estis Samsonis
Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi: nunc primum typis mandata,
curante Johanne Gage Rokewood._ (Camden Society, London, 1840)
----------

Jocelin of Brakelond cannot be called a conspicuous literary
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 example:--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 surname de
Brakelonda indicates a native of St. Edmundsbury 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 _'obedientia,'_
subaltern officiality there, or rather, in succession 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 existence, 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
infinitesimally small one; neither did he altogether want his
_Johnson_ even there and then. Johnsons are rare; yet, as has
been asserted, Boswels perhaps still rarer,--the more is the pity
on both sides! This Jocelin, as we can discern well, was an
ingenious and ingenuous, a cheery-hearted, innocent, yet withal
shrewd, noticing, quick-wilted 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 inhuman manner,--afflictive to all that have humanity!
The man is of patient, peaceable, loving, clear-smiling nature;
open for this and that. A wise simplicity is in him; much
natural sense; a _veracity_ that goes deeper than words.
Veracity: it is the basis of all; and, some say, means genius
itself; the prime essence of all genius whatsoever. Our
Jocelin, for the rest, has read