interests are all in the somewhat degenerate chivalry of his age, in
the splendor of courts, the pomp and circumstance of war, in tourneys,
and in pageantry. Full of the love of adventure, he would travel
across half of Europe to see a gallant feat of arms, a coronation, a
royal marriage. Strength and courage and loyalty were the virtues he
loved; cowardice and petty greed he hated. Cruelty and injustice could
not dim for him the brilliance of the careers of those brigand lords
who were his friends and patrons.

The material for the earlier part of his Chronicles he took largely
from his predecessor and model, Jean Lebel; the later books are filled
with narratives of what he saw with his own eyes, or gathered from the
lips of men who had themselves been part of what they told. This fact,
along with his mastery of a style which is always vivacious if
sometimes diffuse, accounts for the vividness and picturesqueness of
his work. The pageant of medieval life in court and camp dazzled and
delighted him, and it is as a pageant that we see the Middle Ages in
his book.

Froissart holds a distinguished place among the poets as well as the
historians of his century. He wrote chiefly in the allegorical style
then in vogue; and his poems, though cast in a mold no longer in
fashion, are fresh and full of color, and were found worthy of
imitation by Geoffrey Chaucer.

But it is as the supreme chronicler of the later age of chivalry that
he lives. "God has been gracious enough" he writes, "to permit me to
visit the courts and palaces of kings, ... and all the nobles, kings,
dukes, counts, barons, and knights, belonging to all nations, have
been kind to me, have listened to me, willingly received me, and