He not only wrote Chronicles, but poems; and he tells us, that on his last visit to England, he presented a copy of these latter—beautifully illuminated, engrossed by his own hand, bound in crimson velvet, and embellished with silver clasps, bosses, and golden roses—to King Richard II.; and the King asked him what it was all about; and he said—“About Love;” whereat, he says, the King seemed much pleased, and dipped into it, here and there—for “he could read French as well as speak it.”
Altogether, this rambling, and popular Froissart was, in many points, what we should call an exquisite fellow; knowing, and liking to know, only knights and nobles, and flattering them to the full; receiving kindly invitations wherever he went; overcome with the pressure of his engagements; going about in the latest fashion of doublet; somewhiles leading a fine greyhound in leash, and presenting five or six of the same to his friend the Comte de Foix (who had a great love for dogs); never going near enough to the front in battle to get any very hard raps; ready with a song or a story always; pulling a long bow with infinite grace. Well—the pretty poems he thought so much of, nobody knows—nobody cares for: they have never, I think, been published in their entirety:[56] But, his Journal—his notes of what he saw and heard, clapped down night by night, in hostelries or in tent—perhaps on horseback—are cherished of all men, and must be reckoned the liveliest, if not the best of all chronicles of his time. He died in the first decade of that fifteenth century on which we open our British march to-day; and, at the outset, I call attention to a little nest of dates, which from their lying so close together, can be easily kept in mind. Richard II. son of the Black Prince, died—a disgraced prisoner—in 1400. John of Gaunt, his uncle, friend of Chaucer, died the previous year: while Chaucer, Froissart and John Gower all died in less than ten years thereafter; thus, the century opens with a group of great deaths.
Two Henrys and Two Poets.
That Henry IV. who appears now upon the throne, and who was not a very noticeable man, save for his kingship, you will remember as the little son of John of Gaunt, who played about Chaucer’s knee; you will remember him further as giving title to a pair of Shakespeare’s plays, in which appears for the first time that semi-historic character—that enormous wallet of flesh, that egregious villain, that man of a prodigious humor, all in one—Jack Falstaff. And this famous, fat Knight of Literature shall introduce us to Prince Hal who, according to traditions (much doubted nowadays), was a wild boy in his youth, and boon companion of such as Falstaff; but, afterward, became the brave and cruel, but steady and magnificent Henry V. Yet we shall never forget those early days of his, when at Gad’s Hill, he plots with Falstaff and his fellows, to waylay travellers bound to London, with plump purses. Before the plot is carried out, the Prince agrees privately with Poins (one of the rogues) to put a trick upon Falstaff: Poins and the Prince will slip away in the dusk—let Falstaff and his companions do the robbing; then, suddenly—disguised in buckram suits—pounce on them and seize the booty. This, the Prince and Poins do: and at the first onset of these latter, the fat Knight runs off, as fast as his great hulk will let him, and goes spluttering and puffing to a near tavern, where—after consuming “an intolerable deal of sack”—he is confronted by the Prince, who demands his share of the spoils. But the big Knight blurts out—“A plague on all cowards!” He has been beset, while the Prince had sneaked away; the spoils are gone:
“I am a rogue, if I was not at half a sword with a dozen of them two hours together; I have scaped by a miracle; I am eight times thrust thro’ the doublet—four thro’ the hose. My sword is hacked like a hand-saw. If I fought not with fifty of them, then am I a bunch of radish. If there were not two or three and fifty on poor old Jack, then am I no two-legged creature.”
“Pray God, [says the Prince, keeping down his laughter] you have not murdered some of them!”
Falstaff. Nay, that’s past praying for; for I peppered two of them—two rogues in buckram. Here I lay, and thus I bore my sword. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me.
Prince. What, four?; thou said’st two.
Falstaff. Four, Hal; I told thee four.
And Poins comes to his aid, with—“Ay, he said four.” Whereat the fat Knight takes courage; the men in buckram growing, in whimsical stretch to seven, and nine; he, paltering and swearing, and never losing his delicious insolent swagger, till at last the Prince declares the truth, and makes show of the booty. You think this coward Falstaff may lose heart at this; not a whit of it; his eye, rolling in fat, does not blink even, while the Prince unravels the story; but at the end the stout Knight hitches up his waistband, smacks his lips:—