of Chimai pursued his early method of travel--to the court of Gaston, Count of Foix, to Flanders, to England--ever eager in his interrogation of witnesses. It is believed that he lived to the close of 1404, but the date of his death is uncertain. Froissart as a poet wrote gracefully in the conventional modes of his time. His vast romance _Meliador_, to which Wenceslas, Duke of Brabant, contributed the lyric part--famous in its day, long lost and recently recovered--is a construction of external marvels and splendours which lacks the inner life of imaginative faith. But as a brilliant scene-painter Froissart the chronicler is unsurpassed. His chronology, even his topography, cannot be trusted as exact; he is credulous rather than critical; he does not always test or control the statements of his informants; he is misled by their prejudices and passions; he views all things from the aristocratic standpoint; the life of the common people does not interest him; he has no sense of their wrongs, and little pity for their sufferings; he does not study the deeper causes of events; he is almost incapable of reflection; he has little historical sagacity; he accepts appearances without caring to interpret their meanings. But what a vivid picture he presents of the external aspects of fourteenth-century life! What a joy he has in adventure! What an eye for the picturesque! What movement, what colour! What a dramatic--or should we say theatrical?--feeling for life and action! Much, indeed, of the vividness of Froissart's narrative may be due to the eye-witnesses from whom he had obtained information; but genius was needed to preserve--perhaps to enhance--the animation of their recitals. If he understood his own age imperfectly, he depicted its outward appearance with incomparable skill; and though his moral sense was shallow, and his knowledge of character far from profound, he painted portraits which live in the imagination of his readers. The fifteenth century is rich in historical writings of every kind--compilations of general history, domestic chronicles, such as the _Livre des Faits du bon Messire Jean le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut_, official chronicles both of the French and Burgundian parties, journals and memoirs. The Burgundian Enguerrand de Monstrelet was a lesser Froissart, faithful, laborious, a transcriber of documents, but without his predecessor's genius. On the French side the so-called _Chronique Scandaleuse_, by Jean de Roye, a Parisian of the time of Louis XI., to some extent redeems the mediocrity of the writers of his party.