our hostile neighbours, and it also illustrates the quaint adage of old Eustace des Champs:

Bons sont les Chevaliers de Terre;

Bons sont les Chevaliers de Mer.'

When the king's fleet was almost got to Sluys, they saw so many masts standing before it, that they looked like a wood. The king asked the commander of his ship what they could be, who answered, that he imagined they must be that armament of Normans, which the king of France kept at sea, and which had so frequently done him much damage, had burnt his good town of Southampton, and taken his large ship the Christopher.

"The king replied, "I have for a long time wished to meet with them, and now, please God and St. George, we will fight with them; for, in truth, they have done me so much mischief, that I will be revenged on them, if it be possible."

"The king then drew up all his vessels, placing the strongest in the front, and on the wings his archers. Between every two vessels with archers there was one of men at arms. He stationed some detached vessels as a reserve, full of archers, to assist and help such as might be damaged.

There were in this fleet a great many ladies from England, countesses, baronesses, and knights and gentlemen's wives, who were going to attend on the queen at Ghent these the king had guarded most carefully by three hundred men at arms and five hundred archers.

When the king of England and his marshals had properly divided the fleet, they hoisted their sails to have the wind on, their quarter, as the sun shone full in their faces, which they considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished.

The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them: they perceived, however, by his banner, that the king was on board, which gave them great joy, as they were eager to fight with him ; so they put their vessels in proper order, for they were expert and gallant men on the seas. They filled the Christopher, the large ship which they had taken the year before from the English, with trumpets and other warlike instruments, and ordered her to fall upon the English.

The battle then began very fiercely archers and cross-bowmen shot with all their might at each other, and the men at arms engaged hand to hand : in order to be more successful, they had large grapnels, and iron hooks with chains, which they flung from ship to ship, to moor them to each other. There were many valiant deeds performed, many prisoners made and many rescues.

The Christopher, which led the van, was recaptured by the English, and all in her taken or killed. There were then great shouts and cries, and the English manned her again with archers and sent her to fight against the Genoese,

< This battle was very murderous and horrible. Combats at sea are more destructive and obstinate than upon land, for it is not pos¬ sible to retreat or flee-every one must abide his fortune, and exert his prowess and valour.

"Sir Hugh Quiriel and his companions were bold and determined men, had done much mischief to the English at sea, and destroyed many of their ships; this combat, therefore, lasted from early in the morning until noon, and the English were hard pressed, for their enemies were four to one, and the greater part men who had been used to the sea.

The king, who was in the flower of his youth, showed himself on that day a gallant knight, as did the Earls of Derby, Pembroke, Hereford, Huntingdon, Northampton, and Gloucester; the Lord Reginald Cobham, Lord Felton, Lord Bradestan, Sir Richard Stafford, the Lord Percy, Sir Walter Manny, Sir Henry de Flanders, Sir John Beauchamp, Sir John Chandos, the Lord Delaware, Lucie Lord Malton, and the Lord Robert d'Artois, now called Earl of Richmond. I cannot remember all the names of those who behaved so valiantly in the combat; but they did so well, that, with some assistance from Bruges and those parts of the country, the French were completely defeated, and all the Normans and the others were killed or drowned, so that not one of them escaped. This was soon known all over Flanders: and when it came to the two armies before Thin l'Evêque, the Hainaulters were as much rejoiced as their enemies were dismayed.'

To conclude our character of Froissart's work, we cannot pass over his excellence in descriptive scenery, of which a striking instance occurs in the beginning of the first volume, where he is giving an account of the most singular march of the English army in pursuit of the Scots between Durham and Newcastle. He himself, at a period long subsequent to the event he relates, travelled through the same country, and probably at that time made such observations as contributed afterwards to heighten the effect of the fine picture he has presented to us. The detail we have already given renders it almost unnecessary to remark that he is equally admirable in laying open to us the characters of the principal personages of his drama. This he does, not by long comments on particular actions, nor by pictures drawn on purpose to produce the effect (for it must be observed that Froissart never stops at all in the course of his narration to make reflections), but by minute details of actions and little strokes of character which occur naturally in the course of events. To call him a philosophic historian would expose us to the derision of every reader who opens the book; but we may nevertheless venture to assert that in his plain, honest, unvarnished tale,' we can generally discover for

ourselves those secret springs of action, which a more profound historian often labours to expose in vain, and only plunges us into greater obscurity by his learned and scienti fic endeavours to elucidate.

The defects of Froissart's history are exactly those which such a mind as Froissart's could not avoid. We are hurried from action to action, and from time to time, without regard to distinctness either of detail or of chronology. Like Ariosto, and the various romancers who have taken Turpin's Fables for the model of their poems, he leaves one of his heroes engaged, perhaps, at a siege of some castle in Brittany, to hasten without any reason to the exploits of another in Hainault, or the Cambresis, and thence carries us away in the same sudden manner to a feast or a procession at Paris or at Rome, to a long unconnected series of adventures in Languedoc or Provence, or a battle between the Scots and English on the Borders, and at length, after a space of ten or twenty chapters, or even of half a book, lands us again on the same spot and before the same town which we vainly fancied we had quitted some years before, and now find to our astonishment that no further impression has been made upon the outworks than when we left it,

His great diffuseness, and minuteness of detail (which is equally observable on the most trifling, as on the most interesting occasions), becomes frequently extremely tedious; but this we are readily disposed to forgive on account of the many counterbalancing advantages attending it.

