who will take the trouble
to compare the various contemporary narratives of the Siege of Rouen,
that in point of simplicity, clearness, and minuteness of detail, there
is NO existing document which can COMPARE with the Poem before us. Its
authenticity is sufficiently established, from the fact of the Author's
having been an EYEWITNESS of the whole. If we review the names of those
Historians who lived at the same period, we shall have abundant reason
to rejoice at so valuable an accession to our present stock of
information on the subject." _Archaeologia_, vol. xxii. p. 353. The
reader shall be no longer detained from a specimen or two of the poem
itself, which should seem fully to justify the eulogy of the Critic.

"On the day after the return of the twelve delegates sent by the City of
Rouen to treat with Henry, the Poet proceeds to inform us, that the King
caused two tents to be pitched, one for the English Commissioners, and the
other for the French. On the English side were appointed the Earl of
Warwick, the Earl of Salisbury, the Lord Fitzhugh, and Sir Walter
Hungerford, and on the French side, twelve discreet persons were chosen to
meet them. Then says the writer,

'It was a sight of solempnity,
For to behold both party;
To see the rich in their array,
And on the walls the people that lay,
And on our people that were without,
How thick that they walked about;
And the heraudis seemly to seene,
How that they went ay between;
The king's heraudis and pursuivants,
In coats of arms _amyantis_.
The English a beast, the French a flower,
Of Portyngale both castle and tower,
And other coats of diversity,
As lords bearen in their degree.'

"As a striking contrast to this display of pomp and splendour is described
the deplorable condition of those unfortunate inhabitants who lay starving
in the ditches without the walls of the City, deprived both of food and
clothing. The affecting and simple relation of our Poet, who was an
eye-witness, is written with that display of feeling such a scene must
naturally have excited, and affords perhaps one of the most favourable
passages in the Poem to compare with the studied narratives of Elmham or
Livius. In the first instance we behold misery literally in rags, and
hiding herself in silence and obscurity, whilst in the other she is
ostentatiously paraded before our eyes:

'There men might see a great pity,
A child of two year or three
Go abou