Alas9 that we have so little of his very best! for that very best was the finest of our time. Few poets ever wrote sixteen consecutive10 lines more noble and more strong than those which begin with the well-known quatrain—
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from Pole to Pole,
I thank whatever Gods there be
For my unconquerable soul."
It is grand literature, and it is grand pluck too; for it came from a man who, through no fault of his own, had been pruned11, and pruned again, like an ill-grown shrub12, by the surgeon's knife. When he said—
"In the fell clutch of Circumstance
I have not winced13 nor cried aloud,
Beneath the bludgeonings of Chance
My head is bloody14 but unbowed."
It was not what Lady Byron called "the mimic15 woe16" of the poet, but it was rather the grand defiance17 of the Indian warrior18 at the stake, whose proud soul can hold in hand his quivering body.
There were two quite distinct veins19 of poetry in Henley, each the very extreme from the other. The one was heroic, gigantic, running to large sweeping20 images and thundering words. Such are the "Song of the Sword" and much more that he has written, like the wild singing of some Northern scald. The other, and to my mind both the more characteristic and the finer side of his work, is delicate, precise, finely etched, with extraordinarily21 vivid little pictures drawn22 in carefully phrased and balanced English. Such are the "Hospital Verses," while the "London Voluntaries" stand midway between the two styles. What! you have not read the "Hospital Verses!" Then get the "Book of Verses" and read them without delay. You will surely find something there which, for good or ill, is unique. You can name—or at least I can name—nothing to compare it with. Goldsmith and Crabbe have written of indoor themes; but their monotonous23, if majestic24 metre, wearies the modern reader. But this is so varied25, so flexible, so dramatic. It stands by itself. Confound the weekly journals and all the other lightning conductors which caused such a man to pass away, and to leave a total output of about five booklets behind him!
However, all this is an absolute digression, for the books had no business in this shelf at all. This corner is meant for chronicles of various sorts. Here are three in a line, which carry you over a splendid stretch of French (which usually means European) history, each, as luck would have it, beginning just about the time when the other leaves off. The first is Froissart, the second de Monstrelet, and the third de Comines. When you have read the three you have the best contemporary account first hand of considerably26 more than a century—a fair slice out of the total written record of the human race.
Froissart is always splendid. If you desire to avoid the mediaeval French, which only a specialist can read with pleasure, you can get Lord Berners' almost equally mediaeval, but very charming English, or you can turn to a modern translation, such as this one of Johnes. A single page of Lord Berners is delightful27; but it is a strain, I think, to read bulky volumes in an archaic28 style. Personally, I prefer the modern, and even with that you have shown some patience before you have reached the end of that big second tome.
I wonder whether, at the time, the old Hainault Canon had any idea of what he was doing—whether it ever flashed across his mind that the day might come when his book would be the one great authority, not only about the times in which he lived, but about the whole institution of chivalry29? I fear that it is far more likely that his whole object was to gain some mundane30 advantage from the various barons31 and knights33 whose names and deeds be recounts. He has left it on record, for example, that when he visited the Court of England he took with him a handsomely-bound copy of his work; and, doubtless, if one could follow the good Canon one would find his journeys littered with similar copies which were probably expensive gifts to the recipient34, for what return would a knightly35 soul make for a book which enshrined his own valour?
But without looking too curiously36 into his motives37, it must be admitted that the work could not have been done more thoroughly38. There is something of Herodotus in the Canon's cheery, chatty, garrulous39, take-it-or-leave-it manner. But he has the advantage of the old Greek in accuracy. Considering that he belonged to the same age which gravely accepted the travellers' tales of Sir John Maundeville, it is, I think, remarkable how careful and accurate the chronicler is. Take, for example, his description of Scotland and the Scotch40. Some would give the credit to Jean-le-Bel, but that is another matter. Scotch descriptions are a subject over which a fourteenth-century Hainaulter might fairly be allowed a little scope for his imagination. Yet we can see that the account must on the whole have been very correct. The Galloway nags41, the girdle-cakes, the bagpipes—every little detail rings true. Jean-le-Bel was actually present in a Border campaign, and from him Froissart got his material; but he has never attempted to embroider42 it, and its accuracy, where we can to some extent test it, must predispose us to accept his accounts where they are beyond our confirmation43.
But the most interesting portion of old Froissart's work is that which deals with the knights and the knight32-errants of his time, their deeds, their habits, their methods of talking. It is true that he lived himself just a little after the true heyday44 of chivalry; but he was quite early enough to have met many of the men who had been looked upon as the flower of knighthood of the time. His book was read too, and commented on by these very men (as many of them as could read), and so we may take it that it was no fancy portrait, but a correct picture of these soldiers which is to be found in it. The accounts are always consistent. If you collate45 the remarks and speeches of the knights (as I have had occasion to do) you will find a remarkable uniformity running through them. We may believe then that this really does represent the kind of men who fought at Crecy and at Poictiers, in the age when both the French and the Scottish kings were prisoners in London, and England reached a pitch of military glory which has perhaps never been equalled in her history.
In one respect these knights differ from anything which we have had presented to us in our historical romances. To turn to the supreme46 romancer, you will find that Scott's mediaeval knights were usually muscular athletes in the prime of life: Bois-Guilbert, Front-de-Boeuf, Richard, Ivanhoe, Count Robert—they all were such. But occasionally the most famous of Froissart's knights were old, crippled and blinded. Chandos, the best lance of his day, must have been over seventy when he lost his life through being charged upon the side on which he had already lost an eye. He was well on to that age when he rode out from the English army and
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