Jean Froissart - The boys Froissart

The Monk Sir Froissart in the Breach of the Monastery Wall.

OF
Adventure Battle and Custom in
England France Spain etc.
EDITED FOR BOYS WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
SIDNEY LANIER
EDITOR OF THE BOYS KING ARTHUR
Illustrated by Alfred Kappes
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS
1895
Copyright, 1879 ,
By CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS.

P ERHAPS no boy will deny that to find the world still reading a book which was written five hundred years ago is a very wonderful business. For the world grows,faster than a boy; and when you remember how it is only about ten years since you were reading Jack the Giant-killer, and how you are infinitely beyond all that now,you know,you readily see that it must be a very manful man indeed who can make a book so strong and so all-time like as to go on giving delight through the ages, spite of prodigious revolutions in customs, in governments, and in ideas.

Now, Froissart sets the boys mind upon manhood and the mans mind upon boyhood. In reading him the young soul sifts out for itself the splendor, the hardihood, the daring, the valor, the generosity, the boundless conflict and unhindered action, which make up the boys early ideal of the man; while a more mature reader goes at once to his simplicity, his gayety, his passion for deeds of arms, his freedom from consciousness and from all internal debatein short, his boyishness. Thus Froissart helps youth forward and age backward.

With this enchanting quality, by which he not only defies, but even reverses, the passage of time, our fine Sir John has always had and will long have readers, both old and young; and if it were not for some peculiarities of his manner, growing mainly out of the habits of his time, there would be no need of any special edition of him for boys. But the latter sort find many halting-places and many skipping-places in him, by reason of his long dialogues, his tranquil way of telling all the particulars, and his gay habit of often relating events in chapter fifty which happened before those in chapter forty. The first two of these faults were virtues in Froissarts day, when the longer a story the better it helped to pass the time between battles; and the last one probably arose from the manner in which he collected many of his facts,which was as follows.

You must know that in the year 1357 this lively young Hainaulter, being at that time but about twenty years old, was asked by the Count Robert de Namur to write a history of the wars of those times. The idea tickled his fancy, and he went straightway to work.

If any of you should set about writing a history, you would most likely go up into the library, take down a great many books, pamphlets, and manuscripts, and pore and peer and scribble, until after a while when your back was aching and your eyes burning you would look at your watch and say, Bless me! its two oclock in the morning, and so to bed; and such would be your days work until the history was finished. But not so with our young Froissart. Instead of painfully burrowing among dusty books, he saddled his horse, strapped on his portmanteau behind, and cantered off along the road through the bright French air, with his faithful greyhound following. Presently he was pretty sure to overtake or be overtaken by some knight or esquire: whereupon Froissart would salute him, politely inquire his name, and ply him with artful questions as to the battles he had fought, the lords he had served, the negotiations he had conducted or assisted in, the events he had witnessed or heard of; and thus the two would converse by the way, the horses meantime embracing the opportunity to slacken pace, and the greyhound taking his chance to nose about here and there on each side the road. When the inn or friendly castle would be reached where lodgment was to be had in the evening, Froissart would jot down notes of all that he had learned from fellow-travellers during the day. Sometimes such a journey would terminate in a long visit at the castle of a great man,as when he went to see the Count of Foix, referred to in the Third Book of these Chronicles; and then in the long evenings he would learn, either from the actors themselves or from knights or attendants about their persons, the deeds and events with which they had been connected.

Although from Hainault, he was much in England. He loved the society of the great, and was often in it. He was at different times attached to the households of King Edward III. of England, and of King John of France; and became an especial favorite of his countrywoman Queen Philippa, wife to Edward III., who made him the Clerk of her Chamber. He had various offices and preferments, but is most commonly associated with the Church of Chimay in France, of which he was canon. He knew how to please his powerful friends: when he visited the Count of Foix,who loved dogs, and had sixteen hundred of them about him,he carried four greyhounds as a present to that nobleman; he bore a beautiful copy of his love-poem Meliador to Richard II. of England; he presented the earlier portions of his Chronicles to Queen Philippa, who was fond of letters.

He was romantic and poetical. It would seem that he began his travels early, in order to escape the torments of an unfortunate love for a certain lady which had attacked him when a mere boy, and which endured with more or less strength for some time. He was engaged in writing his Chronicles from the year 1357 certainly to the year 1400, for they include events up to the latter date. Without burdening my young readers minds, there are three names of great Englishmen which I cannot forbear begging them to associate with this period. These are, the names of Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote the Canterbury Tales and many other works; of William Langland, or Langley, who probably wrote the wonderful Book concerning Piers the Plowman; and of John Wyclif, who did the greatest service both for our religion and our language by giving forth the first complete translation of the Bible into English. Three large and beautiful souls; so large and beautiful, that one could scarcely frame a finer wish for any boy than that he should make friends with them, and live with them when he becomes a man.

Froissart did not confine himself to history: he wrote many poems,rondeaus, virelays, pastorals, romances. He lived a bright, genial, active, fruitful, and happy life; and died after the year 1400.

As you read of the fair knights and the foul knights,for Froissart tells of both,it cannot but occur to you that somehow it seems harder to be a good knight nowadays than it was then. This is because we have so many more ways of fighting now than in King Edward the Thirds time. A good deal of what is really combat nowadays is not