Kervyn de Lettenhove. 20 vols., Brussels. Ed. S. Luce, Paris,
in course of publication. The edition of Buchon, 3 vols., Paris, 1855,
is still the best for general use. Froissart's poems give many
biographical details which are interesting, but unimportant. He wandered
all his life from court to court, patronised and pensioned by kings,
queens, and princes. He was successively _cure_ of Lestines and canon of
Chimay. In early life he was much in England, being specially patronised
by Edward III. and Philippa.

[136] _Old Mortality_, chap. 35.

[137] Ed. Buchon. Paris, 1858.

[138] Chastellain has been fortunate, like most Flemish writers, in
being excellently and completely edited (by M. Kervyn de Lettenhove. 8
vols., Brussels).

[139] Ed. Michaud et Poujoulat.

[140] Ed. Michaud et Poujoulat.

[141] Ed. Michaud et Poujoulat, in whose collection most of the many
authors here mentioned will be also found.

CHAPTER XII.

MISCELLANEOUS PROSE.

[Sidenote: General use of Prose.]

It was natural, and indeed necessary, that, when the use of prose as an
allowable vehicle for literary composition was once understood and
established, it should gradually but rapidly supersede the more
troublesome and far less appropriate form of verse. Accordingly we find
that, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, the amount of prose
literature is constantly on the increase. It happens, however, or, to
speak more precisely, it follows that this miscellaneous prose
literature is of much less importance and of much less interest than the
contemporary and kindred literature in verse. For in the nature of
things much of it was occupied with what may be called the journey-work
of literature,--the stuff which, unless there be some special attraction
in its form, grows obsolete, or retains a merely antiquarian interest in
the course of time. There was, moreover, still among the chief patrons
of literature a preference for verse which diverted the brightest
spirits to the practice of that form. Yet again, the best prose
composition of the middle ages, with the exception of a few works of
fiction, is to be found in its chronicles, and these have already been
noticed. A review, therefore, much less minute in scale than that which
in the first ten chapters of this book has been given to the mediaeval
poetry of France, will suffice for its mediaeval prose, and such a
review will appropriately close the survey of the literature of