, some say, means genius it-
self ; 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 as 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 duly was to sleep kindly, and love
his mother well ! This is the Biography of Jocelin ; c a man
of excellent religion/ says one of his contemporary Brother
Monks, ' eximiw religionis, pofens 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



THE ANCIENT MONK



us, had bethought him of noting clown thereby what things
seemed notablest to him. Hence gradually resulted a Chron-
ica Jocelini ; new Manuscript in the Liber Albus of St. Ed-
mundsbury. 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 inserted in the Liber Albus ;
and so surviving Henry the Eighth, Putney Cromwell, the
Dissolution of Monasteries, and all accidents of malice and
neglect for six centuries or so, it got into the Harleian Collec-
tion, — and has now therefrom, by Mr. Eokewood of the Cam-
den Society, been deciphered into clear print ; and lies before
us, a dainty thin quarto, to interest for a few minutes whom-
soever it can.

Here too it will behove a just Historian gratefully to say
that Mr. Eokewood, Jocelin's Editor, has done his editorial
function well. Not only has he deciphered his crabbed Man-
uscript into clear print ; but he has attended, what his fellow
editors are not always in the habit of doing, to the important
truth that the Manuscript so deciphered ought to have a mean-
ing for the reader. Standing faithfully by his text, and print-
ing its very errors in spelling, in grammar or otherwise, he
has taken care by some note to indicate that they are errors,
and what the correction of them ought to be. Jocelin's
Monk-Latin is generally transparent, as shallow limpid water.
But at any stop that may occur, of which there are a few, and
only a very few, we have the comfortable assurance that a
meaning does lie in the passage, and may by industry be got
at ; that a faithful editor's industry had already got at it be-
fore passing on. A compendious useful Glossary is given ;
nearly adequate to help the uninitiated through : sometimes
one wishes it had been a trifle larger ; but, with a Spelman
and Ducange at your elbow, how- easy to have made it far
too large ! Notes are added, generally brief ; sufficiently ex-
planatory of most points. Lastly, a copious correct Index ;
which no such Book should want, and which unluckily very
few possess. And so, in a word, the Chronicle of Jocelin is.



JOCELIN OF BRAKEL ONB.



45



as it professes to be, unwrapped from its thick cerements,
and fairly brought forth into the common daylight, so that he
who runs, and has a smattering of grammar, may read.

We have heard so much of Monks ; everywhere, in real and
fictitious History, from Muratori Annals to Radcliffe Ro-
mances, these singular two-legged animals, with their rosaries
and breviaries, with their shaven crowns, hair-cilices, and
vows of poverty, masquerade so strangely through our fancy ;
and they are in fact so very strange an extinct species of the
human family, — a veritable Monk of Bury St. Edmunds is
worth attending to, if by chance made visible and audible.
Here he is, and in' his hand a magical speculum, much gone
to rust indeed, yet in fragments still clear ; wherein the mar-
vellous image of his existence does still shadow itself, though
fitfully, and as with an intermittent light ! Will not the
reader peep with us into this singular camera lucida, where an
extinct species, though fitfully, can still be seen alive? Ex-
tinct species, we say ; for the live specimens which still go
about under that character are too evidently to be classed as
spurious in Natural History : the Gospel of Richard Ark-
wright once promulgated, no Monk of the old sort is any
longer possible in this w^orld. But fancy a deep-buried Mas-
todon, some fossil Megatherion, Ichthyosaurus, were to begin
to speak from amid its rock-swathings, never so indistinctly !
The most extinct fossil species of Men or Monks can do, and
does, this miracle, — thanks to the Letters of the Alphabet,
good for so many things.

Jocelin, we said, was somewhat of a Boswell ; but unfortu-
nately, by Nature, he is none of the largest, and distance has
now dwarfed him to an extreme degree. His light is most
feeble, intermittent, and requires the intensest kindest inspec-
tion ; otherwise it will disclose mere vacant haze. It must
be owned, the good Jocelin, spite of his beautiful child-like
character, is but an altogether imperfect ' mirror ' of these
old-world things ! The good man, he looks on us so clear
and cheery, and in his neighbourly soft-smiling eyes we see
sa well our own shadow, — we have a longing always to cross-



46



THE ANCIENT MONK.



question him, to force from him an explanation of much.
But no ; Jocelin, though lie talks with such clear familiarity,
like a next-door neighbour, will not answer any questions ;
that is the peculiarity of him, dead these six hundred and
fifty years, and quite deaf to us, though still so audible ! The
good man, he cannot help it, nor can we.

But truly it is a strange consideration this simple one, as
we go on with him, or indeed with any lucid simple-hearted
soul like him : Behold therefore, this England of the Year
1200 was no chimerical vacuity or dreamland, peopled with
mere vaporous Fantasms, Rymer's Fcedera, and Doctrines of
the Constitution ; but a green solid place, that grew corn and
several other things. The Sun shone on it ; the vicissitude
of seasons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and worn ;
ditches were dug, furrow-fields ploughed, and houses built.
Day by day all men and cattle rose to labour, and night by
night returned home weary to their several lairs. In wondrous
Dualism, then as now, lived nations of breathing men ; alter-
nating, in all ways, between Light and Dark ; between joy
and sorrow, between rest and toil, — between hope, hoj)e
reaching high as heaven, and fear deep as very Hell. Not
vapour Fantasms, Bymer's Fcedera at all ! Coeur-de-Lion was
not a theatrical popinjay with greaves and steel-cap on it, but
a man living upon victuals, — not imported by Peel's Tariff.
Cceur-de-Lion came palpably athwart this Jocelin at St. Ed-
munclsbury ; and had almost peeled the sacred gold ' Fere-
tram, ' or St. Edmund Shrine itself, to ransom him out of the
Danube Jail.

These clear eyes of neighbour Jocelin looked on the bodily
presence of King John ; the very John Samterre, or Lackland,
who signed Magna Charta afterwards in Kunnymead. Lack-
land, with a great retinue, boarded once, for the matter of a
fortnight, in St. Edmundsbury Convent ; daily in the very
eye-sight, palpable to the very fingers of our Jocelin : O Joce-
lin, what did he say, what did he do ; how looked he, lived
he ; — at the very lowest, what coat or breeches had he on ?
Jocelin is obstinately silent. Jocelin marks down what •in-
terests him ; entirely deaf to us. With Jocelin's eyes we di&



JOCELIN OF BRAKE L ON J).



4-7



cern almost nothing of John Lackland. As through a glass
darkly, we with our own eyes and appliances, intensely look-
ing, discern at most : A blustering, dissipated human figure,
with a kind of blackguard quality air, in cramoisy velvet, or
other uncertain texture, uncertain cut, with much plumage
and fringing ; amid numerous other human figures of the
like ; riding abroad with hawks ; talking noisy nonsense ; —
tearing out the bowels of St. Edmundsbury Convent (its lar-
ders namely and cellars) in the most ruinous way, by living
at rack and manger there. Jocelin notes only, with a slight
subacidity of manner, that the King's Majesty, Dominus Rex,
did leave, as gift for our St. Edmund Shrine, a handsome
enough silk-cloak — or rather pretended to leave, for one of
his retinue borrowed it of us, and we never got sight of it
again ; and, on the whole, that the Dominus Rex, at departing,
gave us 'thirteen sterlingii,' one shilling and one penny, to
say a mass for him ; and so departed, — like a shabby Lackland
as he was ! ' Thirteen pence sterling,' this was w T hat the Con-
vent 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 end-
less 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



48



THE ANCIENT MONK.



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. Edmund sbury 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 ?



CHAPTER II

ST. EDMUND SBTTKY.

The Burg, Bury, or ' Berry ' as they call it, of St. Edmund
is still a prosperous brisk Town ; beautifully diversifying, with
its clear brick houses, ancient clean streets, and twenty or
fifteen thousand busy souls, the general grassy face of Suffolk ;
looking out right pleasantly, from its hill-slope, towards the
rising Sun : and on the eastern edge of it, still runs, long,
black and massive, a range of monastic ruins : into the wide
internal spaces of which the stranger is admitted on payment
of one shilling. Internal spaces laid out, at present, as a
botanic garden. Here stranger or townsman, sauntering at
his leisure amid these vast grim venerable ruins, may persuade
himself that an Abbey of St. Edmundsbury did once exist ;
nay, there is no doubt of it : see here the ancient massive
Gateway, of architecture interesting to the eye of Dilettantism ;
and farther on, that other ancient Gateway, now about to
tumble, unless Dilettantism, in these very months, can sub-
scribe money to cramp it and prop it !

Here, sure enough, is an Abbey ; beautiful in the eye of
Dilettantism. Giant Pedantry also will step in, with its huge
Dugdale and other enormous Monasticons under its arm, and
cheerfully apprise you, That this was a very great Abbey,
owner and indeed creator of St. Edmund's Town itself, owner
of wide lands and revenues ; nay that its lands were once a
county of themselves ; that indeed King Canute or Knut was
very kind to it, and gave St. Edmund his own gold crown off
his head, on one occasion ; for the rest, that the Monks were of



ST EDM UNDSB UR Y.



such and such a genus, such and such a number ; that they
had so many carucates of land in this hundred, and so many
in that ; and then farther, that the large Tower or Belfry was
built by such a one, and the smaller Belfry was built by &c.
&c. — Till human nature can stand no more of it ; till human
nature desperately take refuge in forgetfulness, almost in flat
disbelief of the whole business, Monks, Monastery, Belfries,
Carucates and all! Alas, what mountains of dead ashes,
wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous Pedantry dig up from
the Past Time, and name it History, and Philosophy of His-
tory ; till, as we say, the human soul sinks wearied and be-
wildered ; till the Past Time seems all one infinite incredible
grey void, without sun, stars, hearth-fires, or candle-light :
dim offensive dust-whirlwinds filling Universal Nature ; and
over your Historical Library, it is as if all the Titans had
written for themselves Dry rubbish shot here !

And yet these grim old walls are not a dilettantism and
dubiety ; they are an earnest fact. It was a most real and
serious purpose they were built for ! Yes, another world it
was, when these black ruins, wdiite in their new mortar and
fresh chiselling, first saw the sun as walls, long ago. Gauge
not, with thy dilettante compasses, with that placid dilettante
simper, the Heaven's Watchtower of our Fathers, the fallen
God's-Houses, the Golgotha of true Souls departed !

Their architecture, belfries, land-carucates ? Yes, — and that
is but a small item of the matter. Does it never give thee
pause, this other strange item of it, that men then had a soul, —
not by hearsay alone, and as a figure of speech ; but as a truth
that they knew, and practically went upon ! Verily it was
another world then. Their Missals have become incredible,
a sheer platitude, sayest thou ? Yes, a most poor platitude ;
and even, if thou wilt, an idolatry and blasphemy, should any
one persuade thee to believe them, to pretend praying by
them. But yet it is pity we had lost tidings of our souls : —
actually we shall have to go in quest of them again, or worse
in all ways will befall ! A certain degree of soul, as Ben Jon-
son reminds us, is indispensable to keep the very body from
4



50



THE ANCIENT MONK.



destruction of the frightfullest sort ; to 'save us,' says he, c the
expense of salt.' Ben has known men who had soul enough
to keep their body and five senses from becoming carrion, and
save salt : — men, and also Nations. You may look in Man-
chester Hunger mobs and Corn-law Commons Houses, and
various other quarters, and say whether either soul or else
salt is not somewhat wanted at present !

Another world, truly : and this present poor distressed
world might get some profit by looking wisely into it, instead
of foolishly. But at lowest, O dilettante friend, let us know
always that it was a world, and not a void infinite of grey haze
with fantasms swimming in it. These old St. Edmundsbury
walls, I say, were not peopled with fantasms ; but with men
of flesh and blood, made altogether as we are. Had thou and
I then been, who knows but we ourselves had taken refuge
from an evil Time, and fled to dwell here, and meditate on an
Eternity, in such fashion as we could ? Alas, how like an
old osseous fragment, a broken blackened shin-bone of the
old dead Ages, this black ruin looks out, not yet covered by
the soil : still indicating what a once gigantic Life lies buried
there ! It is dead now, and dumb ; but was alive once, and
spake. For twenty generations, here was the earthly arena
where painful living men worked out their life-wrestle, —
looked at by Earth, by Heaven and Hell. Bells tolled to
prayers ; and men, of many humours, various thoughts,
chanted vespers, matins ; — and round the little islet of their
life rolled forever (as round ours still rolls, though w 7 e are
blind and deaf) the illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with
Us eternal hues and reflexes ; making strange prophetic music !
How silent now ; all departed, clean gone. The World-
Dramaturgist has written : Exeunt. The devouring Time-
Demons have made away with it all : and in its stead, there
is either nothing ; or what is worse, offensive universal dust-
clouds, and grey eclipse of Earth and Heaven, from ' dry rub-
bish shot here ! ' —

Truly, it is no easy matter to get across the chasm of Seven
Centuries, filled with such material. But here, of all helps,



LANDLORD EDMUND.



51



is not a Boswell the welcomest ; even a small Boswell ? Vera-
city, true simplicity of heart, how valuable are these always !
He that speaks what is really in him, will find men to listen,
though under never such impediments. Even gossip, spring-
ing free and cheery from a human heart, this too is a kind of
veracity and speech ; — much preferable to pedantry and inane
grey haze ! Jocelin is weak and garrulous, but he is human.
Through the thin watery gossip of our Jocelin, we do get
some glimpses of that deep-buried Time ; discern veritably,
though in a fitful intermittent manner, these antique figures
and their life-method, face to face ! Beautifully, in our
earnest loving glance, the old centuries melt from opaque to
partially translucent, transparent here and there ; and the
void black Night, one finds, is but the summing-up of innu-
merable peopled luminous Days. .Not parchment Chartularies,
Doctrines of the Constitution, O Dryasdust ; not altogether,
my erudite friend ! —

Eeaders who please to go along with us into this poor Jocelini
Chronica shall wander inconveniently enough, as in wintry
twilight, through some poor stript hazel-grove, rustling with
foolish noises, and perpetually hindering the eyesight ; but
across which here and there, some real human figure is seen
moving : very strange ; whom we could hail if he would an-
swer ;— and we look into a pair of eyes deep as our own, im-
aging our own, but all unconscious of us ; to whom we for the
time are become as spirits and invisible !



CHAPTER III.

LANDLORD EDMUND.

Some three centuries or so had elasped since Beodric' 's-worth*
became St. Edmund's Stow, St. Edmund's Town and Monas-
tery, before Jocelin entered himself a Novice there. 'It was/

* Dryasdust puzzles and pokes for some biography of this Beodric ;
and repugns to consider him a mere East-Anglian Person of Condition,
not in need of a biography, whose peopS, weorth or worth, that is to say,
Growth, Increase, or as we should. now name it, Estate, that same Ham-



m



THE ANCIENT MONK.



says lie, * the year after the Flemings were defeated at Forn-
< ham St. Genevieve.'

Much passes away into oblivion : this glorious victoiy over
the Flemings at Fornham has, at the present date, greatly
dimmed itself out of the minds of men. A victory and battle
nevertheless it was, in its time : some thrice-renowned Earl
of Leicester, not of the De Montfort breed, (as may be read
in Philosophical and other Histories, could any human mem-
ory retain such things), had quarrelled with his sovereign,
Henry Second of the name ; had been worsted, it is like, and
maltreated, and obliged to fly to foreign parts : but had ral-
lied there into new vigour ; and so, in the year 1173, returns
across the German Sea, with a vengeful army of Flemings.
Eeturns, to the coast of Suffolk ; to Framlingham Castle,
where he is welcomed ; westward towards St. Edmundsbury
and Fornham Church, where he is met by the constituted au-
thorities with posse comitatus ; and swiftly cut in pieces, he
and his, or laid by the heels ; on the right bank of the ob-
scure river Lark, — as traces still existing will verify.

For the river Lark, though not very discoverably, still runs
or stagnates in that country ; and the battle-ground was
there ; serving at present as a pleasure-ground to his Grace
of Northumberland. Copper pennies of Henry II. are still
found there ; — rotted out of the pouches of poor slain soldiers,
who had not had time to buy liquor with them. In the river
Lark itself was fished up, within man's memory, an antique
gold ring ; which fond Dilettantism can almost believe may
have been the very ring Countess Leicester threw away in her

let and wood Mansion, now St. Edmund's Bury, originally was. For,
adds our erudite Friend, the Saxon peopSan, equivalent to the German
werden, means to grow, to become ; traces of which old vocable are still
found in the North-country dialects, as, 'What is word of him V mean-
ing 'What is become of him ? ' and the like. Nay we in modern Eng-
lish still say, 'Wo worth the hour ' (Wo befall the hour), and speak of
the ' Weird Sisters ; ' not to mention the innumerable other names of
places still ending in weorth or worth. And indeed, our common noun
worth in the sense of value, does not this mean simply, What a thing
has grown to, What a man has grown to, How much he amounts to, —
hy the Threadneedle-street standard or another !



LANDLORD EDMUND.



