in the true chronicles formerly "written by that reverend, wise, and discreet man, John le Bel, canon of St. Lambert's at Liege; who bestowed great care and diligence on them, and continued them as faithfully as he could to his death, though not without much pains and expense but these he minded not, being rich and powerful." Froissart seems, however, to have recast John le Bel's work, incorporating with it much additional matter of his own. The account of the remaining forty-three years is entirely original, and records events of many of which Froissart was himself a witness.

The Chronicle includes two whole reigns,—that of Edward the Third, supported by his gallant son, and that of Richard the Second, a monarch who seemed sent only to make good the saying that, in the Plantagenet line, a weak prince frequently intervened between two powerful ones. We propose upon the present occasion, however, after a few observations upon Froissart himself, to deal only with the earlier portion of the period recorded in his chronicle, confining our remarks chiefly to the condition and circumstances of England at the accession and during the reign of Edward the Third.

Both Jean le Bel and Froissart, although they wrote in the dialect of "oil," may be classed in matter and feelings far more justly among English than French chroniclers. Both were natives of Flanders, a country strongly allied to England and commonly at war with France; and Froissart in particular was, during many years of his life, attached to the household of Queen Philippa, and was at all times well received at the English court.

The admirers of Froissart, and who is not among them? are indebted to the late Mr. Johnes of Hafod for a careful examination and collation of the best manuscript copies of the Chronicle, as well as for the translation now in general use in this country. His translation, however, is miserably defective,-not indeed so much on the ground of its inaccuracy, although it is very imperfect in this respect, as on account of the tame vapid English into which it is rendered; and in which point it is immeasurably inferior to the old version of Lord Berners, partially obsolete though it has become. In the edition before us, the translation of Mr. Johnes has been followed, corrected by a note where it absolutely needs it, but in no degree improved in style. The notes also contain a few choice passages from Lord Berners, though how little they tend to set off the text to advantage will appear from the following comparison. The passage recounts the parting scene between Edward and the celebrated Countess of Salisbury. We begin with Mr. Johnes:-

Upon taking leave of the Countess, he said, "My dear Lady, God preserve you until I return; and I entreat that you will think well of what I have said, and have the goodness to give me a different answer." "Dear Sir," replied the Countess, "God of his infinite goodness, preserve you, and drive from your heart such villainous thoughts; for I am, and always shall be,

ready to serve you consistently with my own honour and with yours." The King left her quite surprised.-Johnes. Cap. lxxvii.

The following is the translation of the same scene of Lord Berners :

Than he toke leave of the lady saying, "My dere Lady, to God I comende you tyll return agyne, requiryng you to advyse you otherwyse than ye have sayed to me. "Noble prynce," quoth the lady, "God the Father glorious be your conduct, and put you out of all vylayne thoughts. Sir, I am and ever shall be redy to do your grace seruyce to your honour and to myne." Therwith the Kyng departed all abassed.-Lord Berners.

Though occasionally a little obsolete and obscured, the real strength of the language is in Lord Berners's version. Mr. Johnes treats his author as churchwardens treat our fine old Gothic churches. He has plastered and whitewashed him. The sharpness of the ornaments is completely hidden.

The wars between France and England, and the interior manners of the courts of England and of the princes allied to her, form the staple of Froissart's pages; but his visits to Spain, Italy, Ireland, and Scotland, enabled him to diversify his narrative with many passages from the history of those and other countries.

Froissart has always been more popular than any other contemporary, and probably than any other chronicler. M. de St. Palaye, his French editor, says that manuscripts of Froissart are most numerous after those of the Bible and the Fathers. Certainly, with but little tediousness he possesses many charms, and presents, perhaps in a more striking manner than any other writer, the peculiarities of narrative as opposed to philosophical history.

