Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/239



TRULY, too truly has our poet sung" These are not the romantic times, So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes, So dazzling to the dreaming boy." We are in this age poor indeed in those incidents which grace the page of fiction or romance. The world, philosophers say, is daily improving, but surely not for the novel writer ; each successive year adds new territory to the domains of fact, and subtracts from those of imagination. But let the writer of romance rejoice that he is not compelled to conform to the reigning spirit of the day ; no, the lenient public, well-knowing that this prosaic age would clip the wings ofgenius, however lofty his flight, kindly gives, or indeed rather forces upon him a passe-partout, thereby enabling him to place wherever he will the creatures of imagination. And right glad must he be, (we speak from our own heart,) to avail himself of this permission, to gild his pictures with all the splendour of chivalry ; or, as it best pleases him, to wrap them in the awful gloom which still enshrouds earlier times. For ourselves, we regard Froissart with as much veneration as ever catholics did Patron Saint ; we tell his pages as they their beads, after each one sending up thanks that such a chronicler is granted us ; without him we should be helpless, and forced to content ourselves with dull inaction ; with him we dare everything ; even to paint the scenes which he has drawn so truly to the life ; and having thus signified our audacious intention, we will, in our capacity of gentleman-usher, if not in that of enchanter, wave our wand, and--here they are. It was near the close of a sultry day in the month of Sep tember, A.D. 1356, that the Black Prince halted his now small army some five leagues from the celebrated plains of Poitiers. Tents were quickly pitched, pennons and banners were displayed before them, and the knights divesting themselves of their U APRIL, 1839.