53



flight, into that same Lark river or ditch* Nay, few yean
ago, in tearing out an enormous superannuated ash-tree, now
grown quite corpulent, bursten, superfluous, but long a fixture
in the soil, and not to be dislodged without revolution, — there
was laid bare, under its roots, ' a circular mound of skeletons
wonderfully complete/ all radiating from a centre, faces up-
wards, feet inwards ; a ' radiation ' not of Light, but of the
Nether Darkness rather ; and evidently the fruit of battle ;
for ' many of the heads were cleft, or had arrow-holes in them.'
The Battle of Fornham, therefore, is a fact, though a forgotten
one ; no less obscure than undeniable, — like so many other
facts.

Like the St. Edmund's Monastery itself ! Who can doubt,
after what we have said, that there was a Monastery here at
one time ? No doubt at all there was a Monastery here : no
doubt, some three centuries prior to this Fornham Battle,
there dwelt a man in these parts, of the name of Edmund,
King, Landlord, Duke or whatever his title was, of the East-
ern Counties ; — and a very singular man and landlord he must
have been.

For his tenants, it would appear, did not in the least com-
plain of him ; his labourers did not think of burning his
wheatstacks, breaking into his game-preserves ; very far the
reverse of all that. Clear evidence, satisfactory even to my
friend Dryasdust, exists that, on' the contrary, they honoured,
loved, admired this ancient Landlord to a quite astonishing
degree, — and indeed at last to an immeasurable and inexpressi-
ble degree ; for, finding no limits or utterable words for their
sense of his worth, they took to beatifying and adoring
him ! c Infinite admiration,' we are taught, c means worship.'

Very singular, — could we discover it ! What Edmund's
specific duties were ; above all, what his method of discharg-
ing them with such results was, would surely be interesting to
know ; but are not very discoverable now. His Life has be-
come a poetic, nay a religious Myihus ; though, undeniably
enough, it was once a prose Fact, as our poor lives are ; and
* Lyttelton's History of Henry II. (2d Edition), v. 169, &c.



54



THE ANCIENT MONK



even a very rugged unmanageable one. This landlord Edmund
did go about in leather shoes, with femoraiia and body coat of
some sort on him ; and daily had his breakfast to procure ;
and daily had contradictory speeches, and most contradictory
facts not a few, to reconcile with himself. No man becomes
a Saint in his sleep. Edmund, for instance, instead of recon-
ciling those same contradictory facts and speeches to himself ;
which means subduing, and, in a manlike and godlike manner,
conquering them to himself, — might have merely thrown new
contention into them, new unwisdom into them, and so been
conquered by them ; much the commoner case ! In that way
he had proved no ' Saint/ or Divine-looking Man, but a mere
Sinner, and unfortunate, blameable, more or less Diabolic
looking man! No landlord Edmund becomes infinitely ad-
mirable in his sleep.

With what degree of wholesome rigour his rents were col-
lected we hear not. Still less by what methods he preserved
his game, whether by ' bushing ' or how, — and if the partridge-
seasons were 'excellent,' or were indifferent. Neither do we
ascertain what kind of Corn-bill he passed, or wisely-adjusted
Sliding scale : — but indeed there were few spinners in those
days ; and the nuisance of spinning, and other dusty labour,
was not yet so glaring a one.

How then, it may be asked, did this Edmund rise into
favour ; become to such astonishing extent a recognised
Farmer's Friend? Keally, except it were by doing justly and
loving mercy, to an unprecedented extent, one does not know.
The man, it would seem, £ had walked,' as they say, 6 humbly
with God ; 5 humbly and valiantly with God ; struggling to
make the Earth heavenly, as he could : instead of walking
sumptuously and pridefully with Mammon, leaving the Earth
to grow hellish as it liked. Not sumptuously with Mammon ?
How then could he 'encourage trade,' — cause Howel and
James, and many wine-merchants to bless him, and the tailor's
heart (though in a very short-sighted manner) to sing for joy?
Much in this Edmund's Life is mysterious.

That he could, on occasion, do what he liked with his own
is, meanwhile, evident enough. Certain Heathen Physical-



LANDLORD EDMUND, 5r

Force Ultra-Chartists, ' Danes/ as they were then called,
coming into his territory with their £ five points,' or rather
with their five-and-twenty thousand points and edges too, of
pikes namely and battle-axes ; and proposing mere Heathen-
ism, confiscation, spoliation, and fire and sword, — Edmund
answered that he would oppose to the utmost such savagery.
They took him prisoner ; again required his sanction to said
proposals. Edmund again refused. Cannot we kill you ?
cried they. — Cannot I die ? answered he. My life, I think, is
my own to do what I like with ! And he died, under barbar-
ous tortures, refusing to the last breath ; and the Ultra-
Chartist Danes lost their propositions ; — and went with their
' points ' and other apparatus, as is supposed, to the Devil,
the Father of them. Some say, indeed, these Danes were
not Ultra-Chartists, but Ultra-Tories, demanding to reap
where they had not sown, and live in this world without
working, though all the world should starve for it ; which
likewise seems a possible hypothesis. Be what they might,
they went, as we say, to the Devil ; and Edmund doing what
he liked with his own, the Earth was got cleared of them.

Another version is, that Edmund on this and the like oc-
casions stood by his order ; the oldest, and indeed only true
order of Nobility known under the stars, that of Just Men
and Sons of God, in opposition to Unjust and Sons of Belial, —
which latter indeed are second- oldest, but yet a very un-
venerable order. This, truly, seems the likeliest hypothesis
of all. Names and appearances alter so strangely, in some
half-seore centuries ; and all fluctuates chameleon -like, taking
now this hue, now that. Thus much is very plain, and does
not change hue : Landlord Edmund was seen and felt by all
men to have done verily a man's part in this life-pilgrimage
of his ; and benedictions, and outflowing love and admiration
from the universal heart, were his meed. "Well-done ! Well-
done ! cried the hearts of all men. They raised his slain and
martyred body ; washed its wounds with fast-flowing uni-
versal tears ; tears of endless pity, and yet of a sacred joy and
triumph. The beautifullest kind of tears, — indeed perhaps
the beautifullest kind of thing : like a sky all flashing dia-



56



THE ANCIENT MONK



monds and prismatic radiance ; all weeping, yet shone on bj
the everlasting Sun : — and this is not a sky, it is a Soul and
living Face ! Nothing liker the Temple of the Highest, bright
with some real effulgence of the Highest, is seen in this
world.

O, if all Yankee-land follow a small good c Schnuspel the
distinguished Novelist ' with blazing torches, dinner-invita-
tions, universal hep hep-hurrah, feeling that he, though small,
is something ; how might all Angle-land once follow a hero-
martyr and great true Son of Heaven ! It is the very joy of
man's heart to admire, where he can ; nothing so lifts him
from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as
true admiration. Tims it has been said, ' all men, especially
all women, are born worshippers : ' and will worship, if it be but
possible. Possible to worship a Something, even a small one ;
not so possible a mere loud-blaring Nothing ! What sight is
more pathetic than that of poor multitudes of persons met to
gaze at King's Progresses, Lord Mayor's Shews, and other
gilt-gingerbread phenomena of the worshipful sort, in these
times ; each so eager tor worship ; each, with a dim fatal
sense of disappointment, finding that he cannot rightly here !
These be thy gods, O Israel ? And thou art so willing to
worship, — poor Israel !

In this manner, however, did the men of the Eastern Coun-
ties take up the slain body of their Edmund, where it la
cast forth in the village of Hoxne ; seek out the severed head
and reverently reunite the same. They embalmed him wit
myrrh and sweet spices, with love, pity, and all high an
awful thoughts ; consecrating him with a very storm of me
lodious adoring admiration, and sun-dyed showers of tears ;
joyfully, yet with awe (as all deep joy has something of th
awful in it), commemorating his noble deeds and godlik
walk and conversation while on Earth. Till, at length, th
very Pope and Cardinals at Kome were forced to hear of it
and they, summing up as correctly as they well could, wit
Advocatus-Diaboh pleadings and their other forms of process
the general verdict of mankind, declared : That he had, i
very fact, led a hero's life in this world ; and being now gone.



LANDLORD EDMUND.



57



was gone as they conceived to God above, and reaping his re-
ward there. Such, they said, was the best judgment they
could form of the case ; — and truly not a bad judgment. Ac-
quiesced in, zealously adopted, with full assent of ' private
judgment,' by all mortals.

The rest of St. Edmund's history, for the reader sees he has
now become a Saint, is easily conceivable. Pious munificence
provided him a loculus, a feretrum or shrine ; built for him a
wooden chapel, a stone temple, ever widening and growing
by new pious gifts ; — such the overflowing heart feels it a
blessedness to solace itself by giving. St. Edmund's Shrine
glitters now with diamond flowerages,with a plating of wrought
gold. The wooden chapel, as we say, has become a stone
temple. Stately masonries, long-clrawn arches, cloisters,
sounding aisles buttress it, begirdle it far and wide. Regi-
mented companies of men, of whom our Jocelin is one, de-
vote themselves, in every generation, to meditate here on
man's Nobleness and Awfulness, and celebrate and shew forth
the same, as they best can, — thinking they will do it better
here, in presence of God the Maker, and of the so Awful and
so Noble made by Him. In one word, St. Edmund's Body
has raised a Monastery round it. To such length, in such
manner, has the Spirit of the Time visibly taken body, and
crystallised itself here. New gifts, houses, farms, katalla * —
come ever in. King Knut, whom men call Canute, whom the
Ocean -tide would not be forbidden to wet, — we heard already
of this wise King, with his crown and gifts ; but of many
others, Kings, Queens, wise men, and noble loyal women, let
Dryasdust and divine Silence be the record ! Beodric's-
Worth has become St. Edmund's Bury ; — and lasts visible to
this hour. All this that thou now seest, and namest Bury
Town, is properly the Funeral Monument of Saint or Land-
lord Edmund. The present respectable Mayor of Bury may
be said, like a Fakeer (little as he thinks of it), to have his
dwelling in the extensive, many-sculptured Tombstone of St.

* Goods, properties ; what we now call chattels, and still more singu
larly cattle, says my erudite friend !



58



THE ANCIENT MONK.



Edmund ; in one of the brick niches thereof dwells the pres.

ent respectable Mayor of Bury.

Certain times do crystallise themselves in a magnificent
manner ; and others, perhaps, are like to do it in rather a
shabby one ! — But Richard Arkwright too will have his Monu-
ment, a thousand years hence : all Lancashire and Yorkshire,
and how many other shires and countries, with their machin-
eries and industries, for his monument ! A true pyramid or
'^ame-mountain,' flaming with steam fires and useful labour
over wide continents, usefully towards the Stars, to a certain
height ; — how much grander than your foolish Cheops Pyra-
mids or Sakhara clay ones ! Let us withal be hopeful, be con-
tent or patient.



CHAPTER IV.

ABBOT HUGO.

It is true, all things have two faces, a light one and a dark.
It is true, in three centuries much imperfection accumulates ;
many an Ideal, monastic or other, shooting forth into practice
as it can, grows to a strange enough Reality ; and we have to
ask with amazement, Is this your Ideal ! For, alas, the Ideal
always has to grow in the Real, and to seek out its bed and
board there, often in a very sorry way. No beautifullest Poet
is a Bird-of-Paradise, living on perfumes ; sleeping in the
aether with outspread wings. The Heroic, independent of bed
and board, is found in Drury-Lane Theatre only ; to avoid
disappointments, let us bear this in mind.

By the law of Nature, too, all manner of Ideals have their
fatal limits and lot ; their appointed periods of youth, of
maturity or perfection, of decline, degradation, and final death
and disappearance. There is nothing born but has to die.
Ideal monasteries, once grown real, do seek bed and board in
this world ; do find it more and more successfully ; do get at
length too intent on finding it, exclusively intent on that.
They are then like diseased corpulent bodies fallen idiotic,
which merely eat and sleep; ready for dissolution,' by a
Henry the Eighth or some other. Jooelin's St. Edmunds-



ABBOT HUGO.



50



bury is still far from this last dreadful state : but here too the
reader will prepare himself to see an Ideal not sleeping in the
sether like a bird-of-paradise, but roosting as the common
woodfowl do, in an imperfect, uncomfortable, more or less
contemptible manner ! —

Abbot Hugo, as Jocelin, breaking at once into the heart of
the business, apprises us, had in those days grown old, grown
rather blind, and his eyes were somewhat darkened, aliquan-
tulum caligaverunt oculi ejus. He dwelt apart very much, in
his Thalamus or peculiar Chamber ; got into the hands of flat-
terers, a set of mealy-mouthed persons who strove to make the
passing hour easy for him, — for him easy, and for themselves
profitable ; accumulating in the distance mere mountains of
confusion. Old Dominus Hugo sat inaccessible in this way,
far in the interior, wrapt in his warm flannels and delusions ;
inaccessible to all voice of Fact ; and bad grew ever worse with
us. Not that our worthy old Dominus Abbas was inattentive
to the divine offices, or to the maintenance of a devout spirit
in us or in himself ; but the Account-Books of the Convent
fell into the frightfullest state, and Hugo's annual Budget
grew yearly emptier, or filled with futile expectations, fatal
deficit, wind and debts !

His one worldly care was to raise ready money ; sufficient
for the day is the evil thereof. And how he raised it : From
usurious insatiable Jews ; every fresh Jew sticking on him
like a fresh horseleech, sucking his and our life out ; crying
continually, Give, give ! Take one example instead of scores.
Our Camera having fallen into ruin, William the Sacristan re-
ceived charge to repair it ; strict charge, but no money ;
Abbot Hugo would, and indeed could, give him no fraction
of money. The Camera in ruins, and Hugo penniless and in-
accessible, Willelmus Sacrista borrowed Forty Marcs (some
Seven-and-twenty Pounds) of Benedict the Jew, and patched
up our Camera again. But the means of repaying him ? There
were no means. Hardly could Sacrista, Cellerarius, or any
public officer, get ends to meet, on the indispensablest scale,
with their shrunk allowances : ready money had vanished.



60



THE ANCIENT MONK



Benedict's Twenty-seven pounds grew rapidly at compound
•interest ; and at length, when it had amounted to a Hundred
pounds, he, on a day of settlement, presents the account to
Hugo himself. Hugo already owed him another hundred of
his own ; and so here it has become Two Hundred ! Hugo,
in a fine frenzy, threatens to depose the Sacristan, to do this
and do that ; but, in the mean while, How to quiet your in-
satiable Jew ? Hugo, for this couple of hundreds, grants the
Jew his bond for Four hundred, payable at the end of four
years. At the end of four years there is, of course, still no
money ; and the Jew now gets a bond for Eight hundred and
eighty pounds, to be paid by instalments Four-score pounds
every year. Here was a way of doing business !

Neither yet is this insatiable Jew satisfied or settled with :
he had papers against us of ' small debts fourteen years old ; '
his modest claim amounts finally to 4 Twelve hundred pounds
besides interest ; ' — and one hopes he never got satisfied in
this world ; one almost hopes he was one of those beleaguered
Jews who hanged themselves in York Castle shortly after-
wards, and had his usances and quittances and horseleech
papers summarily set fire to ! For approximate justice will
strive to accomplish itself ; if not in one way, then in another.
Jews, and also Christians and Heathens, who accumulate in
this manner, though furnished with never so many parch-
ments, do, at times, c get their grinder-teeth successively
'pulled out of their head, each day a new grinder/ till the
consent to disgorge again. A sad fact — worth reflecting on.

Jocelin, we see, is not without secularity : Our Dominus
Abbas was intent enough on the divine offices ; but then hi
Account-Books — ? — One of the things that strikes us most
throughout, in Jocelin's Chronicle, and indeed in Eadmer'
Anselm, and other old monastic Books, written evidently by
pious men, is this, That there is almost no mention whatever
of 'personal religion' in them ; that the whole gist of their
thinking and speculation seems to be the ' privileges of our
order,' ' strict exaction of our dues,' c God's honour ' (meaning
the honour of our Saint), and so forth. Is not this singular ?



ABBOT HUGO.



61



A body of men, set apart for perfecting and purifying their
own souls, do not seem disturbed about that in any measure :
the 'Ideal' says nothing about its idea; says much about
finding bed and board for itself ! How is this ?

Why, for one thing, bed and board are a matter very apt to
come to speech : it is much easier to speak of them than oi
ideas ; and they are sometimes much more pressing with
some ! Nay, for another thing, may not this religious reti-
cence, in these devout good souls, be perhaps a merit, and
sign of health in them ? Jocelin, Eadmer, and such religious
men, have as yet nothing of ' Methodism ; ' no Doubt, or even
root of Doubt. Religion is not a diseased self-introspection,
an agonising inquiry : their duties are clear to them, the way
of supreme good plain, indisputable, and they are travelling
on it. Religion, lies over them like an all-embracing heavenly
canopy, like an atmosphere and life-element, which is not
spoken of, which in all things is presupposed without speech.
Is not serene or complete Religion the highest aspect of
human nature ; as serene Cant, or complete No-religion, is
the lowest and miserabJest? Between which two, all manner
of earnest Methodisms, introspections, agonising inquiries,
never so morbid, shall play their respective parts, not without
approbation.

