THE WRITINGS OF SIDNEY LANIER. POEMS. Edited by his Wife, with a Memorial by WILLIAM HAYES WARD. With portrait. 12mo $2.50 THE SCIENCE OF ENGLISH VERSE 2.00 THE ENGLISH NOVEL, and the Principle of its Development. Crown 8vo 2.00 THE BOY’S FROISSART. Illustrated. 8vo 2.00 THE BOY’S KING ARTHUR. Illustrated. 8vo 2.00 KNIGHTLY LEGENDS OF WALES; or, The Boy’s Mabinogion. Illustrated 2.00 THE BOY’S PERCY. Illustrated. 8vo 2.00 [Illustration: The Monk Sir Froissart in the Breach of the Monastery Wall.] THE BOY’S FROISSART BEING SIR JOHN FROISSART’S CHRONICLES OF _Adventure Battle and Custom in England France Spain etc._ _EDITED FOR BOYS WITH AN INTRODUCTION_ BY SIDNEY LANIER EDITOR OF “THE BOY’S KING ARTHUR” _Illustrated by Alfred Kappes_ NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1895 COPYRIGHT, 1879, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. INTRODUCTION. Perhaps no boy will deny that to find the world still reading a book which was written five hundred years ago is a very wonderful business. For the world grows,--faster than a boy; and when you remember how it is only about ten years since you were reading Jack the Giant-killer, and how you are _infinitely_ beyond all that _now_,--you know,--you readily see that it must be a very manful man indeed who can make a book so strong and so all-time like as to go on giving delight through the ages, spite of prodigious revolutions in customs, in governments, and in ideas. Now, Froissart sets the boy’s mind upon manhood and the man’s mind upon boyhood. In reading him the young soul sifts out for itself the splendor, the hardihood, the daring, the valor, the generosity, the boundless conflict and unhindered action, which make up the boy’s early ideal of the man; while a more mature reader goes at once to his simplicity, his gayety, his passion for deeds of arms, his freedom from consciousness and from all internal debate--in short, his boyishness. Thus Froissart helps youth forward and age backward.