Truly, it is no easy matter to get across the chasm of Seven Centuries, filled with such material. But here, of all helps, is not a Boswell the welcomest; even a small Boswell? Veracity, 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, springing 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 innumerable peopled luminous _Days._ Not parchment Chartularies, Doctrines of the Constitution, O Dryasdust; not altogether, my erudite friend!-- Readers 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 answer;-- and we look into a pair of eyes deep as our own, _imaging_ 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 elapsed since _Beodric's-worth_* became St. Edmund's _Stow,_ St. Edmund's _Town_ and Monastery, before Jocelin entered himself a Novice there. 'It was,' says he, 'the year after the Flemings were defeated at Fornham St. Genevieve.'