But let any reader fancy himself one of the Brethren in St.
Edmundsbury Monastery under such circumstances! How
can a Lord Abbot, all stuck over with horseleeches of this
/nature, front the world ? He is fast losing his life-blood, and
the Convent will be as one of Pharaoh's lean kine. Old
monks of experience draw their hoods deeper down ; careful
what they say : the monk's first duty is obedience. Our Lord
the King, hearing of sucft work, sends down his Almoner to
make investigations : but what boots it ? Abbot Hugo as-
sembles us in Chapter; asks, " If there is any complaint?"
Not a soul of us dare answer, " Yes, thousands ! " but we all
stand silent, and the Prior even says that things are in a very
comfortable condition. Whereupon old Abbot Hugo, turning
to the royal messenger, says, " You see ! " — and the business



62



THE ANCIENT MONK.



terminates in that way. I, as a brisk eyed, noticing youth
and novice, -could not help asking of the elders, asking of
Magister Samson in particular : Why he, well instructed and
a knowing man. had not spoken out, and brought matters to
a bearing ? Magister Samson was Teacher of the Novices,
appointed to breed us up to the rules, and I loved him well.
"Fili mi" answered Samson, "the burnt child shuns the
fire. Dost thou not know, our Lord the Abbot sent me once
to Acre in Norfolk, to solitary confinement and bread and
water, already ? The Hinghams, Hugo and Kobert, have just
got home from banishment for speaking. This is the hour of
darkness : the hour when flatterers rule and are believed.
Videat Dominus, let the Lord see, and judge."

In very truth, what could poor old Abbot Hugo do? A
frail old man ; and the Philistines were upon him, — that is
to say, the Hebrews. He had nothing for it but to shrink
away from them ; get back into his warm flannels, into his
warm delusions again. Happily, before it was quite too late,
he bethought him of pilgriming to St. Thomas of Canterbury.
He set out, with a fit train, in the autumn days of the year
1180 ; near Bochester City, his mule threw him, dislocated
his poor kneepan, raised incurable inflammatory fever ; and
the poor old man got his dismissal from the whole coil at
once. St. Thomas ii Becket, though in a circuitous way, had
brought deliverance ! Neither Jew usurers, nor grumbling
monks, nor other importunate despicability of men or mud
elements afflicted Abbot Hugo any more ; but he dropt his
rosaries, closed his account-books, closed his old eyes, and
lay down into the long sleep. Heavy-laden hoary old Do
minus Hugo, fare thee well.

One thing we cannot mention without a due thrill of hor-
ror : namely, that, in the empty exchequer of Dominus Hugo,
there was not found one penny to distribute to the Poor that
they might pray for his soul ! By a kind of godsend, Fifty
shillings did, in the very nick of time, fall due, or seem to fall
due, from one of his Farmers (the Firmarius de Palegrava),
and he paid it, and the poor had it ; though, alas, this too
only seemed to fall due, and we had it to pay again after-



TWELFTH CENTURY.



wards. Dominus Hugo's apartments were plundered by bis
servants, to tbe last portable stool, in a few minutes after tbe
breath was out of his body. Forlorn old Hugo, fare thee
well forever.



CHAPTER V.

TWELFTH CENTURY.

Our Abbot being dead, the Dominus Rex, Henry II., or Ra-
nulf de Glanvill Justiciarius of England for him, set Inspec-
tors or Custodiars over us ; — not in any breathless haste to
appoint a new Abbot, our revenues coming into his own Scac-
carium, or royal Exchequer, in the meanwhile. They pro-
ceeded with some rigour, these Custodiars ; took written in-
ventories, clapt-on seals, exacted everywhere strict tale and
measure : but wherefore should a living monk complain ? The
living monk has to do his devotional drill-exercise ; consume
his allotted pitantia, what we call pittance, or ration of victual ;
and possess his soul in patience.

Dim, as through a long vista of Seven Centuries, dim and
very strange looks that monk-life to us ; the ever- surprising
circumstance this, That it is a fact and no dream, that we see
it there, and gaze into the very eyes of it ! Smoke rises daily
from those culinary chimney-throats ; there are living human
beings there, who chant, loud-braying, their matins, nones,
vespers ; awakening echoes, not to the bodily ear alone. St.
Edmund's Shrine, perpetually illuminated, glows ruddy
through the Night, and through the Night of Centuries
withal ; St. Edmundsbury Town paying yearly Forty pounds
for that express end. Bells clang out ; on great occasions,
all the bells. We have Processions, Preachings, Festivals,
Christmas Plays, Mysteries shewn in the Churchyard, at which
latter the Townsfolk sometimes quarrel. Time was, Time is,
as Friar Bacon's Brass Head remarked ; and withal Time will
be. There are three Tenses, Tempora, or Times ; and there
is one Eternity ; and as for us,

* We are such stuff as Dreams are made of ! 9



64



THE ANCIENT MONK



Indisputable, though very dim to modern vision, rests on
its hill-slope that same Bury, Stow, or Town of St. Edmund ;
already a considerable place, not without traffic, nay manu-
factures, would Jocelin only tell us what. Jocelin is totally
careless of telling : but, through dim fitful apertures, we can
see Fullones, 'Fullers,' see cloth-making; looms dimly going,
dye-vats, and old women spinning yarn. We have Fairs too,
Nundince, in due course ; and the Londoners give us much
trouble, pretending that they, as a metropolitan people, are
exempt from toll. Besides there is Field-husbandry, with
perplexed settlement of Convent rents : corn-ricks pile them-
selves within burgh, in their season ; and cattle depart and
enter ; and even the poor weaver has his cow, — ' dungheaps '
lying quiet at most doors (ante foras, says the incidental Joce-
lin), for the Town has yet no improved police. Watch and
ward nevertheless we do keep, and have Gates, — as what
Town must not ; thieves so abounding ; war, werru, such a
frequent thing ! Our thieves, at the Abbot's judgment-bar,
deny ; claim wager of battle ; fight, are beaten, and then
hanged. 'Ketel, the thief,' took this course ; and it did noth-
ing for him, — merely brought us, and indeed himself, aiew
trouble !

Every way a most foreign Time. What difficulty, for ex-
ample, has our Cellerarius to collect the repselver, ' reaping
silver,' or penny, which each householder is by law bound to
pay for cutting down the Convent grain ! Kicher people pre-
tend that it is commuted, that it is this and the other ; that,
in short, they will not pay it. Our Cellerarius gives up call-
ing on the rich. In the houses of the poor, our Cellerarius
finding, in like manner, neither penny nor good promise,
snatches, without ceremony, what vadium (pledge, wad) he
can come at : a joint-stool, kettle, nay the very house-door,
' hostium ; ' and old women, thus exposed to the unfeeling
gaze of the public, rush out after him with their distaffs and
the angriest shrieks \ ' vetuloe exibant cum colisuis,' says Jocelin,
4 minantes et exprobr antes'

What a historical picture, glowing visible, at St. Edmund's
Shrine by night, after Seven long Centuries or so ! VetuliB



TWELFTH CENTURY.



65



cum colls : My venerable ancient spinning grand mo thers, —
^h, and ye too have to shriek, and rash out with your distaffs ;
and become Female Chartists, and scold all evening with void
doorway ; — and in old Saxon, as we in modern, would fain
demand some Five-point Charter, could it be fallen in with,
the Earth being too tyrannous ! — Wise Lord Abbots, hearing
of such phenomena, did in time abolish or commute the reap-
penny, and one nuisance was abated. But the image of these
justly offended old women, in their old wool costumes, with
their angry features, and spindles brandished, lives forever in
the historical memory. Thanks to thee, Jocelin Bos well. Jerusa-
lem was taken by the Crusaders, and again lost by them ; and
Richard Cceur-de-Lion ' veiled his face ' as he passed in sight
of it : but how many other things went on, the while !

Thus, too, our trouble with the Lakenheath eels is very
great. King Knut, namely, or rather his Queen who also did
herself honour by honouring St. Edmund, decreed by authen-
tic deed yet extant on parchment, that the Holders of the
Town Fields, once Beodric's, should, for one thing, go yearly
and catch us four thousand eels in the marsh-pools of Laken-
heath. Well, they went, they continued to go ; but, in later
times, got into the way of returning with a most short account
of eels. Not the due six-score apiece ; no, Here are two-
score, Here are twenty, ten, — sometimes, Here are none at
all ; Heaven help us, we could catch no more, they were not
there ! What is a distressed Cellerarius to do ? We agree
that each Holder of so many acres shall pay one penny yearly,
and let go the eels as too slippery. But alas, neither is this
quite effectual : the Fields, in my time, have got divided
among so many hands, there is no catching of them either ; I
have known our Cellarer get seven and twenty pence formerly,
and now it is much if he get ten pence farthing (yix decern
denarios et obolum). And then their sheep, which they are
bound to fold nightly in our pens, for the manure's sake ;
and, I fear, do not always fold : and their aver-pennies, and
their avragium.s, and their foder-corns, and mill-and-market
dues ! Thus, in its undeniable but dim manner, does old St.
Edmundsbury spin and till, and laboriously keep its pot boil-
5



66



THE ANCIENT MONK.



ing, and St. Edmund's Shrine lighted, under such conditions
and averages as it can.

How much is still alive in England ; how much has not
yet come into life ! A Feudal Aristocracy is still alive, in the
prime of life ; superintending the cultivation of the land, and
less consciously the distribution of the produce of the land,
the adjustment of the quarrels of the land ; judging, soldier-
ing, adjusting ; everywhere governing the people, — so that
even a Gurth, born thrall of Cedric, lacks not his due parings
of the pigs he tends. Governing ; — and, alas, also game -pre-
serving, so that a Eobert Hood, a William Scarlet and others
have, in these days, put on Lincoln coats, and taken to living,
in some universal-suffrage manner, under the greenwood tree !

How silent, on the other hand, lie all Cotton-trades and
such like ; not a steeple-chimney yet got on end from sea to
sea ! North of the Humber, a stern Willelmus Conquestor
burnt the Country, finding it unruly, into very stern repose.
Wild fowl scream in those ancient silences, wild cattle roam
la those ancient solitudes ; the scanty sulky Norse-bred popu-
lation all coerced into silence, — feeling that, under these new
Norman Governors,, their history has probably as good as
ended. Men and Northumbrian Norse populations know little
what has ended, what is but beginning ! The Eibble and the
Aire roll down, as yet unpolluted by dyers' chemistry ; ten-
anted by merry trouts and piscatory otters : the sunbeam and
the vacant winds-blast alone traversing those moors. Side
by side sleep the coal-strata and the iron-strata for so many
ages ; no Steam-Demon has yet risen smoking into being.
Saint Mungo rules in Glasgow ; James Watt still slumbering
in the deep of Time. Mancunium, Manceaster, what we now
call Manchester, spins no cotton, — if it be not wool 1 cottons,'
clipped from the backs of mountain-sheep. The Creek of the
Mersey gurgles, twice in the four-and-twenty hours, with
eddying brine, clangorous with sea-fowl ; and is a Lither-¥oo\,
a lazy or sullen Pool, no monstrous pitchy City, and Seahaven
of the world ! The Centuries are big ; and the birth-hour is
coming, not yet come. Tempus ferax, tempus edax return.



MONK SAMSON.



67



CHAPTER VI.

MONK SAMSON.

Within doors, down at the hill-foot, in our Convent here,
we are a peculiar people, — hardly conceivable in the Arkwright
Corn-Law ages, of mere Spinning-Mills and Joe-Mantons I
There is yet no Methodism among us, and we speak much of
Secularities : no Methodism ; our Religion is not yet a hoi>
rible restless Doubt, still less a far horribler composed Cant ;
but a great heaven-high Unquestionability, encompassing,
interpenetrating the whole of Life. Imperfect as we may be,
we are here, with our litanies, shaven crowns, vows of poverty,
to testify incessantly and indisputably to every heart, That
this Earthly Life^ and its riches and possessions, and good and
evil hap, are not intrinsically a reality at all, but are a shadow
of realities eternal, infinite ; that this Time-world, as an air-
image, fearfully emblematic, plays and flickers in the grand
still mirror of Eternity ; and man's little Life has Duties that
are great, that are alone great, and go up to Heaven and down
to Hell. This, with our poor litanies, w T e testify and struggle
to testify.

Which, testified or not, remembered by all men, or for-
gotten by all men, does verily remain the fact, even in
Arkwright Joe-Manton ages ! But it is incalculable, when
litanies have grown obsolete ; when fodercorns, avragiums,
and all human dues and reciprocities have been fully changed
into one great due of cash payment ; and man's duty to man
reduces itself to handing him certain metal coins, or cove-
nanted money- wages, and then shoving him out of doors ;
and man's duty to God becomes a cant, a doubt, a dim in-
anity, a c pleasure of virtue ' or such like ; and the thing
a man does infinitely fear (the real Hell of a man) is c that
• he do not make money and advance himself,' — I say, it
is incalculable what a change has introduced itself every-
where into human affairs ! How human affairs shall now cir-
culate everywhere not healthy life-blood in them, but, as it



68



THE ANCIENT MONK.



were, a detestable copperas banker's ink ; and all is grown
acrid, divisive, threatening dissolution ; and the huge, tumultu-
ous Life of Society is galvanic, devil-ridden, too truly pos-
sessed by a devil ! For, in short, Mammon is not a god at
all ; but a devil, and even a very despicable devil. Follow
the Devil faithfully, you are sure enough to go to the Devil :
whither else can you go ? — In such situations, men look back
with a kind of mournful recognition even on poor limited
Monk-figures, with their poor litanies ; and reflect, with Ben
Jonson, that soul is indispensable, some degree of soul, even
to save you the expense of salt ! —

For the rest, it must be owned, we Monks of St. Edmunds-
bury are but a limited class of creatures, and seem to have a
somewhat dull life of it. Much given to idle gossip ; having
indeed no other work, when our chanting is over. Listless
gossip, for most part, and a mitigated slander ; the fruit of
idleness, not of spleen. We are dull, insipid men, many of
us ; easy-minded ; whom prayer and digestion of food will
avail for a life. We have to receive all strangers in our Con-
vent, and lodge them gratis ; such and such sorts go by rule
to the Lord Abbot and his special revenues ; such and such
to us and our poor Cellarer, however straitened. Jews then>
selves send their wives and little ones hither in war-time, into
our Pitanceria ; where they abide safe, with due pittances, —
for a consideration. We have the fairest chances for collect-
ing news. Some of us have a turn for reading Books ; for
meditation, -silence ; at times we even write Books. Some of
us can preach, in English-Saxon, in Norman-French, and even
in Monk-Latin ; others cannot in any language or jargon,
being stupid.

Failing all else, what gossip about one another ! This is a
perennial resource. How one hooded head applies itself to
the ear of another and whispers — tacenda. Willelmus Sacrista,
for instance, what does he nightly, over in that Sacristry of
his? Frequent bibations, 'frequentes hibationes et qucedam
tacenda/ — eheu ! We have 6 iempora minutionis, stated sea-
sons of blood-letting, when we are all let blood together ; and
then there is a general free-conference, a sanhedrim of clatter.



MONK SAMSON



69



'Notwithstanding our vow of poverty, we can by rule amass to
the extent of ' two shillings ; ' but it is to be given to our
necessitous kindred, or in charity. Poor Monks ! Thus too
a certain Canterbury Monk was in the habit of 'slipping,
clanculo from his sleeve/ five shillings into the hand of his
mother, when she came to see him, at the divine offices, every
two months. Once, slipping the money clandestinely, just in
the act of taking leave, he slipt it not into her hand but on
the floor, and another had it ; whereupon the poor Monk,
coming to know it, looked mere despair for some days ; till
Lanfrancthe noble Archbishop, questioning his secret from him,
nobly made the sum seven shillings,* and said, Never mind!

One Monk of a taciturn nature distinguishes himself among
these babbling ones : the name of him Samson ; he that an-
swered Jocelin, " Fili mi, a burnt child shuns the fire." They
call him 'Norfolk Barrator,' or litigious person; for indeed,
being of grave taciturn ways, he is not universally a favourite ;
he has been in trouble more than once. The reader is de-
sired to mark this Monk. A personable man of seven-and-
forty ; stout made, stands erect as a pillar; with bushy eye-
brows, the eyes of him beaming into you in a really strange
way ; the face massive, grave, with c a very eminent nose;' his
head almost bald, its auburn remnants of hair, and the copi-
ous ruddy beard, getting slightly streaked with grey. This
is Brother Samson : a man worth looking at.

He is from Norfolk, as the nickname indicates ; from Tot-
tington in Norfolk, as we guess ; the son of poor parents there.
He has told me, Jocelin, for I loved him much, That once in
his ninth year he had an alarming dream ; — as indeed we are
all somewhat given to dreaming here. Little Samson, lying
uneasily in his crib at Tottington, dreamed that he saw the
Arch Enemy in person, just alighted in front of some grand
building, with outspread bat-wings, and stretching forth de-
testable clawed hands to grip him, little Samson, and fly off
with him : whereupon the little dreamer shrieked desperate

* Eadmeri Hist. p. 8.



