1825. ] 
and if this be what Mr. Burke dirged 
over so pathetically in his famous 
“ Apostrophe,”’ we shall perhaps not 
lament that it “is gone for ever !” The 
reader, will observe how naturally it 
introduces the character of Froissart, 
and the circumstances under which he 
wrote his history. 
‘The feudal society of the middle age 
took its morals and its laws from its situa- 
tion, that is to say, from a state of continual 
warfare. As war was constantly carried on 
from man to man, from sovereign to sub- 
ject, from manor to city, and from city to 
castle, all education was resolved into a 
long’ military apprenticeship; vestments 
gave ‘place to armour; houses became for- 
tresses; and the whole life of man a state 
of combat. All the usages and sentiments 
of men adapted themselves to this singular 
situation of things. War, which till then 
had been carried on without mercy, be- 
came milder in its mood by becoming more. 
regular in its system; it had its laws, which 
fixed the rights of service and of resistance; 
its heralds of arms, who declared hostili- 
ties; its maxims of honour for captives; 
its courtesies belonging to the field of bat- 
tle, and its ransoms: in one word, it ele- 
vated itself into an ideal perfection, and 
became chivalry. Even the state of peace 
felt the change; there were no longer any 
other shows but tournaments; love filled 
up the intervals of arms; it was only by 
his deeds that a gentleman could gain the 
golden spurs of knighthood, and by his 
prowess as a knight that he could win the 
heart of his lady. The poetical character 
which war assumed towards the close of 
the thirteenth century, and which it pre- 
served upto the time of Francis I., was 
~ lost in becoming religious; it then adopted 
a character derived from passions too deep 
and inexorable, and from interests too posi- 
tive, to admit of the struggles of war being 
turned into a splendid amusement; or to 
produce any thing but sectarian troops and 
mechanical armies. The poetical character 
of war is only to be found in the Chronicles 
of Froissart, who is eminently the historian 
of feudal chivalry; and who has revived a 
vastand brilliant picture of the events and 
the manners of the fourteenth century. 
‘That warlike and picturesque epoch could 
neyer haye found to represent it, a man of 
a more splendid imagination, a more lively 
and natural historian, a chronicler of a 
i n taste for the high feats of 
arms he is describing, than Froissart. Born 
‘with a restless and unquiet disposition, and 
an insatiable curiosity, he wandered over 
the whole of Europe which was then known, 
not to seek, but to collect adventures. 
Secretary to, the Queen of England, Phi- 
lippa.of Haynault, and canon of Chimay, 
he was admitted ga teviatinacy,of all the 
pote” Breet ns and knights of the 
n which he lived, and was some- 
Montutiy Mac. No. 414. 
Philosophy of Contemporary Criticism. 
137 
what fonder of the pleasures, the hypocras 
and the spices of. royal palaces, than the 
monotonous life of a churchman. “He went 
from one court to another, mounted on his 
stately horse, carrying his wallet behind 
him, and followed by his greyhound, to col- 
lect and record his histories on the spot.’ 
The high but discriminative estima- 
tion of the merits of the Chronicles, as 
authentic materials for history, is criti- 
cally correct; and the following obser- 
vations, on the charge against Frois- 
sart, “ of having written only the his- 
tory of the nobles,” are as candid as 
they are just. 
** Froissart was under the influence of 
his time. A member of the commons by 
birth, of the church by his profession, but 
a gentleman by his tastes and habits, his 
preferences were all on the side of castles, 
of courts, of the feasts and the high deeds 
which filled up the life of the nobles of his 
time. As it was only to these men that 
any importance was given, history, of course, 
commemorated their deeds only. Froissart 
neyer speaks of the burgesses and the pea- 
sants of his day, but as they are connected 
with the feudal aristocracy. If he narrates 
the insurrection of the Flemish towns, it is 
because it was directed against the sove- 
reign count of the country and his knights, 
and because it was quelled by the king of 
France. If his attention is for a moment 
attracted by the famous States of 1356, it 
is because they were adverse to the dauphin, 
and favourable to the king of Navarre. If 
he mentions without detailing it the war of 
the Jacquerie, it was because it was a war 
of peasants against gentlemen. Unless it 
were owing to the interest which his great 
lords have in the events brought about by 
the common people, it is doubtful whether 
he would‘have alluded to them. His book 
is a book of Chivalry, and he would have 
refused to admit the people to figure in it, 
because that would have been, in his eyes, 
to make history vulgar. The dialogue- 
form of his narrative, the profusion of un- 
important deeds of arms which are there 
recorded, the almost exclusive honour given 
to contemporary feats of bravery, and the 
constant inculcation of them as lessons, all 
this seems to prove that he regarded his 
Chronicle as a catechism for the use of the 
nobility.” 
A few pages further on,—noticing 
the horror with which the Chronicler 
‘speaks of an insurrection of the pea- 
santry, who, “ worn out with oppres- 
sions, hunted from their homes, pil- 
laged, murdered, and their wives and 
daughters violated, assembled to de- 
fend and avenge themselves,” and. cried 
out for the destruction of all the nobles, 
—the Reviewer, after frankly indulging 
the radicalism of his own principles and 
T feelings, 
