‘To chronological mistakes must be added the frequent disfiguring of proper names,—more especially foreign ones, which are often so mangled that it is impossible to decipher them. M. du Cange has corrected from one thousand to eleven hundred on the margin of his copy of the edition of 1572, which is now in the imperial library at Paris, and would be of great assistance, should another edition of Monstrelet be called for.[6] Names of places are not more clearly written, excepting those in Flanders and Picardy, with which, of course, he was well acquainted. We know not whether it be through affectation or ignorance that he calls many towns by their latin names, frenchifying the termination: for instance, Aix-la-Chapelle, Aquisgranie; Oxford, Oxonie,—and several others in the like manner.
‘These defects are far from being repaid, as they are in Froissart, by the agreeableness of the narration: that of Monstrelet is heavy, monotonous, weak and diffuse. Sometimes a whole page is barely sufficient for him to relate what would have been better told in six lines; and it is commonly on the least important facts that he labours the most.
‘The second chapter of the first volume, consisting of thirteen pages, contains only a challenge from a spanish esquire, accepted by an esquire of England, which, after four years of letters and messages, ends in nothing. The ridiculousness of so pompous a narration had struck Rabelais, who says, at page 158 of his third volume,—‘In reading this tedious detail, (which he calls a little before _le tant long, curieux et fâcheux conte_) we should imagine that it was the beginning, or occasion, of some severe war, or of a great revolution of kingdoms; but at the end of the tale we laugh at the stupid champion, the Englishman, and Enguerrand their scribe, _plus baveux qu’un pot à moutarde_.’[7]
‘Monstrelet employs many pages to report the challenges sent by the duke of Orleans, brother to king Charles VI., to Henry IV. king of England,—challenges which are equally ridiculous with the former, and which had a similar termination. When he meets with any event that particularly regards Flanders or Picardy, he does not omit the smallest circumstance: the most minute and most useless seem to him worth preserving,—and this same man, so prolix when it were to be wished he was concise, omits, for the sake of brevity, as he says, the most interesting details. This excuse he repeats more than once, for neglecting to enlarge on facts far more interesting than the quarrels of the Flemings and Picards. When speaking of those towns in Champagne and Brie which surrendered to Charles VII. immediately after his coronation, he says, ‘As for these surrenders, I omit the particular detail of each for the sake of brevity.’ In another place, he says, ‘Of these reparations, for brevity sake, I shall not make mention.’ These reparations were the articles of the treaty of peace concluded in 1437, between the duke of Burgundy and the townsmen of Bruges.