[Sidenote: Jehannot de Lescurel.]

[Sidenote: Guillaume de Machault.]

[Sidenote: Eustache Deschamps]

The chief authors of these pieces during the period we are discussing
were Jehannot de Lescurel, Guillaume de Machault, Eustache Deschamps,
Jean Froissart, Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier, and Charles
d'Orleans. Besides these there were many others, though the epoch of
the Hundred Years' War was not altogether fertile in lighter poetry or
poetry of any kind. Jehannot de Lescurel[111] is one of those poets of
whom absolutely nothing is known. His very name has only survived in the
general syllabus of contents of the manuscript which contains his works,
and which is in this part incomplete. The thirty-three poems--sixteen
Ballades, fifteen Rondeaus[112], and two nondescript pieces--which exist
are of singular grace, lightness, and elegance. They cannot be later and
are probably earlier than the middle of the fourteenth century, and thus
they are anterior to most of the work of the school. Guillaume de
Machault was a person sufficiently before the world, and his work is
very voluminous. As usual with all these poets, it contains many details
of its author's life, and enables us to a certain extent to construct
that life out of these indications. Machault was probably born about
1284, and may not have died till 1377. A native of Champagne and of
noble birth, he early entered, like most of the lesser nobility of the
period, the service of great feudal lords. He was chamberlain to Philip
the Fair, and at his death became the secretary of John of Luxembourg,
the well-known king of Bohemia. After the death of this prince at
Cressy, he returned to the service of the court of France and served
John and Charles V., finally, as it appears, becoming in some way
connected with Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus. His works were very
numerous, amounting in all to some 80,000 lines, of which until recently
nothing but a few extracts was in print. In the last few years, however,
_La Prise d'Alexandrie_[113], a rhymed chronicle of the exploits of
Lusignan, and the _Voir Dit_[114], a curious love poem in the style of
the age, have been printed. Besides these his works include numerous
ballades, etc., and several long poems in the style of those of
Froissart, shortly to be described. On the other hand, the works of
Eustache Deschamps, which are even more voluminous than those of
Machault, his friend and master, are almost wholly c