Count Gaston received him hospitably, and filled his three months' sojourn with stories of great events. Then Froissart visited many towns of Provence and Languedoc. These peregrinations furnished much of the material for Book iii. Little more is known of his life, except with respect to a visit to England which he made in 1394, and which enabled him to collect material for a large part of Book iv., the last in the chronicle. He is supposed to have died at Chimay, later than 1400, and perhaps, as tradition asserts, in 1410.

It is an engaging picture, this, of a genial, sharp-eyed, somewhat worldly churchman, riding his gray horse over hill and dale in quest of knowledge. We can fancy him arriving at his inn of an evening, and at once asking the obsequious host what knight or other great person dwells in the neighborhood. He loses no time before calling at the castle, and is gladly admitted when he tells his wellknown name. He is ready to pay for any historical information with a story from his own collection. He is welcome everywhere, and for his part does not regret the time thus spent, nor the money,- several fortunes, by his own count,- for he has the light heart of the true traveler. It is always sunshine where he goes. The clangor of arms and the blare of trumpets hover ever above the horizon. Around the corner of every hill sits a fair castle by a shining river. From town to town, from province to province, his love of listening draws him on. To realize the charm of journeying in those days, we must remember that the local customs and qualities were almost undisturbed by communication; two French cities only a score of miles apart would often differ from each other as much as Nuremberg does from Venice.

"And I tell you for a truth,” we read, "that to make these chronicles I have gone in my time much through the world, both to fulfill my pleasure by seeing the wonders of the earth, and to inquire about the arms and adventures that are written in this book.»

So to horse, good Canon of Chimay! Throw aside books; there is news of fighting in the South; after the battle, soldiers will talk. There have been deeds of courage and romance. Hasten thither, while the tale of them is new!

If he were not so celebrated as a chronicler, Froissart would be known as one of the last of the wandering minstrels. He had the roving foot; he lived by charming the rich into generosity with his recitals. And he wrote much poetry, which is little read, except where it has some autobiographical interest. We possess the long poems, 'L'Espinette Amoureuse,' 'Le Buisson de Jeunesse,' 'Le Dit du Florin,' and several shorter pieces, with fragments of his once famous versified romance Méliador.'

His great prose work, while professing to be a history, in distinction from the chronicles of previous writers, is however not an orderly narration, nor is it a philosophical treatment of political causes and effects. It is a collection of pictures and stories, without much unity except the constant purpose of exhibiting the prowess of knighthood. There is not much indication even of partisanship or patriotic feeling. Froissart generally gives due meed of praise to the best knight in every bout, the best battalion in every encounter, regardless of sides.

The subjects treated are so numerous and disparate that no general idea of them can be given. They cover the time from 1326 to 1394, and lead us through England, Scotland, Flanders, Hainault, France, Italy, Spain, and Northern Africa. Among the most interesting passages are the story of King Edward's campaign against the Scots; his march through France; the battle of Crécy; the siege of Calais; Wat Tyler's Rebellion, which Froissart the well-fed parasite treats with an odd and inconsistent mingling of horror and contempt; the Jacquerie, which he says was the work of peasant dogs, the scum of the earth; the battle of Poitiers, with a fine description of the Black Prince waiting at table on poor captured King Jean; and the rise and fall of Philip van Artevelde.

Froissart's chronicle used to be regarded as authoritative history. But as might have been expected from his mode of inquiry, it is full of geographical, chronological, and other errors. Getting his information by ear, he wrote proper names phonetically, or turned them into something resembling French. Thus Worcester becomes "Vaucestre," Seymour "Simon," Sutherland "Surlant," Walter Tyler "Vautre Tuilier," Edinburgh "Hedaimbourch," Stirling "Eturmelin." The persons from whom he got his material were generally partisans either of France or of England, and often told him their stories years after the events; so that although he tried to be impartial himself, and to offset one witness by another, he seldom heard a judicial account of a battle or a quarrel. He seems to have consulted few written records, though he might easily have seen the State papers of England and Hainault.

It is useless to blame him, however; for the writing of mere history was not his purpose. With all his fine devotion to his life work, a devotion which is the more admirable when we consider his pleasure-loving nature,- with all his attention to fairness, his great concern was not so much to instruct as to delight, first himself, secondly the great people of his age, and lastly posterity, on whom he ever and anon cast a shrewd and longing glance. To please his contemporaries, he several times revised his work. Posterity has nearly always preferred what might be called the first edition, which is the most unconscious and entertaining, though the least precise.

But if we must deny him much of the value as a political historian which was once attributed to him, we may still regard him as a great authority for the general aspect of life in the fourteenth century. Manners, customs, morals, as well as armor and dress, are no doubt correctly portrayed in his book. We learn from it what was deemed virtue and what vice; we learn that although religion was sincerely professed by the upper classes, it was not very successfully practiced, and had amazingly little effect upon morals. We are struck, for instance, with the absence of imagination or sympathy. which permitted people to witness the horrible tortures inflicted on prisoners and criminals, although their minds were frequently filled with visions of supernatural beings. Froissart unconsciously makes himself, too, a medium for studying human character in his time, by his negative morality, his complacent recording of crimes, his unconcerned mention of horrors. Yet from his bringing up as a poet, and his scholarly associations, and his connection with the Church, it is likely he was a gentler man than nine-tenths of the knights and squires and men-at-arms about him.

