ly said, each successive admirer tried to add a little
more, till at last, as a matter of course, he was compared to Thucydides,
and lauded for the graces of his style, the vigor of his language, the
subtlety of his mind, and his worship of the harmonious and the beautiful,
in such a manner that the old bluff soldier would have been highly
perplexed and disgusted, could he have listened to the praises of his
admirers. Well might M. Paulin Paris say, "I shall not stop to praise what
everybody has praised before me; to recall the graceful _naivete_ of the
good Senechal, would it not be, as the English poet said, 'to gild the
gold and paint the lily white?' "

It is surprising to find in the large crowd of indiscriminate admirers a
man so accurate in his thoughts and in his words as the late Sir James
Stephen. Considering how little Joinville's History was noticed by his
contemporaries, how little it was read by the people before it was printed
during the reign of Francois I., it must seem more than doubtful whether
Joinville really deserved a place in a series of lectures, "On the Power
of the Pen in France." But, waiving that point, is it quite exact to say,
as Sir James Stephen does, "that three writers only retain, and probably
they alone deserve, at this day the admiration which greeted them in their
own,--I refer to Joinville, Froissart, and to Philippe de Comines?" And is
the following a sober and correct description of Joinville's style?--

"Over the whole picture the genial spirit of France glows with all
the natural warmth which we seek in vain among the dry bones of
earlier chroniclers. Without the use of any didactic forms of
speech, Joinville teaches the highest of all wisdom--the wisdom of
love. Without the pedantry of the schools, he occasionally
exhibits an eager thirst of knowledge, and a graceful facility of
imparting it, which attest that he is of the lineage of the great
father of history, and of those modern historians who have taken
Herodotus for their model." (Vol. ii. pp. 209, 219.)

Now, all this sounds to our ears just an octave too high. There is some
truth in it, but the truth is spoilt by being exaggerated. Joinville's
book is very pleasant to read, because he gives himself no airs, and tells
us as well as he can what he recollects of his excellent King, and of the
fearful time which they spent together during the crusade. He writes very
much as an old s