The boy's Froissart

The boy's Froissart - Being Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of adventure, battle, and custom in England, France, Spain, etc.

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 boys mind upon manhood and the mans 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 boys 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 debatein short, his boyishness. Thus Froissart helps youth forward and age backward. With this enchanting quality, by which he not only defies, but even reverses, the passage of time, our fine Sir John has always had and will long have readers, both old and young; and if it were not for some peculiarities of{vi} his manner, growing mainly out of the habits of his time, there would be no need of any special edition of him for boys. But the latter sort find many halting-places and many skipping-places in him, by reason of his long dialogues, his tranquil way of telling all the particulars, and his gay habit of often relating events in chapter fifty which happened before those in chapter forty. The first two of these faults were virtues in Froissarts day, when the longer a story the better it helped to pass the time between battles; and the last one probably arose from the manner in which he collected many of his facts,which was as follows. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 61710
Author: Froissart, Jean
Release Date: Mar 30, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Lanier, Sidney, 1842-1881
Illustrator: Kappes, Alfred, 1850-1894