There is an indifference colder even than cynicism in his failure to remark on the sufferings of the poor, which were so awful in his age. It is the result of class prejudice, and seems deliberate. The burned village, the trampled grain-field, the cowering women, the starved children, the rotting corpses, the mangled forms of living and agonizing foot-soldiers, - all these consequences of war he sees and occasionally mentions, yet they hardly touch him. But he is forever mourning the death of stricken knights as if it were a woeful loss. Yet for all his association with the governing class, we never find ourselves thinking of him as anything but a commoner raised to fortune by genius and favor. He has not the distinction of Joinville, who was a nobleman in the conventional sense and also in the truest sense.

Froissart's merit, then, is not that he is a great political historian, nor even a great historian of the culture of his time. He did not see accurately enough to be the first, nor broadly and deeply and independently enough to be the second. But kindly Nature made. him something else, and enabled him to win that name which honoreth most and most endureth." She gave him the painter's eye, the poet's fancy, and it is as the artist of chivalry he lives to-day. His chronicle may be often false to historical fact, it may not display a broad and sympathetic intelligence or a generous impatience of conventionality, but it does please, it does enthrall. It is one of those books without moral intent, like the Arabian Nights, which the boys of all ages will persist in reading, and which men delight in if they love good pictures and good story-telling. No more lasting colors have come down to us from Venetian painters than those which rush

out from the words on his pages. His scenes do not take shape in our minds as etchings or engravings, but smile themselves into being, like oil-paintings. Sunlight, the glint of steel, red and yellow banners waving, white horses galloping over the sand, flashing armor, glittering spurs, the shining faces of eager men, fill with glory this great pictorial wonder-book of the Middle Ages.

GeoMiLion Harper

THE INVASION OF FRANCE BY KING EDWARD III., AND THE BATTLE OF CRÉCY

From the Chronicles': Translation of John Bourchier, Lord Berners

HOW THE KING OF ENGLAND RODE THROUGH NORMANDY

WHE

HEN the King of England arrived in the Hogue Saint-Vaast, the King issued out of his ship, and the first foot that he set on the ground he fell so rudely that the blood brast out of his nose. The knights that were about him took him up and said, "Sir, for God's sake enter again into your ship, and come not aland this day, for this is but an evil sign for us.” Then the King answered quickly and said, "Wherefore? This is a good token for me, for the land desireth to have me." Of the which answer all his men were right joyful. So that day and night the King lodged on the sands, and in the mean time discharged the ships of their horses and other baggages; there the King made two marshals of his host, the one the Lord Godfrey of Harcourt and the other the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of Arundel constable. And he ordained that the Earl of Huntingdon should keep the fleet of ships with a hundred men of arms and four hundred archers; and also he ordained three battles, one to go on his right hand, closing to the seaside, and the other on his left hand, and the King himself in the midst, and every night to lodge all in one field.

Thus they set forth as they were ordained, and they that went by the sea took all the ships that they found in their ways; and so long they went forth, what by sea and what by land, that they came to a good port and to a good town called Barfleur, the

which incontinent was won, for they within gave up for fear of death. Howbeit, for all that, the town was robbed, and much gold and silver there found, and rich jewels; there was found so much riches, that the boys and villains of the host set nothing. by good furred gowns; they made all the men of the town to issue out and to go into the ships, because they would not suffer them to be behind them for fear of rebelling again. After the town of Barfleur was thus taken and robbed without brenning, then they spread abroad in the country and did what they list, for there was not to resist them. At last they came to a great and a rich town called Cherbourg; the town they won and robbed it, and brent part thereof, but into the castle they could not come, it was so strong and well furnished with men of war.

OF THE GREAT ASSEMBLY THAT THE FRENCH KING MADE TO RESIST THE KING OF ENGLAND

THUS by the Englishmen was brent, exiled, robbed, wasted, and pilled the good plentiful country of Normandy. Then the French King sent for the Lord John of Hainault, who came to him with a great number; also the King sent for other men of arms, dukes, earls, barons, knights, and squires, and assembled together the greatest number of people that had been seen in France a hundred year before. He sent for men into so far countries, that it was long or they came together, wherefore the King of England did what him list in the mean season. The French King heard well what he did, and sware and said how they should never return again unfought withal, and that such hurts and damages as they had done should be dearly revenged; wherefore he had sent letters to his friends in the Empire, to such as were farthest off, and also to the gentle King of Bohemia and to the Lord Charles his son, who from thenceforth was called King of Almaine; he was made King by the aid of his father and the French King, and had taken on him the arms of the Empire: the French King desired them to come to him with all their powers, to the intent to fight with the King of England, who brent and wasted his country. These Princes and Lords made them ready with great number of men of arms, of Almains, Bohemians, and Luxemburgers, and so came to the French King. Also King Philip sent to the Duke of Lorraine, who came to serve him with three hundred spears; also there came the Earl