70



THE ANCIENT MONK.



to St. Edmund for help, shrieked and again shrieked ; and St
Edmund, a reverend heavenly figure, did oome, — and indeed
poor little Samson's mother awakened by his shrieking, did
come ; and the Devil and the Dream both fled away fruitless.
On the morrow, his mother pondering such an awful dream,
thought it were good to take him over to St. Edmund's own
Shrine, and pray with him there. See, said little Samson at
sight of the Abbey-Gate ; see, mother, this is the building I
dreamed of ! His poor mother dedicated him to St, Edmund,
— left him there with prayers and tears : what better could
she do? The exposition of the dream, Brother Samson used
to say, was this : Diabolus with outspread bat-wings shadowed
forth the pleasures of this world, voluptales huj us sceculi, which
were about to snatch and fly away with me, had not St. Ed-
mund flung his arms round me, that is to say, made me a
monk of his. A monk, accordingly, Brother Samson is ; and
here to this day where his mother left him. A learned man,
of devout grave nature ; has studied at Paris, has taught in
the Town Schools here, and done much else ; can preach in
three languages, and, like Dr. Caius, * has had losses ' in his
time. A thoughtful, firm-standing man ; much loved by some,
not loved by all ; his clear eyes flashing into you, in an almost
inconvenient way !

' Abbot Hugo, as we said, had his own difficulties with him ;
Abbot Hugo had him in prison once, to teach him what
authority was, and how to dread the fire in future. Eor
Brother Samson, in the time of the Antipopes, had been sent
to Koine on business ; and, returning successful, was too late,
— the business had all misgone in the interim ! As tours to
Borne are still frequent with us English, perhaps the reader
will not grudge to look at the method of travelling thither in
those remote ages. We happily have, in small compass, a
personal narrative of it. Through the clear eyes and memory
of Brother Samson, one peeps direct into the very bosom of
that Twelfth Century, and finds it rather curious. The actual
Papa, Father, or universal President of Christendom, as yet
not grown chimerical, sat there ; think of that only ! Brother
Samson w T ent to Rome as to the real Light-fountain of this



MONK SAMSON



71



lower world ; we now — ! — But let us hear Brother Samson, as
to his mode of travelling :

' You know what trouble I had for that Church of Wool-
6 pit ; how I was despatched to Rome in the time of the Schism
' between Pope Alexander and Octavian ; and passed through
' Italy at that season, when all clergy carrying letters for our
' Lord Pope Alexander were laid hold of, and some were

* clapt in prison, some hanged ; and some, with nose and lips
' cut off, were sent forward to our Lord the Pope, for the dis-
£ grace and confusion of him (in dedecus el confusionem ejus).
' I, however, pretended to be Scotch, and putting on the garb
' of a Scotchman, and taking the gesture of one, walked
' along ; and when anybody mocked at me, I would brandish
' my staff in the manner of that weapon they call gaveloc*
' uttering comminatory words after the way of the Scotch.
8 To those that met and questioned me who I was, I made no
£ answer but : Hide, ride Rome ; tame Cantwereberei.\ Thus
c did I, to conceal myself and my errand, and get safer to
' Rome under the guise of a Scotchman.

■ Having at last obtained a letter from our Lord the Pope
' according to my washes, I turned homewards again. I had
' to pass through a certain strong towm on my road ; and lo,
' the soldiers thereof surrounded me, seizing me, and saying :
? " This vagabond (iste soli vagus), who pretends to be Scotch,
1 is» either a spy, or has Letters from the false Pope Alex-
' ander." And whilst they examined every stitch and rag of
6 me, my leggings (caligas), breeches, and even the old shoes

■ that I carried over my shoulder in the way of the Scotch,
e — I put my hand into the leather scrip I wore, wherein our
' Lord the Pope's Letter lay, close by a little jug (ciffus) I

* had for drinking out of ; and the Lord God so pleasing, and

■ St. Edmund, I got out both the Letter and the jug together ;

* in such a way that, extending my arm aloft, I held the Let-

* Javelin, missile pike. Gaveloc is still the Scotch name for crowbar.

f Does this mean, "Rome forever; Canterbury not" (which claims
an unjust Supremacy over us) ! Mr. Rokewood is silent. Dryasdust
would perhaps explain it, — in the course of a week or two of talking ;
did one dare to question him !



72



THE ANCIENT MONK.



4 ter hidden between jug and hand : they saw the jug, but the
Letter they saw not. And thus I escaped out of their hands
1 in the name of the Lord. Whatever money I had they took
f from me ; wherefore I had to beg from door to door, with-
£ out any payment (sine omni expensa) till I came to England
6 again. But hearing that the Woolpit Church was already
6 given to Geoffry Kidell, my soul was struck with sorrow bc-
' cause I had laboured in vain. Coming home, therefore, I
6 sat me down secretly under the Shrine of St. Edmund, fear-
e ing lest our Lord Abbot should seize and imprison me,
' though I had done no mischief ; nor was there a monk who
c durst speak to me, nor a laic who durst bring me food ex-
' cept by stealth. ' *

Such resting and welcoming found Brother Samson, with
his worn soles, and strong heart ! He sits silent, revolving
many thoughts, at the foot of St. Edmund's Shrine. In the
wide Earth, if it be not Saint Edmund, what friend or refuge
has he ? Our Lord Abbot, hearing of him, sent the proper
officer to lead him down to prison, and clap ' foot-gyves on
him ' there. Another poor official furtively brought him a
cup of wine ; bade him "be comforted in the Lord." Sam-
son utters no complaint ; obeys in silence. £ Our Lord Ab-
bot, taking counsel of it, banished me to Acre, and there I
had to stay long.'

Our Lord Abbot next tried Samson with promotions ; made
him Subsacristan, made him Librarian, which he liked best
of all, being passionately fond of Books : Samson, with many
thoughts in him, again obeyed in silence ; discharged his
offices to perfection, but never thanked our Lord Abbot, —
seemed rather as if looking into him, with those clear eyes of
his. Whereupon Abbot Hugo said, Se nunquam vidisse, He
had never seen such a man ; whom no severity would break
to complain, and no kindness soften into smiles or thanks : —
a questionable kind of man !

In this way, not without troubles, but still in an erect clear-
standing manner, has Brother Samson reached his forty*

* Jocelini Chronica, p. S6.



THE CANVASSING.



73



seventh year ; and his ruddy beard is getting slightly grizzled.
He is endeavouring, in these days, to have various broken
things thatched in ; nay perhaps to have the Choir itself com-
pleted, for he can bear nothing ruinous. He has gathered
'heaps of lime and sand;' has masons, slaters working, he
and Warinus monachus nosier, who are joint keepers of the
Shrine ; paying out the money duly,— furnished by charitable
burghers of St. Edmundsbury, they say. Charitable burghers
of St. Edmundsbury? To me Jocelin it seems rather, Sam-
son, and Warinus whom he leads, have privily hoarded the
oblations at the Shrine itself, in these late years of indolent
dilapidation, while Abbot Hugo sat wrapt inaccessible ; and
are struggling, in this prudent way, to have the rain kept
out ! * — Under what conditions, sometimes, has Wisdom to
struggle with Folly ; get Folly persuaded to so much as
thatch out the rain from itself ! For, indeed, if the Infant
govern the Nurse, what dexterous practice on the Nurse's part
will not be necessary.

It is a new regret to us that, in these circumstances, our
Lord the King's Custodiars, interfering, prohibited all build-
ing or thatching from whatever source ; and no Choir shall be
completed, and Rain and Time, for the present, shall have
their way. W'illelmus Sacrista, he of ' the frequent bibations
and some things not to be spoken of ; ' he, with his red nose,
I am of opinion, had made complaint to the Custodiars ; wish-
ing to do Samson an ill turn : — Samson his >SV<6sacristan br="" with="">those clear eyes, could not be a prime favourite of his ! Sam-
son again obeys in silence.



CHAPTER VII.

THE CANVASSING.

Now, however, come great news to St. Edmundsbury : That
there is to be an Abbot elected ; that our interlunar obscura-
tion is to cease ; St. Edmund's Convent no more to be a dole-
ful widow, but joyous and once again a bride ! Often in our
widowed state had we prayed to the Lord and St. Edmund,
* Joceliiii Chronica, p. 7.



74



THE ANCIENT MONK.



singing weekly a matter of ' one - and - twenty penitential
Psalms, on our knees in the Choir/ that a fit Pastor might be
vouchsafed us. And, says Jocelin, had some known what
Abbot we were to get, they had not been' so devout, I believe !
— Bozzy Jocelin opens to mankind the floodgates of authentic
Convent gossip ; we listen, as in a Dionysius' Ear, to the
inanest hubbub, like the voices at Virgil's Horn-Gate of
Dreams. Even gossip, seven centuries off, has significance.
List, list, how like men are to one another in all centuries ;

' Dixit quidcnn de quodam, a certain person said of a certain
' person, " He, that Frater, is a good monk, probabilis persona;
' knows much of the order and customs of the church ; and
' though not so perfect a philosopher as some others, would
'make a very good Abbot. Old Abbot Orcling, still famed
' among us, knew little of letters. Besides, as we read in Fables,
' it is better to choose a log for king, than a serpent never so
'wise, that will venomously hiss and bite his subjects." — "Im-
' possible ! " answered the other : "How can such a man make

* a sermon in the Chapter, or to the people on festival days,
' when he is without letters ? How can he have the skill
£ to bind and to loose, he who does not understand the Script-
ures? How—?"'

And then ' another said of another, alius de alio, " That
£ Frater is a homo literatus, eloquent, sagacious ; vigorous in
' discipline ; loves the Convent much, has suffered much for
'its sake." To which a third party answers, "From all your
' great clerks good Lord deliver us ! From Norfolk barrators,
' and surly persons, That it would please thee to preserve us,

* We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord ! " Then another
' quidam said of another quodam, " That Frater is a good
' manager (husebondus) ; " but was swiftly answered, " God
' forbid that a man who can neither read nor chant, nor cele-
'brate the divine offices, an unjust person withal, and grinder
' of the faces of the poor, should ever be Abbot ! " ' One man,
it appears, is nice in his victuals. Another is indeed wise ;
but apt to slight inferiors ; hardly at the pains to answer, if
they argue with him too foolishly. And so each aliquin con-
cerning his aliquo, — through whole pages of electioneering



THE CANVASSING.



75



babble. 'For,' says Jocelin, 'So many men, so many minds/
Our Monks, 'at time of blood-letting, tempore minutionis,'
holding their sanhedrim of babble, would talk in this manner :
Brother Samson, I remarked, never said anything ; sat silent,
sometimes smiling ; but he took good note of what others
said, and would bring it up, on occasion, twenty years after.
As for me Jocelin, I was of opinion that 'some skill in Dia-
lectics, to distinguish true from false, 5 would be good in an
Abbot, I spake as a rash Novice in those days, some con-
scientious words of a certain benefactor of mine ; ' and behold,
one of those sons of Belial ' ran and reported them to him, so
that he never after looked at me with the same face again !
Poor Bozzy ! —

Such is the buzz and frothy simmering ferment of the
general mind and no-mind ; struggling to c make itself up/ as
the phrase is, or ascertain what it does really want ; no easy
matter, in most cases. St. Edmundsbury, in that Candlemas
season of the year 1182, is a busily fermenting place. The
very clothmakers sit meditative at their looms ; asking, Who
shall be Abbot ? The sochemanni speak of it, driving their ox-
teams afield ; the old women with their spindles : and none
yet knows what the days will bring forth.

The Prior, however, as our interim chief, must proceed to
work ; get ready ' Twelve Monks,' and set off with them to his
Majesty at Waltham, there shall the election be made. An
election, whether managed directly by ballot-box on public
hustings, or indirectly by force of public opinion, or were it
even by open alehouses, landlords' coercion, popular club-law,
or whatever electoral methods, is always an interesting phe-
nomenon. A mountain tumbling in great travail, throwing up
dustclouds and absurd noises, is visibly there ; uncertain yet
what mouse or monster it will give birth to.

Besides it is a most important social act ; nay, at bottom,
the one important social act. Given the men a People choose,
the People itself, in its exact worth and worthlessness, is given.
A heroic people chooses heroes, and is happy ; a valet or flun-
key people chooses sham-heroes, what are called quacks, think-



70



THE ANCIENT MONK



ing them heroes, and is not happy. The grand summary of a
man's spiritual condition, what brings out all his herohood aiu 1
insight, or all his nunkeyhood and horn-eyed dimness, is tin
question put to him, What man dost thou honour ? Which i
thy ideal of a man ; or nearest that ? So too of a People : fo
a People too, every People, speaks its choice, — were it only b
silently obeying, and not revolting, — in the course of a century
or so. Nor are electoral methods, Reform Bills and such like-
unimportant. A People's electoral methods are, in the long
run, the express image of its electoral talent; tending an
gravitating perpetually, irresistibly, to a conformity with that
and are, at all stages, very significant of the People. Judi
cious readers, of these times, are not disinclined to see ho
Monks elect their Abbot in the Twelfth Century : how the St
Edmundsbury mountain manages its midwifery; and wha
mouse or man the outcome is.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE ELECTION.

Accordingly our Prior assembles us in Chapter ; and, we
adjuring him before God to do justly, nominates, not by our
selection, yet with our assent, Twelve Monks, moderately satis
factory. Of whom are Hugo Third-Prior, Brother Dennis
venerable man, Walter the Medicus, Samson Subsacrista, an
other esteemed characters, — though W T illelmus Sacrista, of the
red nose, too is one. These shall proceed straightway to Walt-
ham ; and there elect the Abbot as they may and can. Monks
are sworn to obedience ; must not speak too loud, under pen-
alty of foot-gyves, limbo, and bread and water : yet monks too
would know what it is they are obeying. The St. Edmunds-
bury Community has no hustings, ballot-box, indeed no open
voting : yet by various vague manipulations, pulse-feelings,
we struggle to ascertain what its virtual aim is, and succeed
better or worse.

This question, however, rises ; alas, a quite preliminary ques
tion : Will the Dominus Rex allow us to choose freely ? It i



THE ELECTION.



77



to be hoped ! Well, if so, we agree to choose one of our own
Convent. If not, if the Dominus Rex will force a stranger on
us, we decide on demurring, the Prior and his Twelve shall
demur : we can appeal, plead, remonstrate ; appeal even to
the Pope, but trust it will not be necessary. Then there is
this other question, raised by Brother Samson : What if the
Thirteen should not themselves be able to agree ? Brother
Samson Subsacrista, one remarks, is ready oftenest with some
question, some suggestion, that has wisdom in it. Though a
servant of servants, and saying little, his words all tell, having
sense in them ; it seems by his light mainly that we steer our-
selves in this great dimness.

What if the Thirteen should not themselves be able to agree ?
Speak, Samson, and advise. — Could not, hints Samson, Six of
oar venerablest elders be chosen by us, a kind of electoral
committee, here and now : of these, 6 with their hand on the
Gospels, with their eye on the Sacrosancta, 3 we take oath that
they will do faithfully ; let these, in secret and as before God,
agree on Three whom they reckon fittest ; write their names
in a Paper, and deliver the same sealed, forthwith, to the
Thirteen : one of those Three the Thirteen shall fix on, if per-
mitted. If not permitted, that is to say, if the Dominus Rex
force us to demur, — the Paper shall be brought back unop-
ened, and publicly burned, that no man's secret bring him
into trouble.

So Samson advises, so we act ; wisely, in this and in other
crises of the business. Our electoral committee, its eye on
the Sacrosancta, is soon named, soon sworn ; and we striking *
up the Fifth Psalm, ' Verba mea,

' Give ear unto my words, O Lord,
My meditation weigh,'

march out chanting, and leave the Six to their work in the
Chapter here. Their work, before long, they announce as
finished : they, with their eye on the Sacrosancta, imprecating
the Lord to weigh and witness their meditation, had fixed on
Three Names, and written them in this Sealed Paper. Let



78



THE ANCIENT MONK.



Samson Subsacrista, general servant of the party, take charge
of it. On the morrow morning, our Prior and his Twelve
will be ready to get under way.

This then is the ballot-box and electoral winnowing-ma-
chine they have at St. Edmundsbury : a mind fixed on the
Thrice Holy, an appeal to God on high to witness their medi-
tation : by far the best, and indeed the only good electoral
winnowing-machine, — if men have souls in them. Totally
worthless, it is true, and even hideous and poisonous, if men
have no souls. But without soul, alas, what winnowing-ma-
chine in human elections, can be of avail? We cannot get
along without soul ; we stick fast, the mournfullest spectacle ;
and salt itself will not save us !

On the morrow morning, accordingly, our Thirteen set
forth ; or rather our Prior and Eleven ; for Samson, as general
servant of the party, has to linger, settling many things. At
length he too gets upon the road ; and, £ carrying the sealed
' Paper in a leather pouch hung round his neck ; and froccum
' bajulans in ulnis' (thanks to thee Bozzy Jocelin), 'his frock-
' skirts looped over his elbow,' showing substantial stern-
works, tramps stoutly along. Away across the Heath, not yet
of Newmarket and horse-jockeying ; across your Fleam -dike
and Devil's-dike, no longer useful as a Mercian East- Anglian
boundary or bulwark : continually towards Waltham, and the
Bishop of Winchester's House there, for his Majesty is in that.
Brother Samson, as purse-bearer, has the reckoning always,
when there is one, to pay ; *' delays are numerous,' progress
none of the swiftest.