His chronology is not more perplexed than his geography, and his knowledge of names and terms. Nor is his ignorance confined to those points, but becomes gross enough to scandalize all good Christians when they hear that a Priest, Canon, and Treasurer of the collegiate Church of Chimay, calls Nebuchadnezzar the prince and leader of God's Chivalry.'

Indeed, though a churchman, Froissart was by no means addicted to priest-craft; and we readily forgive, and are even entertained by the superstitious tales which he now and then introduces into his history with the most honest credulity, as they have no mixture in them of Romish miracles or saintly legends.

Froissart has been accused by many French writers of partiality to the English; but from this charge he is very ably and satisfactorily (we think) exculpated by M. de St. Palaye, in the criticism on his history, which we have before noticed. The characters of King Edward and his son, of Sir John Chandos, and Sir Walter Manny,were indeed so splen

did, and so far eclipsed the contemporary chivalry of France by the brilliancy of their great exploits, that it was impossible to write a faithful history of the times, without bestowing greater praise and honour on the English naine, than a true Frenchman would probably feel inclined to admit yet it does not at all follow that Froissart received an undue bias on the side of dur countryinen, or was any further prejudiced than the most honest man must be in favour of superior worth. But he stands fairly acquitted from all stigma of this nature, on the internal evidence of the work itself. Many instances occur in the course of his history, where he gives the lie to many of our own historians, and seems to deal ont with most just and scrupulous measure, the due shares of praise and blame that attached to each nation and court. M. de St. Palave, in the Essay before referred to, has collected many of these instances. We will add one that recurs to our own observation in confirmation of our remark. The English have always looked on the splendid character of their black Prince with a degree of enthusiastic reverence approaching to adoration. They are quite unable to find a blemish in his illustrious character. Yet Froissart does not spare the recital of actions in which he must needs fall under severe censure, He mentions the unknightly conduct of which he was guilty, in letting loose the Free Companions, and encouraging them to renew their depredations and hostilities in France, after his return from the Spanish expedition.-He records, even with unusual warmth, the impolitic and ungenerous theasures he took against his subjects in Aquitaine, which proved the cause of a general rebellion, and, not long afterwards, of a new and furious war between the two nations. He enters with zeal into the wise and manly remon strance. made him by Sir John Chandos, and appears to accompany that worthy knight, sullen and discontented, to his retirement at St. Sauveur in Coutantin.

We have thus attempted to give a sketch of the work," which Mr. Johnes has undertaken to translate. On the vast importance of the work itself, particularly to our national historians, we shall no further observe, than for the purpose of rendering to Mr. J. those acknowledgments which we think he justly merits from the literary world. This history, important as it is, and most highly interesting, from its subject, to every Englishman, has hitherto met with only one translator; but that translator was, at the time he undertook the task, in every respect most admirably qualified for the execution of it. Lord Berners was himself a soldier" and à courtier in the reign of Henry VIII., a period at which the CRIT. REV. Vol. 7. March, 1800

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spirit of chivalry was not entirely lost either in the camp or the court. Its peculiarities were still within the observation, or at least the remembrance of many, and its language and phraseology survived, for a very considerable period, the decay of its more noble qualities. The style and words of Lord Berners are, accordingly, precisely those of Froissart made English, It is, therefore, a real loss to literature that his translation is now become so extremely scarce and difficult to be met with, and it would still be a useful task, (the utility of which Mr. J. has now diminished indeed, but not superseded) to present a new edition to the world. We here disclaim all design of insinuating that Mr. Johnes should rather have employed his talents in such a work, than in the line he has chosen to adopt. On the contrary, it would be paying a very poor compliment to his labours not to add, (which we do most sincerely) that we have to thank him for a much more important service. The language of the days of Henry VIII.'is become, in many respects, obsolete and almost unintelligible, except to antiquaries. A mere general reader could not sit down with other sentiments than those of disgust to so mouldy a meal, and would soon rise again, tired with the trouble of picking. Lord Berners has, besides, in most parts increased the deformity of his original with regard to the names of places and persons. Even those of our own nobility with which, we should suppose, he ought to have been perfectly well acquainted, are seldom, if ever, rectified, and are generally made more uncouth and barbarous than Froissart himself had left them.

To remedy all these deficiencies in our stores of national history was Mr. J.'s praise-worthy intention. The work he has undertaken is of a very extensive nature. The three volumes already published make but a fourth part of the whole, though they include much more than half the chronological period of the history, relating all the occurrences from 1826 to 1360 Passessed of many valuable MSS. himself, Mr. J. spares no cost nor pains in his task of consulting all the celebrated ones in our own country, and several of those which are preserved in foreign collections. From the Breslaw MS, in particular he has already received some important additions no where else to be found, which he has inserted in the present edition, and he gives us some reason to expect still richer treasures from the same mine. He has with very great and commendable industry, reformed Froissart's innumerable errors in his proper names, wherever. it is possible to do so. Many of these he has replaced from the best parallel authorities, which he seems to be in the constant

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