History indeed is strictly philosophical; its scope is epic; it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It presents us with abstractions; it acts through the reason; tells of the great results of a campaign; of the general features of the business transacted at a council. A chronicle on the contrary is poetical; it is lyric; it represents a series of independent actions; it contains the elements of the ballad and romance; it deals in the concrete; its province is the imagination, even when it seems to leave little scope for its exercise. Nations like individuals have their different ages: the chronicle is the style of infancy-the horn-book,-it treats men as if they were little children. Those who content themselves with modern compilations, or even with sound philosophical writings, to the neglect of the original authorities, lose much of the charm of our old English history. A compilation is not only less accurate, but less vivid, less picturesque, less fresh: it is the difference between the flat liquor of yesterday and the sparkling draught of to-day. The zest is gone. Instead of the warm colouring of the old tale, instinct with life and truth, we have a chilled and paralyzed copy. The general outline is the same,-the same elements, the same images enter into the picture, but the mode

of handling them is different; and instead of the warmth or roundness of Titian or Rubens, we have the cold hard forms of the modern French school. This reappearance of Froissart and his successor Monstrelet, together with the reception with which the publications of the Camden society have been greeted, leads us to hope that the public taste in this respect is improving, and that men are beginning to unite the study of the ancient chronicles with the comprehensive views of our modern philosophical historians.

The period of which Froissart wrote was one admirably suited to the subject of a chronicler,-better probably than any other that the world ever saw. It includes the reign of Edward the Third, the life and actions of the Black Prince, the early splendour of Richard the Second; not a few Scottish campaigns, and more than one in Flanders and Spain. But its brilliant features are the wars of England for the sovereignty of France, the memorable battles of Crecy and Poictiers, the surrender and subsequent defence of Calais, and the campaigns of Najara,-glorious in everything except in the character of the monarch whom it reseated upon his throne. England by land and sea was everywhere victorious. France shaken to her centre, struggled in her mortal throes; and foundations were laid of that deadly strife between the Norman and Teutonic races, which at an expense of so much blood and treasure has been waged between France and England century by century from Crecy to Waterloo. Feudal splendour then touched its limit, knightly valour never shone more conspicuous, was never more loftily exalted by the eccentric, but not insincere devotion of chivalry, never more beautifully softened down and humanized by a free and flowing courtesy. France was then weak because internal spoliation had crushed her commerce, and three successive monarchs had beat down her commonalty, and utterly excluded them from all voice in the imports or transactions of the empire; but the very tyranny that diminished her real strength as a nation, had been exerted in order to add to the splendour of her chivalry, then the bravest and most impetuous in the world. The Dutchy of Burgundy rivalled France itself. The great fiefs of Normandy, Guyenne, Toulouse, and Britanny, were held with powers over life and limb, of independent war and peace, with powers nearly allied to sovereignty, and by men whose feudal magnificence rivalled and even eclipsed that of their liege lord and sujerain. The wars of Edward extended from Spain and Britanny to the Flemish border; and far exceeded, in the extent of their operations as in the brilliancy of their victories, the campaigns of any previous reign. France from sea to sea rose up in arms. The rays of military glory lightened into the remote recesses of Christendom. From the Appennines, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, to the distant Cheviot; from the Rhine and the Tagus to the Thames, the mingled warriors of Europe crowded to join in that bloody conflict, on one side or the other of which

appeared every lord and every vassal who sought plunder or renown. Under the banner of England were arrayed her Saxon yeomanry, her well-trained archers, the flower of her Norman nobles. With them fought the heavily-armed chivalry of Aquitaine, the cool sturdy Flemish, the hot-blooded Celts of Wales and Britanny, and their half-clad brethren from Ireland. On the side of France appeared her own impetuous men-at-arms, the Scottish pikemen, the German and Bohemian heavy cavalry, the well-armed swarthy Italian, the cross-bow-men of Genoa and Leghorn, the slingers and light archers of the Pyrenees,-a mingled host. France, hunted hard, was at length brought to bay. The island mastiff was never loosed upon a nobler quarry, the pomp and circumstance of war never glittered in such bright array, the weeds of peace were never so costly, never worn at triumphs so high. Deeds of valour and renown, battles won, strong fortresses beleaguered, wealthy cities sacked, kings slain or taken prisoners, tournaments, pageants, feastings, royal homages,. were matters of daily occurrence, and in which Froissart took an infinite delight.