But, in the solitude of the Convent, Destiny thus big and
in her birthtime, what gossiping, what babbling, what dream-
ing of dreams ! The secret of the Three our electoral elders
alone know : some Abbot we shall have to govern us ; but
which Abbot, O which ! One monk discerns in a vision of the
night-watches, that we shall get an Abbot of our own body,
without needing to demur : a prophet appeared to him clad
ail in white, and said, will rage among you like a wolf, sceviet ut lupus" Verily ! —



THE ELECTION.



79



then which of ours? Another Monk now dreams: he has
seen clearly which ; a certain Figure taller by head and
shoulders than the other two, dressed in alb and pallium, and
with the attitude of one about to fight ; — which tall Figure a
wise Editor would rather not name at this stage of the busi-
ness ! Enough that the vision is true : that Saint Edmund
himself, pale and awful, seemed to rise from his Shrine, with
naked feet, and say audibly, "He, tile, shall veil my feet;"
which part of the vision also proves true. Such guessing,
visioning, dim perscrutation of the momentous future : the
very clothmakers, old women, all townsfolk speak of it, 4 and
} more than once it is reported in St. Edmundsbury, This one is
c elected, and then, This one and That other.' Who knows?

But now, sure enough, at Waltham i on the Second Sunday
of Quadragesima/ which Dryasdust declares to mean the 22d
day of February, year 1182, Thirteen St. Edmundsbury Monks
are, at last, seen processioning towards the "Winchester
Manorhouse ; and in some high Presence-chamber, and Hall
of State, get access to Henry II. in all his glory. What a
Hall, — not imaginary in the least, but entirely real and indis-
putable, though so extremely dim to us ; sunk in the deep
distances of Night ! The Winchester Manorhouse has fled
bodily, like a Dream of the old Night ; not Dryasdust himself
can shew a wreck of it. House and people, royal and epis-
copal, lords, and varlets, where are they ? Why there, I say,
Seven Centuries off ; sunk so far in the Night, there they are ;
peep through the blankets of the Old Night, and thou wilt
see ! King Henry himself is visibly there, a vivid, noble-
looking man, with grizzled beard, in glittering uncertain
costume ; with earls round him, and bishops and dignitaries,
in the like. The Hall is large, and has for one thing an altar
near it — chapel and altar adjoining it ; but what gilt seats,
carved tables, carpeting of rush-cloth, what arras-hangings,
and huge fire of logs : — alas, it has Human Life in it ; and is
not that the grand miracle, in what hangings or costume
soever ? —

The Dorninus Bex, benignantly receiving our Thirteen with



80



THE ANCIENT MONK.



their obeisance, and graciously declaring that he will strive to
act for God's honour, and the Church's good, commands, ' by
the Bishop of Winchester, and Geoffrey the Chancellor/ —
Galfridus Cancellarius, Henry's and the Fair Rosamond's au-
thentic Son present here ! — commands, "That they, the said
Thirteen, do now withdraw, and fix upon Three from their
own Monastery." A work soon done ; the Three hanging-
ready round Samson's neck, in that leather pouch of his,
Breaking the seal, we find the names, — what think ye of it,
ye higher dignitaries, thou indolent Prior, thou Willelmus
Sacrista with the red bottle-nose ? — the names in this order :
of Samson Subsaerista, of Roger the distressed Cellarer, of
Hugo Tertius- Prior.

The higher dignitaries, all omitted here, 'flush suddenly
red in the face ; ' but have nothing to say. One curious fact
and question certainly is, How Hugo Third-Prior, who was of
the electoral committee, came to nominate himself as one of
the Three ? A curious fact, which Hugo Third-Prior has
never yet entirely explained, that I know of ! — However, we
return, and report to the King our Three names ; merely alter-
ing the order ; putting Samson last, as lowest of all. The
King, at recitation of our Three, asks us: " Who are they ?
Were they born in my domain ? Totally unknown to me !
You must nominate three others." Whereupon Willelmus
Sacrista says, " Our Prior must be named, quia caput nostrum
est, being already our head." And the Prior responds, " Wil-
lelmus Sacrista is a fit man, bonus vir est" — for all his red
nose. Tickle me, Toby, and I'll tickle thee ! Venerable Den-
nis too is named ; none in his conscience can say nay. There
are now Six on our List. "Well," said the King, "they have
done it swiftly, they ! Deus est cum eis." The Monks with-
draw again ; and Majesty revolves, for a little, with his Pares
and Episcopi, Lords or ' Law-wards 9 and Soul-Overseers, the
thoughts of the royal breast. The Monks wait silent in an
outer room.

In short while, they are next ordered, to add yet another
three ; but not from their own Convent ; from other Convents,



THE ELECTION.



81



"for the honour of my kingdom." Here, — what is to be
done here ? "We will demur, if need be ! We do name three,
however, for the nonce : the Prior of St. Faith's, a good Monk
of St. Neot's, a good Monk of St. Alban's : good men all ; all
made abbots and dignitaries since, at this hour. There are
now Nine upon our List. What the thoughts of the Dominus
Rex may be farther ? The Dominus Rex, thanking graciously,
sends out word that we shall now strike off three. The three
strangers are instantly struck off. Willelmus Sacrista adds,
that he will of his own accord decline, — a touch of grace and
respect for the Sacrosancta, even in Willelmus ! The King
then orders us to strike off a couple more ; then yet one more :
Hugo Third-Prior goes, and Roger Gellerarius, and venerable
Monk Dennis ; — and now there remain on our List two only,
Samson Subsacrista and the Prior.

Which of these two ? It w r ere hard to say, — by Monks who
may get themselves foot-gyved and thrown into limbo, for
speaking ! We humbly request that the Bishop of Winches-
ter and Geoffrey the Chancellor may again enter, and help us
to decide. " Which do you want ? " asks the Bishop. Ven-
erable Dennis made a speech, 'commending the persons of
£ the Prior and Samson ; but always in the corner of his dis-
' course, in angulo sui sermoms, brought Samson in. ' " I see ! "
said the Bishop : " We are to understand that your Prior is
somewhat remiss ; that you want to have him you call Sam-
son for Abbot/' "Either of them is good," said venerable
Dennis, almost trembling ; u but we would have the better, if
it pleased God." " Which of the two do you want ? " inquires
the Bishop pointedly. " Samson ! " answered Dennis ; "Sam-
son ! " echoed all of the rest that durst speak or echo any-
thing : and Samson is reported to the King accordingly. His
Majesty, advising of it for a moment, orders that Samson be
brought in with the other Twelve.

The King's Majesty, looking at us somewhat sternly, then
says : " You present to me Samson ; I do not know him :
had it been your Prior, whom I do know, I should have ac-
cepted him : however, I will now do as you wish. But have
a care of yourselves. By the true eyes of God, per veros oculos
0



82



THE ANCIENT MONK.



Dei, if you manage badly, I will be upon you ! " Samson,
therefore, steps forward, kisses the King's feet ; but swiftly
rises erect again, swiftly turns towards the altar, uplifting
with the other Twelve, in clear tenor note, the Fifty-first
Psalm, ' Miserere mei Deus,

4 After thy loving-kindness, Lord,
Have mercy upon me ; '

with firm voice, firm step and head, no change in his counte-
nance whatever. " By God's eyes," said the King, "that
one, I think, will govern the Abbey well." By the same oath
(charged to your Majesty's account), I too am precisely of that
opinion ! It is some while since I fell in with a likelier man
anywhere than this new Abbot Samson. Long life to him,
and may the Lord have mercy on him as Abbot.

Thus, then, have the St. Edmundsbury Monks, without ex-
press ballot-box or other good winnowing-machine, contrived
to accomplish the most important social feat a body of men
can do, to winnow out the man that is to govern them : and
truly one sees not that, by any winnowing-machine whatever,
they could have done it better. O ye kind Heavens, there is
in every Nation and Community a fittest, a wisest, bravest,
best ; whom could we find and make King over us, all were
in very truth well ; — the best that God and Nature had per-
mitted us to make it I By what art discover him ? Will the
Heavens in their pity teach us no art ; for our need of him is
great !

Ballot-boxes, Keform Bills, winnowing machines : all these
are good, or are not so good ; — alas, brethren, how can these,
I say, be other than inadequate, be other than failures, melan-
choly to behold ? Dim all souls of men to the divine, the
high and awful meaning of Human Worth and Truth, we
shall never, by all the machinery in Birmingham, discover the
Tine and Worthy. It is written, c if we are ourselves valets,
there shall exist no hero for us ; we shall not know the hero
when we see him ; '—we shall take the quack for a hero ; and
cry, audibly through all ballot-boxes and machinery whatso-
ever, Thou art he : be thou King over us !



ABBOT SAMSON.



83



What boots it? Seek only deceitful Speciosity, money
with gilt carriages, ' fame ' with newspaper-paragraphs, what-
ever name it bear, you will find only deceitful Speciosity ; god-
like Reality will be forever far from you. The Quack shall be
legitimate inevitable King of you ; no earthly machinery able
to exclude the Quack. Ye shall be born thralls of the Quack,
and suffer under him, till your hearts are near broken, and no
French Eevolution or Manchester Insurrection, or partial or
universal volcanic combustions and explosions, never so many,
can do more than 'change ^he figure of your Quack ; ' the es-
sence of him remaining, for a time and times. — " How long,
O Prophet ? " say some, with a rather melancholy sneer.
Alas, ye ^prophetic, ever till this come about : Till deep
misery, if nothing softer will, have driven you out of your
Speciosities, into your Sincerities ; and you find that there
either is a God-like in the world, or else ye are an unintelligible
madness ; that there is a God, as well as a Mammon and a
Devil, and a Genuis of Luxuries and canting Dilettantisms
and Vain Shows ! How long that will be, compute for your-
selves. My unhappy brothers ! —



CHAPTER IX.

ABBOT SAMSON.

So then the bells of St. Edmundsbury clang out one and
all, and in church and chapel the organs go : Convent and
Town, and all the west side of Suffolk, are in gala ; knights,
viscounts, weavers, spinners, the entire population, male and
female, young and old, the very sockmen with their chubby
infants, — out to have a holiday, and see the Lord Abbot ar-
rive ! And there is c stripping barefoot ' of the Lord Abbot
at the Gate, and solemn leading of him in to the High Altar
and Shrine; with sudden 'silence of all the bells and organs,'
as we kneel in deep prayer there ; and again with outburst
of all the bells and organs, and loud Te Deum from the gene-
ral human windpipe ; and speeches by the leading viscount,
and giving of the kiss of brotherhood ; the whole wound up



84



THE ANCIENT MONK.



with popular games, and dinner within doors of more than
a thousand strong, plus quam milie comederdibus in gaudio
magno.

In such manner is the selfsame Samson once again return-
ing to us, welcomed on this occasion. He that went away
with his frock-skirts looped over his arm, conies back riding
high ; suddenly made one of the dignitaries of this world.
Reflective readers will admit that here was a trial for a man.
Yesterday a poor mendicant, allowed to possess not above two
shillings of money, and without authority to bid a dog run
for him, this man to-day finds himself a Dominus Abbas,
mitred Peer of Parliament, Lord of manorhouses, farms,
manors, and wide lands ; a man with £ Fifty Knights under
him,' and dependent, swiftly obedient multitudes of men.
It is a change greater than Napoleon's ; so sudden withal.
As if one of the Chandos day drudges had, on awakening
some morning, found that he overnight was become Duke !
Let Samson with his clear-beaming eyes see into that, and
discern it if he can, "We shall now get the measure of him
by a new scale of inches, considerably more rigorous than the
former was. ♦ For if a noble soul is rendered tenfold beauti-
fuller by victory and prosperity, springing now radiant as
into his own due element and sun-throne ; an ignoble one
is rendered tenfold and hundredfold uglier, pitifuller. What-
soever vices, whatsoever weaknesses were in the man, the
parvenu will shew us them enlarged, as in the solar micro-
scope, into frightful distortion. Nay, how many mere semi-
nal principles of vice, hitherto a]l wholesomely kept latent,
may we now see unfolded, as in the solar hothouse, into
growth, into huge universally-conspicuous luxuriance and de-
velopment !

But is not this, at any rate, a singular aspect of what polit-
ical and social capabilities, nay let us say what depth and
opulence of true social vitality, lay in those old barbarous
ages, That the fit Governor could be met with under such
disguises, could be recognised and laid hold of under such ?
Here he is discovered with a maximum of two shillings in



ABBOT SAMSON.



85



his pocket, and a leather scrip round his neck ; trudging
along the highway, his frock-skirts looped over his arm.
They think this is he nevertheless, the true Governor ; and
he proves to be so. Brethren, have we no need of discover-
ing true Governors, but will sham ones forever do for us ?
These were absurd superstitious blockheads of Monks ; and
we are enlightened Tenpound Franchisers, without taxes on
knowledge ! "Where, I say, are our superior, are our similar
or at all comparable discoveries ? We also have eyes, or
ought to have ; we have hustings, telescopes ; we have lights,
link-lights and rush-lights of an enlightened free Press, burn-
ing and dancing everywhere, as in a universal torch-dance ;
singeing your whiskers as you traverse the public thorough-
fares in town and country. Great souls, true Governors, go
about under all manner of disguises now as then. Such tele-
scopes, such enlightenment,— and such discovery ! How
comes it, I say ; how comes it ? Is it not lamentable ; is it
not even, in some sense, amazing ?

Alas, the defect, as we must often urge and again urge, is
less a defect of telescopes than of some eyesight. Those super-
stitious blockheads of the Twelfth Century had no telescopes,
but they had still an eye ; not ballot-boxes ; only reverence for
Worth, abhorrence of "On worth". It is the way with all bar-
barians. Thus Mr. Sale informs me, the old Arab Tribes
would gather in liveliest gaudeamus, and sing, and kindle
bonfires, and wreathe crowns of honour, and solemnly thank
the gods that, in their Tribe too, a Poet had shewn himself.
As indeed they well might ; for what usefuller, I say not
nobler and heavenlier thing could the gods, doing their very
kindest, send to any Tribe or Nation, in any time or circum-
stances ? I declare to thee, my afflicted quack-ridden broth-
er, in spite of thy astonishment, it is very lamentable ! We
English find a Poet, as brave a man as has been made for a
hundred years or so anywhere under the Sun ; and do we
kindle bonfires, or thank the gods? Not at all. We, tak-
ing due counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in
the Burgh of Dumfries ; and pique ourselves on our ' patron-
age of genius/



86



THE ANCIENT MONK.



Genius, Poet: do we know what these words mean? An
inspired Soul once more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's
own great fire-heart, to see the Truth, and speak it, and do it ;
Nature's own sacred voice heard once more athwart the
dreary boundless element of hearsaying and canting, of
twaddle and poltroonery, in which the bewildered Earth, nigh
perishing, has lost its way. Hear once more, ye bewildered
benighted mortals ; listen once again to a voice from the in-
ner Light-sea and Flame-sea, Nature's and Truth's own heart ;
know the Fact of your Existence what it is, put away the
Cant of it which it is not ; and knowing, do, and let it be well
with you ! —

George the Third is Defender of something we call ' the
Faith ' in those years ; George the Third is head charioteer of
the Destinies of England, to guide them through the gulf of
French Revolutions, American Independence ; and Robert
Burns is Gauger of ale in Dumfries. It is an Iliad in a nut-
shell. The physiognomy of a world now verging towards dis-
solution, reduced now to spasms and death-throes, lies pic-
tured in that one fact, — which astonishes nobody, except at
me for being astonished at it. The fruit of long ages of con-
firmed Valethood, entirely confirmed as into a Law of Nature ;
cloth- worship and quack-worship : entirely confirmed Valet-
hood, — which will have to imconfirm itself again ; God knows,
with difficulty enough ! — ■

Abbot Samson had found a Convent all in dilapidation ;
rain beating through it, material rain and metaphorical, from
all quarters of the compass. Willelmus Sacrista sits drinking
nightly, and doing mere tacenda. Our larders are reduced to
leanness, Jew Harpies and unclean creatures our purveyors ;
in our basket is no bread. Old women with their distaffs
rush out on a distressed Cellarer in shrill Chartism. * You
cannot stir abroad but Jews and Christians pounce upon you
with unsettled bonds ; ' debts boundless seemingly as the
National Debt of England. For four years our new Lord
Abbot never went abroad but Jew creditors and Christian,
and all manner of creditors, were about him driving him to



ABBOT SAMSON.



87



very despair. Our Prior is remiss ; our Cellarers, officials are
remiss, our monks are remiss : what man is not remiss ?
Front this, Samson, thou alone art there to front it ; it is thy
task to front and fight this, and to die or kill it. May the
Lord have mercy on thee !

