"With him ther wenten knights many on, Some wol ben armed in an habergeon, And in a breast-plate, and in a gipon; And som wol have a pair of plates large; And som wol have a pruse sheld or a targe. Som wol ben armed on his legges well, And have an axe, and some a mace stele. Ther n'is no newe guise, that it n'as old. _Armed they weren_, as I have you told, _Everich after his opinion_." [Sidenote: A precise knowledge unattainable.] A chronological history of armour, minutely accurate, is unattainable, if any deduction may be made from the books of laborious dulness which have hitherto appeared on the armour of different countries. Who can affirm that the oldest specimen which we possess of any particular form of harness is the earliest specimen of its kind? No one can determine the precise duration of a fashion; for after ruling the world for some time it suddenly disappears, but some years afterwards it rears it's head again to the confusion and dismay of our antiquarians. Our best authorities sometimes fail us. The monumental effigies were not always carved at the moment of the knight's death: that the bust is tardily raised to buried merit is not the peculiar reproach of our times. It is complimenting the sculptors of the middle ages too highly if we suppose that they did not sometimes violate accuracy, in order to introduce some favorite fashion of their own days. As for the illuminations of manuscripts which are so much boasted of, they are often the attempts of a scribe to imitate antiquity, beautiful in respect of execution, but of problematical accuracy, and more frequently mark the age when the manuscript was copied, than that when the work was originally written. We know that violation of costume was common in the romances. Thus, in the Morte d'Arthur, an unknown knight, completely armed, and having his vizor lowered so as to conceal his features, entered the hall of the king. Again, "Cometh sir Launcelot du Lake, Ridand right into the hall; His steed and armour all was blake His visere over his eyen falle,"[114]