In 1392, probably, Froissart wrote his "Plaidorie de la Rose et de la Violette," which is here translated from his "Poésies," edited in three volumes, with an excellent introduction, by A. Scheler, Brussels, 1872. The value of his poetical works lies in their revelation of the literary taste of the court and of the fashionable world of the day, for he employed the artificial sentiment and the conventional forms of dream and allegory very pleasantly. The Plaidorie is not a famous poem, but it is chosen because it serves to illustrate a combination of various important traits. It is one of the many mediæval poems in which the flower _motif_ is preëminent. Here Froissart introduces rather charming personifications, especially significant in the case of the fleur-de-lys, the national flower of France. In spite of the trivial and sentimental attitude towards nature there are many passages of genuine feeling. The poem should be compared with Chaucer's "Prologue to the Legend of Good Women," where the cult of the daisy is represented. Valuable aids to this study will be found in the following articles: LOWES, J. L. The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women as related to the French Marguerite Poems. _Publications of the Modern Language Association_, XIX, 593-683. MARSH, G. P. The Sources of the Flower and the Leaf. _Modern Philology_, IV, 121-167, 281-327. Furthermore, the jesting mockery of legal procedure should be noted. Chaucer's "Fortune" employs legal phraseology, and although Froissart's poem may never have been known to Chaucer, the use of the terms and the associations of law was frequent among poets. Readers of Shakespeare's "Sonnets" will recall his use of legal imagery, but of course he was uninfluenced by this poem. VISION The Purgatory of Saint Patrick This translation is a free rendering of a poem found in the famous Auchinleck manuscript, a collection of popular poetry copied in the fourteenth century. A description of this manuscript will be found in Scott's edition of "Sir Tristem." The poem is in the six-line, tail-rime stanza which was much used in romances of the day. There are other versions of this legend in Latin, in French, and in English. Because of its detail, this version, of the late thirteenth century, edited by E. Koelbing in _Englische Studien_, I, 98, has been chosen, although in some respects it is inferior in style to the other English versions. Especially interesting is the picture of the earthly paradise, which is nowhere else described so fully as it is here by catalogues and other means. As an introduction to mediæval religious beliefs the poem is almost unequaled. Pilgrimages, even to this day, are made, by the faithful, to Lough Derg, in Ireland, where Saint Patrick's Purgatory is still continuing its saving grace.