By the Rev. Canon Jackson, F.S.A. 



41 



the land of the country. Before making any remark upon that I 

 would just observe, that a great many other things have been said to 

 their disparagement, as for instance, some have condemned them 

 wholesale, as merely receptacles of a lazy useless set of men. 



No doubt in later times, when founder's rules began to be for- 

 gotten, there were among so many wearers of the hood, many 

 somewhat unclerical. It was so when our poet Chaucer in his Pro- 

 logue picked out one of this sort for immortality. This was one of 

 the fat and jolly species who found the rule of St. Benedict much 

 too old-fashioned and tight : who candidly, says in the poetry " If 

 St. Benedict likes to work with his hands, he may do so, but for my 

 own part I like a dainty horse and greyhound, and pricking for the 

 hare/'' As to the good things of the table, he candidly avows, that 

 "A fat swan lov'd he, best of any roast." 



That the monks thought a good deal about eating and drinking, 

 is an opinion also widely fixed upon the public mind, by a famous 

 and well-known picture from the pencil of Landseer the great 

 animal-painter. Wishing to bring together into one tableau, many 

 varieties of fish, flesh and fowl, he took for his locality, the larder 

 of a monastery : in which, a very portly and comfortable-looking 

 manciple is receiving and registering a number of articles that hold 

 out the promise of very good fare. 



But it is unfair to judge of any system only by its defects. All 

 things and all systems we know are apt to slide into abuse, and to fall 

 away from the propriety and rigour with which they first began. 

 Rules become obsolete, discipline relaxed, and the habits of the outer 

 world imperceptibly steal in, within precincts that were severely 

 guarded at the first. But it was the case with the monasteries, as 

 with individuals : 



" The evil that men do, lives after them : 

 The good is oft interred with their bones/' 



or as the same idea is otherwise expressed by the same pen : 



" Men's evil manners live in brass : their virtues we write in water." 



We do not deny the faults : but let us also fairly consider the 



