To turn from poetry to prose, I have to remark that Ingulph, the Abbot of Croyland, who wrote the pleasant story of his monastery, appears to me to have been (possibly) a tailor’s son. The good old man does not indeed say as much, but he intimates that he was a cockney of humble origin; and, if “vous êtes orfèvre, Monsieur Josse,” have a significance, why something of the same sort may be detected in the phrases and, I may add, in the deeds of the Chronicler of Croyland. Ingulph was a Westminster boy and an Oxford scholar. Speaking of his studies at the latter place, he says:—“After I had made progress beyond most of my fellows in mastering Aristotle, I also _clothed myself down to the heels_ with the first and second rhetoric of Tully. On growing to be a young man, I loathed the narrow means of my parents, and daily longed with the most ardent desire to leave my paternal home, and sighed for the palaces of kings and princes, to clothe myself in soft or pompous raiment.” If Molière’s Monsieur Josse was discovered to be a goldsmith by the setting of his criticism, we may say that Ingulph was of a tailorish origin by the cut of his phrases. And so, as I have said, of his acts: in these there is a strong _redolence_ of what the vulgar call “cabbage.” For instance, when “trustworthy reports” were made by local valuers of land and property, in order that the same should be taxed, and the said valuers visited Croyland to that intent, Ingulph thus exultingly records what took place:—“Those persons showed a kind and benevolent feeling towards our monastery, and _did not value the monastery at its true revenue_, nor yet _at its exact extent_; and thus, in their compassion, took due precautions against the future exactions of the kings, as well as other burdens, and with the most attentive benevolence made provision for our welfare.” It is curious to see how robbing the king’s exchequer in favour of a monastery is called attentive benevolence; how fraudulent returns are spoken of as “trustworthy reports;” and how the Lord Abbot of Croyland, the personal favourite of William the Conqueror, cheated the master who confided in him, and practically illustrated the text, “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.”