Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 10.djvu/18

and teacher retire into the background, the unrivalled master oi historical narrative, the magical rebuilder of the past, assume their places, and the result appears in a picture of mediæval monasticism which will live as long as anything that Carlyle ever wrote. More than one professed romancer of the highest genius has dealt with the cloistral life; and the quaint mixture of nobility and naivete, of dignity and childishness, of the pathetic and the absurd, which meets one in the typical monkish character, has attracted poets and humorists in all ages. But none among them has ever done fuller justice to it than the author of the wonderful sketch of Abbot Samson and the St. Edmundsbury monks. Perhaps if one were challenged to name ten pages in which Carlyle has most brilliantly exhibited the whole array of those gifts by virtue of which he makes history live again, one would do well to seek them, not in the dramatic pages of the French Revolution, but in the two short chapters of Past and Present wherein he describes the canvassing for the new Abbot of St. Edmundsbury, and the final election of Samson Subsacrista to that exalted office. The preliminary chattering of the monks among themselves; the despatch of the thirteen delegate electors to Henry ii. at Waltham; their journey thither; and the formidable figure, dashed in with a few strokes, of the great King himself—it is all done in Carlyle's inimitable manner, with that force and truth and humour and swift unerring touch that marks his handling of any historic incident which had once taken hold of his imagination. Jocelin of Brakelond's narrative, is his sole authority throughout; but how vividly do the figures stand out on the faded tapestry of the monkish chronicler! And when at last the names of the competing candidates are one by one struck off, and the electors make their final unexpected presentment of the Subsacrista, how intensely real is the scene which follows!—

'The King's Majesty, looking at us somewhat sternly, then says: "You present to me Samson; I do not know him: had it been your Prior, whom I do know, I should have accepted him: however, I will