In sooth the man himself was not ill suited to his task. With an uncommon share of the merits, Froissart has less than the common share of the faults of writers of narrative history. The chroniclers of those days wrote commonly from the cloister, and related events, at second hand, in a grave, ecclesiastical, and, with respect be it spoken, a somewhat prosing tone. Froissart, on the contrary, was a man not of speculation, but of action; animated, pointed, dramatic, lavish of money, fond of good cheer, hunting, music, warlike sights, dress, and female beauty, and entering with most uncanonical zest into all the dissipations of a dissipated age. He sings

of "fierce wars and faithful loves." He is always cheerful, in a goodhumour, occupied with his subject rather than himself, not generally anxious to thrust himself into the presence of his readers, though by no means without a spice of vanity in his composition. In his days, love was regarded as the spring of every noble act or gallant exploit, and our canon was not backward with his homage. His love stories, madrigals, and virelays, his book of amorous poetry, collected by the aid of "God and Cupid," his devotion to his first love carried on from sixteen to sixty, "in spite," as he says, "of his bald-head and grey hairs," so oddly mixed up with a number of episodical attachments, are all infinitely delightful; and, although these amiable weaknesses are not actually related in his history, they have not the less combined to render him the prince of chroniclers. In those days, the appetite for fabulous narrative was at its height, and Froissart, in common with the rest of the world, more than half believed

the glowing romances of chivalry, upon which his style was formed, and upon the general taste for which his chronicle is ingeniously grafted. The deeds of some of his heroes are, indeed, to the full as romantic as any he could have read of in fable. He writes like a man who has seen and felt all he describes. His minute details persuade us to an easy conviction, that he has left nothing to be added. Instead of the dry bones of the monastic writers, he presents us with good flesh and blood, and in rich garments to boot. His figures are real men and women, at home in their braveries, not decked out for the nonce, like the man in armour at a lord mayor's-show, nor all front like a statue in a niche. They will bear handling; you may walk round them; their blemishes are not unpleasantly dwelt upon, but they are not concealed. We marvel, that some of our modern religious biographers have not learned how much the admission of a few defects among the beauties adds to the truth and individuality of a portrait.

The Makers and Troubadours of the age preceding Froissart, were often grossly indelicate, and their mirth and satire often rude in the extreme. Froissart confines himself to his subject; he has no objection to a ludicrous tale when it falls in his way, but he does not seek it; his satire never exceeds a good-natured allusion, and he is always decorous.

Froissart is rather a constructive than a creative writer; his strength lies in description, not in invention; and in the description of men rather than of things; but not of men as we find them in an eastern tale, where the gold and jewels draw off all attention from their wearer. In his pictures we have indeed a blaze of arms and armour, tabards, embroidered banners, and glittering caparisons, scattered about with a liberal hand; but these are the mere accessories of the picture, and are kept in due subordination to the principal subject.

As an historical authority, Froissart is not to be relied upon; he is too careless, far too credulous, in every way too partial. His silence upon French affairs, remarkable in so loquacious a writer, may in some degree be attributed to his attachment to the English cause, but is, no doubt, chiefly due to the haughty spirit of the French monarchs, who took no counsel of their people, called no public assemblies, and wrapped both their victories and defeats in an oriental silence. Tacitus attributes the decline of history in part to the exclusion of the people from public affairs. The archives of England, under Edward the Third, are rich in historical documents. Of the corresponding period in France, there are absolutely none at all; and French historians have been obliged to gather facts from the collateral authorities of England. But Froissart was partial, not so much because he regarded men as they inclined to England or France, as because he viewed them only as they appeared in the court