Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
For one thing, he had learned to write a kind of Monk or Dog-
Latin, still readable to mankind; and, by good luck for us, had
bethought him of noting down thereby what things seemed notablest
to him. Hence gradually resulted a _Chronica Jocelini;_ new
Manuscript in the _Liber Albus_ of St. Edmundsbury. Which
Chronicle, once written in its childlike transparency, in its
innocent good-humour, not without touches of ready pleasant wit
and many kinds of worth, other men liked naturally to read:
whereby it failed not to be copied, to be multiplied, to be
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 Collection,_--and has now therefrom, by Mr.
Rokewood of the Camden Society, been deciphered into clear print;
and lies before us, a dainty thin quarto, to interest for a few
minutes whomsoever it can.
Here too it will behove a just Historian gratefully to say that
Mr. Rokewood, Jocelin's Editor, has done his editorial function
well. Not only has he deciphered his crabbed Manuscript 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 meaning for the reader.
Standing faithfully by his text, and printing 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 before 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 explanatory 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, 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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