To our antiquarian interest in poor Jocelin and his Convent,
where the whole aspect of existence, the whole dialect, of
thought, of speech, of activity, is sq. obsolete, strange, long-
vanished, there now superadds itself a mild glow of human
interest for Abbot Samson ; a real pleasure, as at sight of
man's work, especially of governing-, which is man's highest
work, done well. Abbot Samson had no experience in govern-
ing ; had served no apprenticeship to the trade of governing,
— alas, only the hardest apprenticeship to that of obeying.
He had never in any court given vadium or plegium, says
Jocelin ; hardly ever seen a court, when he was set to preside
in one. But it is astonishing, continues Jocelin, how soon he
learned the ways of business ; and, in all sort of affairs, be-
came expert beyond others. Of the many persons offering
him their service c he retained one Knight skilled in taking
vadia and plegia ; ' and within the year was himself well
skilled. Nay, by and by, the Pope appoints him Justiciary
in certain causes ; the King one of his new Circuit Judges :
official Osbert is heard saying, " That Abbot is one of your
shrewd ones, disputator est ; if he go on as he begins, he will
cut out every lawyer of us ! " *

Why not ? "What is to hinder this Samson from governing ?
There is in him what far transcends all apprenticeships ; in
the man himself there exists a model of governing, something
to govern by ! There exists in him a heart-abhorrence of what-
ever is incoherent, pusillanimous, unveracious, that is to say,
chaotic, ^governed ; of the Devil, not of God. A man of this
kind cannot help governing ! He has the living ideal of a gov-
ernor in him ; and the incessant necessity of struggling to un-
fold the same out of him. Not the Devil or Chaos, for any
wages, will he serve ; no, this man is the born servant of An-
other than them. Alas, how little avail all apprenticeships,
* Jocelini Chronica, p. 25.



88



THE ANCIENT MONK.



when there is in your governor himself what we may well call
nothing to govern by ; — a general grey twilight, looming with
shapes of expediencies, parliamentary traditions, division-lists,
election -funds, leadin g- articles ; this, with what of vulpine
alertness and adroitness soever, is not much !

But indeed what say we, apprenticeship? Had not this Sam-
son served, in his way, a right good apprenticeship to govern-
ing ; namely, the harshest slave-apprenticeship to obeying !
Walk this world with no friend in it but God and St. Edmund,
you will either fall into the ditch, or learn a good many things.
To learn obeying is the fundamental art of governing. How
much would many a Serene Highness have learned, had he
travelled through the world with water-jug and empty wallet,
sine omni expensa ; and, at his victorious return, sat down not
to newspaper-paragraphs and city-illuminations, but at the
foot of St. Edmund's Shrine to shackles and bread and water !
He that cannot be servant of many, will never be master, true
guide and deliverer of many ; — that is the meaning of true
mastership. Had not the Monk-life extraordinary ' political
capabilities' in it ; if not imitable by us, yet enviable ? Heavens,
had a Duke of Logwood, now rolling sumptuously to his place
in the Collective Wisdom, but himself happened to plough
daily, at one time, on seven-and-six-pence a week, with no out-
door relief, — what a light, unquenchable by logic and statistic
and arithmetic, would it have thrown on several things for
him !

In all cases, therefore, we will agree with the judicious Mrs.
Glass : 6 First catch your hare ! ' First get your man ; all is
got : he can learn to do all things, from making boots, to de-
creeing judgments, governing communities ; and will do them
like a man. Catch your no-man, — alas, have you not caught
the terriblest Tartar in the world ! Perhaps all the terribler,
the quieter and gentler he looks. For the mischief that one
blockhead, that every blockhead does, in a world so feracious,
teeming with endless results as ours, no ciphering will sum
up. The quack bootmaker is considerable ; as corn -cutters
can testify, and desperate men reduced to buckskin and list-
shoes. But the quack priest, quack high-priest, the quack



GOVERNMENT.



89



king ! Why do not all just citizens rush, half-frantic, to stop
him, as they would a conflagration ? Surely a just citizen is
admonished by God and his own Soul, by all silent and articu-
late voices of this Universe, to do what in him lies towards
relief of this poor blockhead-quack, and of a world that groans
under him. Kun swiftly ; relieve him, — were it even by extin-
guishing him ! For all things have grown so old, tinder-dry,
combustible ; and he is more ruinous than conflagration.
Sweep him down, at least ; keep him strictly within the
hearth ; he will then cease to be conflagration ; he will then
become useful, more or less as culinary fire. Fire is the best
of servants ; but what a master ! 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 ?



CHAPTEE 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 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 grow-
ing 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 honest unconscious feeling,



90



THE ANCIENT MONK



without insolence as without fear or flutter, of what he is
and what others are. A courage to quell the proudest, an
honest pity to encourage the humblest. Withal there is a
noble reticence in this Lord Abbot : much vain unreason he
hears ; lays up without response. He is not there to expect
reason and nobleness of others ; he is there to give them of
his own reason and nobleness. Is he not their servant, as we
said, who can suffer from them, and for them ; bear the
burden their poor spindle-limbs totter and stagger under ;
and in virtue thereof govern them, lead them out of weakness
into strength, out of defeat into victory !

One of the first Herculean Labours Abbot Samson under-
took, or the very first, was to institute a strenuous review and
radical reform of his economies. It is the first labour of every
governing man, from Paterfamilias to Dominus Bex. To get
the rain thatched out from you is the preliminary of whatever
farther, in the way of speculation or of action, you may mean
to do. Old Abbot Hugo's budget, as we saw, had become
empty, filled with deficit and wind. To see his account-books
clear, be delivered from those ravening flights eff Jew and
Christian creditors, pouncing on him like obscene harpies
wherever he shewed face, was a necessity for Abbot Samson.

On the morrow after his instalment, he brings in a load of
money-bonds, all duly stamped, sealed with this or the other
Convent Seal : frightful, unmanageable, a bottomless confu-
sion of Convent finance. There they are ; but there at least
they all are ; all that shall be of them. Our Lord Abbot de-
mands that all the official seals in use among us be now pro-
duced and delivered to him. Three-and- thirty seals turn up ;
are straightway broken, and shall seal to more : the Abbot
only, and those duly authorised by him shall seal any bond.
There are but two ways of paying debt : increase of industry
in raising income, increase of thrift in laying it out. "With
iron energy, in slow but steady undeviating perseverance,
Abbot Samson sets to work in both directions. His troubles
are manifold : cunning milites, unjust bailiffs, lazy sockmen,
he an inexperienced Abbot ; relaxed lazy monks, not disin-



GOVERNMENT.



91



clinecl to mutiny in mass : but continued vigilance, rigorous
method, what we call ' the eye of the master,' work wonders.
The clear-beaming eyesight of Abbot Samson, stedfast, severe,
all penetrating, — it is like Fiat lux in that inorganic waste
whirlpool ; penetrates gradually to all nooks, and of the chaos
makes a kosmos or ordered world !

He arranges everywhere, struggles unweariedly to arrange,
and place on some intelligible footing, the ' affairs and dues,
res ac redditus,' of his dominion. The Lakenheath eels cease
to breed squabbles between human beings ; the penny of
reap-silver to explode into the streets the Female Chartism of
St. Edmundsbury. These and innumerable greater things.
Wheresoever Disorder may stand or lie, let it have a care ;
here is the man that has declared war with it, that never will
make peace with it. Man is the Missionary of Order ; he is
the servant not of the Devil and Chaos, but of God and the
Universe ! Let all sluggards and cowards, remiss, false-
spoken, unjust, and otherwise diabolic persons have a care :
this is a dangerous man for them. He has a mild grave face ;
a thoughtful sternness, a sorrowful pity : but there is a terri-
ble flash of anger in him too ; lazy monks often have to mur-
mur, " Scevit ut lupus, He rages like a wolf ; was not our
Dream true ! " ' To repress and hold-in such sudden anger
he was continually careful/ and succeeded well : — right, Sam-
son ; that it may become in thee as noble central heat, fruit-
ful, strong, beneficent ; not blaze out, or the seldomest possi-
ble blaze out, as wasteful volcanoism to scorch and consume !

" We must first creep, and gradually learn te walk," had
Abbot Samson said of himself, at starting. In four years he
has become a great walker ; striding prosperously along ;
driving much before him. In less than four years, says Joce-
lin, the Convent Debts were all liquidated : the harpy Jews
not only settled with, but banished, bag and baggage, out of
the Bannaleuca (Liberties, Banlieue) of St. Edmundsbury, — so
has the King's Majesty been persuaded to permit. Farewell
to you, at any rate ; let us, in no extremity, apply again to
you ! Armed men march them over the borders, dismiss them



92



THE ANCIENT MONK.



under stern penalties, — sentence of excommunication on all
that shall again harbour them here : there were many dry
eyes at their departure.

New life enters everywhere, springs up beneficent, the In-
cubus of Debt once rolled away. Samson hastes not ; but
neither does he pause to rest. This of the Finance is a life-
long business with him ; Jocelm's anecdotes are filled to
weariness with it. As indeed to Jocelin it was of very pri-
mary interest.

But we have to record also, with a lively satisfaction, that
spiritual rubbish is as little tolerated in Samson's Monastery
as material. With due rigour, Willelmus Sacrista, and his
bibations and tacenda are, at the earliest opportunity, softly,
yet irrevocably put an end to. The bibations, namely, had to
end ; even the building where they used to be carried on was
razed from the soil of St. Edmundsbury, and 'on its place
grow rows of beans : ' Willelmus himself, deposed from the
Sacristy and all offices, retires into obscurity, into absolute
taciturnity unbroken thenceforth to this hour. Whether the
poor Willelmus did not still, by secret channels, occasionally
get some slight wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor, — now
grown, in a manner, indispensable to the poor man? Jocelin
hints not ; one knows not how to hope, what to hope ! But if
he did, it was in silence and darkness ; with an ever-present
feeling that teetotalism was his only true course. Drunken
dissolute Monks are a class of persons who had better keep
out of Abbot Samson's way. Scevit id lupus; was not the
Dream true ! murmured many a Monk. Nay, Kanulf de Glan-
ville, Justiciary in Chief, took umbrage at him, seeing these
strict ways ; and watched farther with suspicion : but dis-
cerned gradually that there was nothing wrong, that there
was much the opposite of wrong.



THE ABBOT'S WAYS.



03



CHAPTER XI.

THE ABBOT'S WAYS.

Abbot Samson shewed no extraordinary favour to the Monks
who had been his familiars of old ; did not promote them to
offices, — nisi essent idonei, unless they chanced to be fit men !
Whence great discontent among certain of these, who had
contributed to make him Abbot : reproaches, open and secret,
of his being £ ungrateful, hard-tempered, unsocial, a Norfolk
barrator and paltenerius.'

Indeed, except it were for idonei, 'fit men,' in all kinds, it
was hard to say for whom Abbot Samson had much favour.
He loved his kindred well, and tenderly enough acknowledged
the poor part of them ; with the rich part, who in old days
had never acknowledged him, he totally refused to have any
business. Bat even the former he did not promote into of-
fices ; finding none of them idonei. ' Some whom he thought
- suitable he put into situations in his own household, or made
' keepers of his country places : if they behaved ill, he dis-
missed them without hope of return.' In his promotions,
nay almost in his benefits, you would have said there was a
certain impartiality. ' The official person who had, by Abbot
' Hugo's order, put the fetters on him at his return from Italy,
' was now supported with food and clothes to the end of his
'days at Abbot Samson's expense.'

Yet he did not forget benefits ; far the reverse, when an
opportunity occurred of paying them at his own cost. How
pay them at the public cost ; — how, above all, by setting fire
to the public, as we said ; clapping ' conflagrations ' on the
public, which the services of blockheads, non-idonei, intrinsi-
cally are ! He was right willing to remember friends, when
it could be done. Take these instances : ' A certain chaplain
c who had maintained him at the Schools of Paris by the sale
'of holy water, qucestu aquce benedictce ; — to this good chaplain
' he did give a vicarag*e, adequate to the comfortable suste-
' nance of him.' 'The Son of Elias, too, that is, of old Abbot



94



THE ANCIENT MONK.



' Hugo's Cupbearer, coming to do homage for his Father's
' land, our Lord Abbot said to him in full court : " I have, for
'• these seven years, put off taking thy homage for the land
' which Abbot Hugo gave thy Father, because that gift was to
'the damage of Elmswell, and a questionable one : but now I
'must profess myself .overcome ; mindful of the kindness thy
c Father did me when I was in bonds ; because he sent me a
£ cup of the very wine his master had been drinking, and bade
' me be comforted in God." '

' To Magister "Walter, son of Magister William de Dice, who
' wanted the vicarage of Chevington, he answered: "Thy
' Father was Master of the Schools ; and when I was an indi-
' gent clericus, he granted me freely and in charity an entrance
' to his School, and opportunity of learning ; wherefore I
' now, for the sake of God, grant to thee what thou askest." 5
Or lastly, take this good instance, — and a glimpse, along with
it, into long-obsolete times : ' Two Milites of Risby, Willelm
6 and Norman, being adjudged in Court to come under his
' mercy, in misericordia ejus/ for a certain very considerable
fine of twenty shillings, ' he thus addressed them publicly on
' the spot : "When I was a Cloister-monk, I was once sent to
' Durham on business of our Church ; and coming home again,
' the dark night caught me at Risby, and I had to beg a lodg-
- ing there. I went to Dominus Norman's, and he gave me a
' flat refusal. Going then to Dominus Willelm's, and begging
' hospitality, I was by him honourably received. The twenty
' shillings therefore of mercy, I, without mercy, will exact from
'Dominus Norman ; to Dominus Willelm, on the other hand,
4 1, with thanks, will wholly remit the said sum." ' Men know
not always to whom they refuse' lodgings ; men have lodged
Angels unawares ! —

It is clear Abbot Samson had a talent ; he had learned to
judge better than Lawyers, to manage better than bred Bail-
iffs : — a talent shining out indisputable, on whatever side you
took him. £ An eloquent man he was,' says Jocelin, 'both in
'French and Latin ; but intent more on the substance and
' method of what was to be said, than on the ornamental way



THE ABBOT'S WAYS.



95



1 of saying it. He could read English Manuscripts very ele-
' gantry, elegantissime : he was wont to preach to the people
£ in the English tongue, though according to the dialect of
' Norfolk, where he had been brought up ; wherefore indeed
£ he had caused a Pulpit to be erected in our Church both for
( ornament of the same, and for the use of his audiences. 5
There preached he, according to the dialect of Norfolk : a
man worth going to hear.

That he was a just clear-hearted man, this, as the basis of
all true talent, is presupposed. How can a man, without clear
vision in his heart first of all, have any clear vision in the head ?
It is impossible ! Abbot Samson was one of the justest of
judges ; insisted on understanding the case to the bottom, and
then swiftly decided without feud or favour. For which rea-
son, indeed, the Dominus Rex, searching for such men, as for
hidden treasure and healing to his distressed realm, had made
him one of the new Itinerant Judges, — such as continue to
this day. " My curse on that Abbot's court," a suitor was
heard imprecating, " Maledicta sit curia istius Abbatis, where
neither gold nor silver can help me to confound my enemy ! "
And old friendships and all connexions forgotten, when you
go to seek an office from him ! " A kinless loon," as the- Scotch
said of Cromwell's new judges, — intent on mere indifferent
fair-play !

Eloquence in three languages is good ; but it is not the best.
To us, as already hinted, the Lord Abbot's eloquence is less
admirable than his ineloquence, his great invaluable £ talent
of silence ! 3 ' " Deus, Deus" said the Lord Abbot to me once,
£ when he heard the Convent were murmuring at some act of
£ his, " I have much need to remember that Dream they had
6 of me, that I was to rage among them like a wolf. Above all
6 earthly things I dread their driving me to do it. How much
' do I hold in, and wink at ; raging and shuddering in my own
' secret mind, and not outwardly at all ! " He would boast to
£ me at other times : " This and that I have seen, this and that
£ I have heard ; yet patiently stood it." He had this way, too,
' which I have never seen in any other man, that he affection-
' ately loved many persons to whom he never or hardly ever



96



THE ANCIENT MONK.



'shewed a countenance of love. Once on my venturing to
' expostulate with him on the subject, he reminded me of Sol-
c onion : " Many sons I have ; it is not fit that 1 should smile
' on them." He would suffer faults, damage from his servants,
' and know what he suffered, and not speak of it ; but I think
' the reason was, he waited a good time for speaking of it, and
'in a wise way amending it. He intimated, openly in chapter
e to us all, that he would have no eaves-dropping : " Let none,"
'said he, "come to me secretly accusing another, unless he
' will publicly stand to the same ; if he come otherwise, I will
' openly proclaim the name of him. I wish, too, that every
' Monk of you have free access to me, to speak of your needs
' or grievances when you will." 5

The kinds of people Abbot Samson liked worst were these
three : ' Mendaces, ebriosi, verbosi, Liars, drunkards, and wordy
or windy persons — not good kinds, any of them ! He also
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 pro-
vide 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 nomtate 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 (fere alum) 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 txferculum 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 in-
4 stead ; which emendation he was angry at, and rebuked me



THE ABBOT'S WAYS.



97



'for/ — the stoical monastic man ! ' For the first seven years
1 he had commonly four sorts of dishes on his table ; after-
6 wards 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 pru-
dently, I think.

As to his parks, of these, in the general repair of buildings,
general improvement and adornment of the St. Edmund
Domains, c 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
4 the dogs run ; but he himself never meddled with hunting,
' that I saw. ' f

6 In an opening of the woods ; ' — for the country was still
dark with wood in those days ; and Scotland itself still
rustled shaggy and leafy, like a damp black American Forest,
with cleared spots and spaces here and there. Dryasdust ad-
vances several absurd hypotheses as to the insensible but
almost total disappearance of these woods ; the thick wreck
of which now lies as peat, sometimes with huge heart of-oak
timber logs imbedded in it, on many a height and hollow.
The simplest reason doubtless is, that by increase of hus-
bandry, there was increase of cattle ; increase of hunger for
green spring food ; and so, more and more, the new seedlings
got yearly eaten out in April ; and the old trees, having only
a certain length of life in them, died gradually, no man heed-
ing it and disappeared into peat.

