ion. The other is the
_Chronique_ of Jean Lebel, canon of Liege. This is not only a work of
considerable merit in itself, but still more remarkable because it was
the model, and something more, of Froissart. That historian began by
almost paraphrasing the work of Lebel; and though by degrees he worked
the early parts of his book into more and more original forms according
to the information which he picked up, these parts remained to the last
indebted to the author from whom they had been originally compiled.

[Sidenote: Froissart.]

Froissart was born in 1337 and did not die till after 1409, the precise
date of his death being unknown. There are few problems of literary
criticism which are more difficult than that of arranging a definitive
edition of his famous Chroniques[135]. In most cases the task of the
critic is to decide which of several manuscripts, all long posterior to
the author's death, deserves most confidence, or how to supply and
correct the faults of a single document. In Froissart's case there is,
on the contrary, an embarrassing number of seemingly authentic texts.
During the whole of his long life, Froissart seems to have been
constantly occupied in altering, improving, and rectifying his work, and
copies of it in all its states are plentiful. The early printed editions
represent merely a single one of these; Buchon's is somewhat more
complete. But it is only within the last few years that the labours of
M. Kervyn de Lettenhove and M. Simeon Luce have made it possible (and
not yet entirely possible) to see the work in all its conditions. M.
Kervyn de Lettenhove's edition is complete and excellent as far as it
goes. That of M. Luce is still far from finished. The editor, however,
has succeeded in presenting three distinct versions of the first book.
This is the most interesting in substance, the least in manner and
style. It deals with a period most of which lay outside of Froissart's
own knowledge, and in treating which he was at first content to
paraphrase Jean Lebel, though afterwards he made this part of the book
much more his own. It never, however, attained to the gossiping
picturesqueness of the later books (there are four in all), in which the
historian relies entirely on his own collections. Although Cressy,
Poitiers, and Najara may be of more importance than the fruitless
_chevauchee_ of Buckingham through France, the gossip of the Count de
Foix' court, and the kite-and-crow battles of the D