I do not notice this circumstance on account of the literary coincidence, but to shew that the squire of France and the squire of England were in Chaucer’s view the same character.
[66] Du Cange, Dissert. 7. au Joinville, and Menage, Dict. Et. in verb.
[67] Fairy Queen, book 2. canto 3. st. 46.
“So to his steed he got, and ’gan to ride,
As one unfit therefore, that all might see
He had not trained been in chivalry;
Which well that valiant courser did discern;
For he despised to tread in dew degree,
But chaf’d and foam’d with courage fierce and stern,
And to be eas’d of that base burthen still did erne.”
In the old poem called the Siege of Karvalerock, a knight is praised for not appearing on horseback like a man asleep.
“Ki kant seroit sur le cheval,
Ne sembloit home ki someille.”
[68] Chaucer, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Selden, Titles of Honour, part 2. c. 3, 6.
[69] Froissart, vol. 1. c. 321. ‘The lord Langurant did that day marvels in arms, so that his own men and also strangers had marvels of his deeds. He advanced himself so much forward that he put his life in great jeopardy, for they within the town (against whose walls he was standing on a ladder,) by clean force raised his helm from his head, and so had been dead without remedy, if a squire of his had not been there, who followed him so near that he covered him with his target, and the lord and he together descended down the ladder by little and little, and in their descending they, received on their target many a great stroke. They were greatly praised by all that saw them.’—Berner’s Froissart.
[70] Froissart, liv. 2. c. 24.
[71] Rigordus in Du Chesne, vol. 5. p. 59. Mr. Maturin, in that powerful and magnificent romance, the Albigenses, has made a very fine use of the instance related above of the squirehood of Philip Augustus.