A sorrowful waste of noble wood and umbrage ! Yes, — but
a very common one ; the course of most things in this world.
Monachism itself, so rich and fruitful once, is now all rotted
into peat ; lies sleek and buried, — and a most feeble bog-grass

* Jocelini Chronica, p. 31. t Ibid., p. 21.

7



98



THE ANCIENT MONK.



of Dilettantism all the crop we reap from it ! That also . was
frightful waste ; perhaps ^among the saddest our England ever
saw. Why will men destroy noble Forests, even when in
part a nuisance, in such reckless manner ; turning loose four-
footed cattle and Henry-the-Eighths into them ! The fifth part
of our English soil. Dryasdust computes, lay consecrated to
' spiritual uses,' better or worse ; solemnly set apart to foster
spiritual growth and culture of the soul, by the methods then
known : and now— it too, like the four-fifths, fosters what ?
Gentle shepherd, tell me what !



CHAPTER XII

THE ABBOT'S TROUBLES.

The troubles of Abbot Samson, as he went along in this
abstemious, reticent, rigorous way, were more than tongue
can tell. The Abbot's mitre once set on his head he knew
rest no more. Double, double toil and trouble ; that is the
life of all governors that really govern : not the spoil of vic-
tory, only the glorious toil of battle can be theirs. Abbot
Samson found all men more or less headstrong, irrational,
prone to disorder ; continually threatening to prone ungov-
ernable.

His lazy Monks gave him most trouble. ' My heart is tor-
tured,' said he, ' till we get out of debt, cor meum cruciatum
est' Your heart, indeed ; — but not altogether ours ! By no
devisable method, or none of three or four that he devised,
could Abbot Samson get these Monks of his to keep their ac-
counts straight ; but always, do as he might, the Cellerarius
at the end of the term is in a coil, in a flat deficit, — verging
again towards debt and Jews. The Lord Abbot at last de-
clares sternly he will keep our accounts too himself ; will ap-
point an officer of his own to see our Cellerarius keep them.
Murmurs thereupon among us : Was the like ever heard ?
Our Cellerarius a cipher ; the very Townsfolk know it : sub-
sannatio et derisio sumus, we have become a laughingstock to
mankind. The Norfolk barrator and paltener !



THE ABBOT'S TROUBLES.



99



And consider, if the Abbot found such difficulty in the
mere economic department, how much in more complex ones,
in spiritual ones perhaps ! He wears a stern calm face ; rag-
ing and gnashing teeth, fremens and frendens, many times, in
the secret of his mind. Withal, however, there is a noble
slow perseverance in him ; a strength of £ subdued rage ' cal-
culated to subdue most things : always, in the long-run, he
contrives to gain his point.

Murmurs from the Monks, meanwhile, cannot fail ; ever
deeper murmurs, new grudges accumulating. At one time,
on slight cause, some drop making the cup run over, they
burst into open mutiny : the Cellarer will not obey, prefers
arrest on bread and water to obeying ; the Monks thereupon
strike work ; refuse to do the regular chanting of the day, at
least the younger part of them with loud clamour and uproar
refuse : — Abbot Samson has withdrawn to another residence,
acting only by messengers : the awful report circulates
through St. Edmundsbury that the Abbot is in danger of
being murdered by the Monks with their knives ! How wilt
thou appease this, Abbot Samson? Return ; for the Monas-
tery seems near catching fire !

Abbot Samson returns ; sits in his Thalamus or inner room,
hurls out a bolt or two of excommunication : lo, one dis-
obedient Monk sits in limbo, excommunicated, with foot-
shackles on him, all day ; and three more our Abbot has
gyved c with the lesser sentence, to strike fear into the
others ! 9 Let the others think with whom they have to do.
The others think ; and fear enters into them. £ On the mor-
4 row morning we decide on humbling ourselves before the
' Abbot, by word and gesture, in order to mitigate his mind.
* And so accordingly was done. He, on the other side, re-
£ plying with much humility, yet always alleging his own jas-
' tice and turning the blame on us, when he saw that we were
' conquered, became himself conquered. And bursting into
6 tears, perfusus lachri/mis, he swore that he had never grieved
' so much for anything in the world as for this, first on his
£ own account, and then secondly and chiefly for the public
£ scandal which had gone abroad, that St. Edmund's Monks



100



THE ANCIENT MONK.



' were going to kill their Abbot. And when he had narrated.
' how he went away on purpose till his anger should cool, re-
'peating this word of the philosopher, "I would have taken
6 vengeance on thee, had not I been angry," he arose weeping,
' and embraced each and all of us with the kiss of peace. He
' wept ; we all wept : ' * — what a picture ! Behave better, ye
remiss Monks, and thank Heaven for such an Abbot ; or
know at least that ye must and shall obey him.

Worn down in this manner, with incessant toil and tribula-
tion, Abbot Samson had a sore time of it ; his grizzled hair
and beard grew daily greyer. Those Jews, in the first four
years, had ' visibly emaciated him : ' Time, Jews, and the task
of Governing, will make a man's beard very grey ! ' In
'twelve years,' says Jocelin, 'our Lord Abbot had grown
'wholly white as snow, tot us efficitur albus sicut nix.' White,
atop, like the granite mountains : — but his clear beaming
eyes still look out, in their stern clearness, in their sorrow and
pity ; the heart within him remains unconquered.

Nay sometimes there are gleams of hilarity too ; little
snatches of encouragement granted even to a Governor.
'Once my Lord Abbot and I, coming down from London
' through the Forest, I inquired of an old w r oman whom we
' came up to, Whose wood this was, and of what manor ; who
'the master, who the keeper?/ — All this I knew very well be-
forehand, and my Lord Abbot too, Bozzy that I was ! But
' the old woman answered, The wood belonged to the new
' Abbot of St. Edmunds, was of the manor of Harlow, and the
' keeper of it was one Arnald. How did he behave to the
' people of the manor ? I asked farther. She answered that
6 he used to be . a devil incarnate, dcemon vivus, an enemy of
£ God, and flayer of the peasants' skins,' — skinning them like
live eels, as the manner of some is : ' but that now he dreads
' the new Abbot, knowing him to be a wise and sharp man,
' and so treats the people reasonably, tractat homines paciftce.'
Whereat the Lord Abbot f actus est hilaris, — could not but
take a triumphant laugh for himself ; and determines to leave
that Harlow manor yet unmeddled with, for a while. f

* Jocelini Chronica, p. 85. flbid., p. 24.



THE ABBOT'S TROUBLES,



101



A brave man, strenuously fighting, fails not of a little
triumph, now and then, to keep him in heart. Everywhere
we try at least to give the adversary as good as he brings ;
and, with swift force or slow watchful manoeuvre, extinguish
this and the other solecism, leave one solecism less in God's
Creation ; and so proceed with our battle, not slacken or sur-
render in it ! The Fifty feudal Knights, for example, were of
unjust greedy temper, and cheated us, in the Installation day,
of ten knight's-fees ; — but they know now whether that has
profited them aught, and I Joeelin know. Our Lord Abbot
for the moment had to endure it, and say nothing ; but he
watched his time.

Look also how my Lord of Clare, coming to claim his undue
' debt ■ in the Court at Witham, with barons and apparatus,
gets a Kowland for his Oliver ! Joeelin shall report : c The
8 Earl, crowded round (constipatus) with many barons and

* men at arms, Earl Alberic and others standing by him, said,
' " That his bailiffs had given him to understand they were
' wont annually to receive for his behoof, from the Hundred of

* Bisebridge and the bailiffs thereof, the sum of ftve shillings,
' which sum was now unjustly held back ; " and he alleged
'farther that his predecessors had been infeft, at the Conquest,
' in the lands of Alfric son of Wisgar, who was Lord of that
'Hundred, as may be read in Domesday Book by all persons.
' — The Abbot, reflecting for a moment, without stirring
' from his place, made answer : u A wonderful deficit, my
£ Lord Earl, this that thou mentionest ! King Edward gave
' to St. Edmund that entire Hundred, and confirmed the
6 same with his Charter ; nor is there any mention there of
■ those five shillings. It will behove thee to say, for what
4 service, or on what ground, thou exactest those five shil-
' lings." Whereupon the Earl, consulting with his followers,
' replied, That he had to carry the Banner of St. Edmund in
' war-time, and for this duty the five shillings were his. To
' which the Abbot : " Certainly, it seems inglorious, if so
'great a man, Earl of Clare no less, receive so small a gift
6 for such a service. To the Abbot of St. Edmund's it is no
s unbearable burden to give five shillings. But Roger Earl



102



THE ANCIENT MONK



6 Bigot holds himself duly seised, and asserts that he by such
4 seisin has the office of carrying St. Edmund's Banner ; and
£ he did carry it when the Earl of Leicester and his Flemings
£ were beaten at Fornham. Then again Thomas de Mendham
£ says that the right is his. When you have made out with
6 one another, that this right is thine, come then and claim
( the five shillings, and I will promptly pay them ! " Where-
£ upon the Earl said, He would speak with the Earl Boger
* his relative ; and so the matter cepit dilationem,' and lies
undecided to the end of the world. Abbot Samson answers
by word or act, in this or the like pregnant manner, having
justice on his side, innumerable persons : Pope's Legates.
King's Viscounts, Canterbury Archbishops, Cellarers, Soche-
manni ; — and leaves many a solecism extinguished.

On the whole, however, it is and remains sore work. 'One
6 time, during my chaplaincy, I ventured to say to him : u Do-
6 mine, I heard thee, this night after matins, wakeful, and
£ sighing deeply, valde suspirantem, contrary to the usual
£ wont." He answered : " No wonder. Thou, son Jocelin,
( sharest in* my good things, in food and drink, in riding and
£ such like ; but thou little thinkest concerning the manage-
£ ment of House and Family, the various and arduous businesses
' of the Pastoral Care, which harass me, and make my soul to
1 sigh and be anxious." Whereto I, lifting up my hands to
'Heaven: "From such anxiety, Omnipotent Merciful Lord
£ deliver me ! " — I have heard the Abbot say, If he had been
4 as he was before he became a Monk, and could have any-
£ where got five or six marcs of income/ some three pound ten
of yearly revenue, £ whereby to support himself in the schools,
6 he would never have been Monk nor Abbot. Another time he
s said with an oath, If he had known what a business it was to
£ govern the Abbey, he would rather have been Almoner, how
£ much rather Keeper of the Books, than Abbot and Lord.
( That latter office he said he had always longed for, beyond
£ any other. Quis talia crederet,' concludes Jocelin, £ Who can
6 believe such things ? '

Three pound ten, and a life of Literature, especially of quiet
Literature, without copyright, or world-celebrity of literary-



IN PARLIAMENT.



103



gazettes, — yes, thorn brave Abbot Samson, for thyself it had
been better, easier, perhaps also nobler ! But then, for thy
disobedient Monks, unjust Viscounts ; for a Domain of St.
Edmund overgrown with Solecisms, human and other, it had
not been so well. Nay neither could thy Literature, never so'
quiet, have been easy. Literature, when noble, is not easy ;
but only when ignoble. Literature too is a quarrel, and in-
ternecine duel, with the whole World of Darkness that lies
without one and within one ; — rather a hard fight at times,
even with the three pound ten secure. Thou, there where
thou art, wrestle and duel along cheerfully to the end ; and
make no remarks !



CHAPTER XIII

IN PARLIAMENT.

Of Abbot Samson's public business we say little, though
that also was great. He had to judge the people as Justice
Errant, to decide in weighty arbitrations and public con-
troversies ; to equip his milites, send them duly in war-time
to the King ; — strive every way that the Commonweal, in his
quarter of it, take no damage.

Once, in the confused days of Lackland's usurpation, while
Cceur~de-Lion was away, our brave Abbot took helmet him-
self, having first excommunicated all that should favour Lack-
land ; and led his men in person to the siege of Windleshora,
what we now call Windsor ; where Lackland had entrenched
himself, the centre of infinite confusions ; some Reform Bill,
then as now, being greatly needed. There did Abbot Samson
' fight the battle of reform,' — with other ammunition, one
hopes, than 6 tremendous cheering ' and such like ! For these
things he was called £ the magnanimous Abbot.'

He also attended duly in his place in Parliament de ardiris
regni ; attended especially, as in arduissimo, when ' the new r s
reached London that King Richard was a captive in Germany.'
Here 'while all the barons sat to consult,' and many of them
looked blank enough, { the Abbot started forth, prosiliit coram
' omnibus, in his place in Parliament, and said, that he was



104



THE ANCIENT MONK.



£ ready to go and seek his Lord the King, either clandestinely
' by subterfuge (in tapinagio), or by any other method ; and
' search till he found him, and got certain notice of him ; he
c for one ! By which word/ says Jocelin, 'he acquired great
' praise for himself,' — unfeigned commendation from the Able
Editors of that age.

By which word ; — and also by which deed : for the Abbot
actually went - with rich gifts to the King in Germany ; ' *
Usurper Lackland being first rooted out from Windsor, and
the King's peace somewhat settled.

As to these c rich gifts,' however, we have to note one thing :
In all England, as appeared to the Collective Wisdom, there
was not like to be treasure enough for ransoming King Rich-
ard ; in which extremity certain Lords of the Treasury, Jus-
ticiarii ad Scaccarium, suggested that St. Edmund's Shrine,
covered with thick gold was still untouched. Could not it, in
this extremity, be peeled off, at least in part ; under condi-
tion, of course, of its being replaced, when times mended?
The Abbot, starting plumb up, se erigen.% answered : " Know
ye for certain, that I will in no wise do this thing ; nor is
there any man who could force me to consent thereto. But
I will open the doors of the Church : Let him that likes enter ;
let him that dares come forward ! " Emphatic words, which
created a sensation round the woolsack. For the Justiciaries
of the Scaccarium answered, 6 with oaths, each for himself:
' "I won't come forward, for my share ; nor will I, nor I ! The
' distant and absent who offended him, Saint Edmund has
' been knowm to punish fearfully ; much more will he those
£ close by, who lay violent hands on his coat, and would strip
* it off! " These things being said, the Shrine was not med-
' died with, nor any ransom levied for it.' f

For Lords of the Treasury have in all times their impassa-
ble limits, be it by ' force of public opinion ' or otherwise ;
and in those days a Heavenly Awe overshadowed and encom-
passed, as it still ought and must, all earthly Business what-
soever.

* Jocelini Chronica, pp. 39, 40. f Ibid., p. 71.



HENRY OF ESSEX.



105



CHAPTEE XIV.

HENRY OF ESSEX.

Or St. Edmund's fearful avengements have they not the re-
markablest instance still before their eyes ? He that will go
to Heading Monastery may find there, now tonsured into a
mournful penitent Monk, the once proud Henry Earl of Es-
sex ; and discern how St. Edmund punishes terribly, yet with
mercy ! This Narrative is too significant to be omitted as a
document of the Time. Our Lord Abbot, once on a visit at
Reading, heard the particulars from Henry's own mouth ; and
thereupon charged one of his monks to write it down ; — as
accordingly the Monk has done, in ambitious rhetorical Latin ;
inserting the same, as episode, among Jocelin's garrulous
leaves. Read it here ; with ancient yet with modern eyes.

Henry Earl of Essex, standard-bearer of England, had high
places and emoluments ; had a haughty high soul, yet with
various flaws, or rather with one many-branched flaw and
crack, running through the texture of it. For example, did
he not treat Gilbert de Cereville in the most shocking man-
ner? He cast Gilbert into prison ; and, with chains and slow
torments, wore the life out of him there. And Gilbert's crime
was understood to be only that of innocent Joseph : the Lady
Essex was a Potiphar's Wife, and had accused poor Gilbert !
Other cracks, and branches of that widespread flaw in the
Standard-bearer's soul we could point out : but indeed the
main stem and trunk of all is too visible in this, That he had
no right reverence for the Heavenly in Man, — that far from
showing due reverence to St. Edmund, he did not even shew
him common justice. While, others in the Eastern Counties
were adorning and enlarging with rich gifts St. Edmund's
resting place, which had become a city of refuge for many
things, this Earl of Essex flatly defrauded him, by violence or
quirk of law, of five shillings yearly, and converted said sum
to his own poor uses ! Nay, in another case of litigation, the



106



THE ANCIENT MONK.



unjust Standard-bearer, for his own profit, asserting that the
cause belonged not to St. Edmund's Court, but to his in Lai-
land Hundred, 'involved us in travellings and innumerable
' expenses, vexing the servants of St. Edmund for a long tract
c of time.' In short, he is without reverence for the Heavenly,
this Standard-bearer ; reveres only the Earthly, Gold-coined ;
and has a most morbid lamentable flaw in the texture of him.
It cannot come to good.

Accordingly, the same flaw, or St. Vitus' tic, manifests itself
ere long in another way. In the year 1157, he went with his
Standard to attend King Henry, our blessed Sovereign (whom
we saw afterwards at Waltham), in his War with the Welsh.
A somewhat disastrous War ; in which while King Henry and
his force were struggling to retreat Parthian-like, endless
clouds of exasperated Welshmen hemming them in, and now
we had come to the £ difficult pass- of Coleshill,' and as it were
to the nick of destruction, — Henry Earl of Essex shrieks out
on a sudden (blinded doubtless by his inner flaw, or 6 evil
genius ' as some name it), That King Henry is killed, That all
is lost, — and flings down his Standard to shift for itself there !
And, certainly enough, all had been lost, had all men been as
he ; — had not brave men, without such miserable jerking tic-
douloureux in the souls of them, come dashing up, with blaz-
ing swords and looks, and asserted That nothing was lost yet,
that all must be regained yet. In this manner King Henry
and his force got safely retreated, Parthian-like, from the pass
of Coleshill and the Welsh War.* But, once home again,
Earl Kobert de Montfort, a kinsman of this Standard-bearer's,
rises up in the King's Assembly to declare openly that such a
man is unfit for bearing English Standards, being in fact
either a special traitor, or something almost worse, a coward
namely, or universal traitor. Wager of Battle in consequence ;
solemn Duel, by the King's appointment, c in a certain Island
of the Thames-stream at Beading, apud Badingas, short way
from the Abbey there.' Kings, Peers, and an immense mul-
titude of people, on such scaffoldings and heights as they can
come at, are gathered round, to see what issue the business
*St>e Lyttelton's Henry II., ii. 384.



\



HENRY OF ESSEX.



107



will take. The business takes this bad issue, in our Monk's
own words faithfully rendered ; •

6 And it came to pass, while Robert de Montfort thundered
' on him manfully [mriliter intoridsset) with hard and frequent
* strokes, and a valiant beginning promised the fruit of vie-
' tory, Henry of Essex, rather giving way, glanced round on
c all sides ; and lo, at the rim of the horizon, on the confines
' of the River and land, he discerned the glorious King and
' Martyr Edmund, in shining armour, and as if hovering in
' the air ; looking towards him with severe countenance, nod-
1 ding his head with a mien and motion of austere anger. At
' St. Edmund's hand there stood also another Knight, Gilbert
' de Cereville, whose armour was not so splendid, whose
' stature was less gigantic ; casting vengeful looks at him.
' This he seeing with his eyes, remembered that old crime
' brings new shame. And now wholly desperate, and chang-
' ing reason into violence, he took the part of one blindly
' attacking, not skilfully defending. Who while he struck
' fiercely was more fiercely struck ; and so, in short, fell down
' vanquished, and it was thought, slain. As he lay there for
' dead, his kinsmen, Magnates of England, besought the King,
c that the Monks of Reading might have leave to bury him.
i However, he proved not to be dead, but got well again
' among them ; and now, with recovered health, assuming the
£ Regular Habit, he strove to wipe out the stain of his former
' life, to cleanse the long week of his dissolute history by at
' least a purifying sabbath, and cultivate the studies of Virtue
' into fruits of eternal Felicity.' *

Thus does the Conscience of man project itself athwart
whatsoever of knowledge or surmise, of imagination, under-
standing, faculty, acquirement, or natural disposition he has in
him ; and, like light through coloured glass, paint strange pic-
tures c on the rim of the horizon' and elsewhere ! Truly, this
same c sense of the Infinite nature of Duty ' is the central part
of all with us ; a ray as of Eternity and Immortality, immured
in dusky many-coloured Time, and its deaths and births. Your
* Jocelini Chronica, p. 52.



108



THE ANCIENT MONK



c coloured glass ' varies so much from century to century ; — ■
and, in certain money-making, game-preserving centuries, it
gets so terribly opaque ! Not a Heaven with cherubim sur-
rounds you then, but a kind of vacant leaden-coloured Hell.
One day it will again cease to be opaque, this ' coloured glass/
Nay, may it not become at once translucent and ?mcoloured ?
Painting no Pictures more for us, but only the everlasting
Azure itself ? That will be a right glorious consummation !—

Saint Edmund from the horizon's edge, in shining armour,
threatening the misdoer in his hour of extreme need : it is
beautiful, it is great and true. So old, yet so modern, actual ;
true yet for every one of us, as for Henry the Earl and Monk !
A glimpse as of the Deepest in Man's Destiny, which is the
same for all times and ages. Yes, Henry my brother, there
in thy extreme need, thy soul is lamed ; and behold thou
canst not so much as fight ! For Justice and Reverence are
the everlasting central Law of this Universe ; and to forget
them, and have all the Universe against one, God and one's
own Self for enemies, and only the Devil and the Dragons
for friends, is not that a 'lameness' like few? That some
shining armed St. Edmund hang minatory on thy horizon,
that infinite sulphur-lakes hang minatory, or do not now
hang, — this alters no whit the eternal fact of the thing. I
say, thy soul is lamed, and the God and all Godlike in it
marred : lamed, paralytic, tending towards baleful eternal
death, whether thou know it or not ; — nay hadst thou never
known it, that surely had been worst of all ! —

Thus, at any rate, by the heavenly Awe that overshadows
earthly Business, does Samson, readily in those days, save St.
Edmund's Shrine, and innumerable still more precious things.



PR A CTIGAL'DE VOTIONAL.



109



CHAPTEE XV.

PRACTICx\L-DEVOTIONAL.

Here indeed, perhaps, by rule of antagonisms, may be the
place to mention that, after King Richard's return, there was
a liberty of tourneying given to the fighting men of England :
that a Tournament was proclaimed in the Abbot's domain,
€ between Thetford and St. Edmundsbury,' — perhaps in the
Euston region, on Fakenham Heights, midway between these
two localities : that it was publicly prohibited by our Lord
Abbot ; and nevertheless was held in spite of him, — and by
the parties, as would seem, considered ' a gentle and free pas-
sage of arms.'

Nay, next year, there came to the same spot four-and-
twenty young men, sons of Nobles, for another passage of
arms ; who, having completed the same, all rode into St. Ed-
mundsbury to lodge for the night. Here is modesty ! Our
Lord Abbot, being instructed of it, ordered the Gates to be
closed ; the w T hole party shut in. The morrow was the Vigil
of the Apostles Peter and Paul ; no outgate on the morrow.
Giving their promise not to depart without permission, those
four-and-twenty young bloods dieted all that day (manduca-
verunt) with the Lord Abbot, waiting for trial on the mor-
row. ' But after dinner,' — mark it, posterity ! — ' the Lord
6 Abbot retiring into his Thalamus, they all started up, and
( began carolling and singing (carolare et can tare) ; sending
/into the Town for wine; drinking, and afterwards howling
c (ululantes) ; — totally depriving the Abbot and Convent of
c their afternoon's nap ; doing all this in derision of the Lord
'Abbot, and spending in such fashion the whole day till
6 evening, nor would they desist at the Lord Abbot's order !
' Night coming on, they broke the bolts of the Town Gates,
' and went off by violence ! ' * "Was the like ever heard
of ? The roysterous young dogs ; carolling, howling, break-
ing the Lord Abbot's sleep, — after that sinful chivalry cocb
* Jocelini Chronica, p. 40.

\



110



THE ANCIENT MONK



fight of theirs! They loo are a feature of distant centuries,
as of near ones. St. Edmund on the edge of your horizon,
or whatever else there, young scamps, in the dandy state,
whether cased in iron or in whalebone, begin to caper and
carol on the green Earth ! Our Lord Abbot excommuni-
cated most of them ; and they gradually came in for repent-
ance.

Excommunication is a great recipe with our Lord Abbot ;
the prevailing purifier in those ages. Thus when the Towns-
folk and Monks'-menials quarrelled once at the Christmas
Mysteries in St. Edmund's Churchyard, and £ from words it
came to cuffs, and from cuffs to cuttings and the effusion of
blood,' — our Lord Abbot excommunicates sixty of the rioters,
with bell, book and candle {accensis candelis), at one stroke.*
Whereupon they all come suppliant, indeed nearly naked,
1 nothing on but their breeches, omnino nudi prceter fp-mo-
' ralia, and prostrate themselves at the Church-door.' Figure
that !

In fact, by excommunication or persuasion, by impetuosity
of driving or adroitness in leading, this Abbot, it is now
becoming plain everywhere, is a man that generally remains
master at last. He tempers his medicine to the malady, now
hot, now cool ; prudent though fiery, an eminently practical
man. Nay sometimes in his adroit practice there are swift
turns almost of a surprising nature ! Once, for example, it
chanced that Geoffrey Kiddell Bishop of Ely, a Prelate rather
troublesome to our Abbot, made a request of him for timber
from his woods towards certain edifices going on at Glems-
ford. The Abbot, a great builder himself, disliked the re-
quest ; could not, however, give it a negative. While he lay,
therefore, at his Manorhouse of Melford not long after, there
comes to him one of the Lord Bishop's men or monks, with a
message from his Lordship, " That he now begged permission
to cut down the requisite trees in Elms well Wood," — so said
the monk : JElmswell, where there are no trees but scrubs and
shrubs, instead of Elmse£, our true nemus, and high-towering
oak-wood, here on Melford Manor! Elmswell? The Lord
* Jocelini Chronica, p. 68.



PR A CTICAL-DE VO TIONAL.



Ill



Abbot, in surprise, inquires privily of Richard his Forester ;
.Richard answers that my Lord of Ely has already had his
carpentarii in Elmsetf, and marked out for his own use all the
best trees in the compass of it. Abbot Samson thereupon
answers the monk : " Elms well ? Yes surely, be it as my
Lord Bishop wishes." The successful monk, on the morrow
morning, hastens home to Ely ; but, on the morrow morning,
'directly after mass,' Abbot Samson too was busy ! The suc-
cessful monk, arriving at Ely, is rated for a goose and an
owl ; is ordered back to say that Elmset was the place meant.
Alas, on arriving at Elmset, he finds the Bishop's trees, they
' and a hundred more/ all felled and piled, and the stamp of
St. Edmund's Monastery burnt into them, — for rooting of the
great tower we are building there ! Your importunate Bishop
must seek wood for Glemsford edifices in some other nemus
than this. A practical Abbot !

We said withal there was a terrible flash of anger in him :
witness his address to old Herbert the Dean, who in a too
thrifty manner has erected a windmill for himself on his glebe-
lands at Haberdon. On the morrow, after mass, our Lord
Abbot orders the Cellerarius to send off his carpenters to
demolish the said structure brevi manu, and lay up the wood
in safe-keeping. Old Dean Herbert, hearing what was toward,
comes tottering along hither, to plead humbly for himself and
his mill. The Abbot answers : " I am obliged to thee as if
thou hadst cut off both my feet ! By God's face, per os Dei, I
will not eat bread till that fabric be torn in pieces. Thou art
an old man, and shouldst have known that neither the King
nor his Justiciary dare change aught within the Liberties,
without consent of Abbot and Convent ; and thou hast pre-
sumed on such a thing ? I tell thee, it will not be without
damage to my mills ; for the Townsfolk will go to thy mill
and grind their corn (bladum suum) at their own good pleas-
ure ; nor can I hinder them, since they are free men. I will
allow no new mills on such principle. Away, away ; before
thou gettest home again, thou shalt see what thy mill has
grown to ! " * — The very reverend, the old Dean totters home
* Jocelini Chronica, p. 43.



112



THE ANCIENT MONK.



again in all haste ; tears the mill in pieces by his own car*
pextarii to save at least the timber ; and Abbot Samson's
workmen, coming up, find the ground already clear of it.

Easy to bully down poor old rural Deans, and blow their
windmills away : but who is the man that dare abide King
Richard's anger ; cross the Lion in his path, and take him by
the whiskers ! Abbot Samson too ; he is that man, with jus-
tice on his side. The case was this. Adam de Cokefield, one
of the chief feudatories of St. Edmund, and a principal man
in the Eastern Counties, died, leaving large possessions, and
for heiress a daughter of three months ; who, by clear law, as
all men know, became thus Abbot Samson's ward ; whom ac-
cordingly he proceeded to dispose of to such person as
seemed fittest. But now King Richard has another person in
view, to whom the little ward and her great possessions were
a suitable thing. He, by letter, requests that Abbot Samson
will have the goodness to give her to this person. Abbot
Samson, with deep humility, replies that she is already given.
Now letters from Richard, of severer tenor ; answered with
new deep humilities, with gifts and entreaties, with no prom-
ise of obedience. King Richard's ire is kindled ; messengers
arrive at St. Edmundsbury, with emphatic message to obey
or tremble ! Abbot Samson, wisely silent as to the King's
threats, makes answer : u The King can send if he will and
seize the ward : force and power he has to do his pleasure,
and abolish the whole Abbey. But I, for my part, never can
be bent to wish this that he seeks, nor shall it by me be ever
done. For there is danger lest such things be made a pre-
cedent of, to the prejudice of my successors. Videat Altissi-
mus, Let the Most High look on it. Whatsoever thing shall
befall I will patiently endure."

Such was Abbot Samson's deliberate decision. Why not ?
Cceur-de-Lion is very dreadful, but not the dreadfullest. Vi-
deat Altissimus. I reverence Cceur-de-Lion to the marrow of
my bones, and will in all right things be homo suns ; but it
is not, properly speaking, with terror, with any fear at all.
On the whole, have I not looked on the face of ' Satan with
outspread wings ; ' steadily into Hellfire these seven and -forty



PR A GTICAL-DE VOTIONA L.



113



years ; and was not melted into terror even at that, such the
Lord's goodness to me ? Coeur-de-Lion !

Richard swore tornado oaths, worse than our armies in
Flanders, to be revenged on that proud Priest. But in the end
he discovered that the Priest was right ; and forgave him, and
even loved him. ' King Richard wrote, soon after, to Abbot
' Samson, That he wanted one or two of the St. Edmundsbury
6 dogs, which he heard were good. ' Abbot Samson sent him
dogs of the best ; Richard replied by the present of a ring,
which Pope Innocent the Third had given him. Thou brave
Richard, thou brave Samson ! Richard too, I suppose, ' loved
a man,' and knew one when he saw him.

No one will accuse our Lord Abbot of wanting worldly wis-
dom, due interest in worldly things. A skilful man ; full of
cunning insight, lively interests ; always discerning the road
to his object, be it circuit, be it short-cut, and victoriously
travelling forward thereon. Nay rather it might seem, from
Jocelin's Narrative, as if he had his eye all but exclusively di-
rected on terrestrial matters, and was much too secular for a
devout man. But this too, if we examine it, was right. For
it is in the world that a man, devout or other, has his life to
lead, his work waiting to be done. The basis of Abbot Sam-
son's we shall discover, was truly religion, after all. Return-
ing from his dusty pilgrimage, with such welcome as we saw,
'he sat down at the foot of St. Edmund's Shrine.' Not a
talking theory that ; no, a silent practice : Thou St. Edmund
with what lies in thee, thou now must help me, or none will !

This also is a significant fact : the zealous interest our Ab-
bot took in the Crusades. To all noble Christian hearts of
that era, what earthly enterprise so noble ? ' When Henry II.,
c having taken the cross, came to Sfc. Edmund's, to pay his de-
' votions before setting out, the Abbot secretly made for. him-
' self a cross of linen cloth : and, holding this in one hand
' and a threaded needle in the other, asked leave of the King
' to assume it ! ' The King could not spare Samson out
of England ; — the King himself indeed never went. But
the Abbot's eye was set on the Holy Sepulchre, as on the spot
8



THE ANCIENT MONK.



of this Earth where the true cause of Heaven was deciding
itself. ' At the retaking of Jerusalem by the Pagans, Abbot
' Samson put on a cilice and hair-shirt, and wore under-gar-
' ments of hair-cloth ever after ; he abstained also from flesh
' and flesh-meats {came et carneis) thenceforth to the end of
' his life.' Like a dark cloud eclipsing the hopes of Christen-,
dom, those tidings cast their shadow over St. Eclmundsbury
too : Shall Samson Abbas take pleasure while Christ's Tomb
is in the hands of the Infidel ? Samson, in pain of body, shall
daily be reminded of it, daily be admonished to grieve for it.

The great antique heart : how like a child's in its simplicity,
like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth ! Heaven lies
over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the Earth ; making
all the Earth a mystic Temple to him, the Earth's business all
a kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the
common sunlight ; angels yet hover doing God's messages
among men : that rainbow was set in the clouds by the hand
of God ! Wonder, miracle encompass the man ; he lives in
an element of miracle ; Heaven's splendour over his head,
Hell's darkness under his feet. A great Law of Duty, high
as these two Infinitudes, dwarfing all else, annihilating all
else, — making royal Richard as small as peasant Samson,
smaller if need be ! — The c imaginative faculties ? ' £ Rude
poetic ages?' The 'primeval poetic element?' O for God's
sake, good reader, talk no more of all that ! It was not a
Dilettantism this of Abbot Samson. It was a Reality, and it
is one. The garment only of it is dead ; the essence of it
lives through all Time and all Eternity ! —

And truly, as we said above, is not this comparative silence
of Abbot Samson as to his religion, precisely the healthiest
sign of him and of it ? 6 The Unconscious is the alone Com-
plete.' Abbot Samson all along a busy working man, as all
men are bound to be, his religion, his worship was like his
daily bread to him ; — which he did not take the trouble to
talk much about ; which he merely eat at stated intervals,
and lived and did his work upon ! This is Abbot Samson's
Catholicism of the Twelfth Century ; — something like the Ism



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