was reckoned midnight Sometimes lie adds te» thefe words, primer-tierce^ «me, wépre$3 the epithet of bâffè, to mark that thr time of thefe hours was near clofing ; and fometimes the word Annie, which, m Ibrae kftance% appears to have the fame lignification, and in others quite the contrary*. He ufes this mode of fpeech à Vaube crevant* to fky that the dawn of day has but j uft begun to ftiew itfelf; em foteil refcortfant, to exprefs the fetting fun ; à la relevée, for the time which follows the hour of mid-day ; and i la remontée, which feems to me tynonyntous to in viprée% for the evenings the time at whkh the day approaches to Its end» IX. OF THE FIRST THIETY TBARS WHICH FROISSAIT HA» TREATED OF AT THE BEGINNING OF HIS HISTORY. AFTER JOHN LE BALI THAT IS TQ SAY,. Itil ISM TO ISif^ ' THE firft thirty- years of the Hftory of Fioiflut. aie properly bur a: preliminary, ferving to give the reader feme Morrattion: relative m ihm %rars of which he was afterwards to fender an- account. He ciefcribes the Hate of France and of England, and Ihews the caufe of the quatre! between the two crowns9 which was the origin of thofe bloody wars they carried oa againft eaeh other. Froiflart cannot be reckoned a contemporary writer of thefe firft thirty years: he was not thenborn,or,ifhewere,hewas in his infancy* or of fitch an age that he could not make any great ufe of his reafon. He therefore fcavcely ever mentions thefe thirty years, as an author who has feen, what he relates; and, without doubt, it. muft be to this period alone that caa be reft rued what he fays- in the commencemt nt of his hiftorjr, that he wrote after another who had lived before : it is, as he tells us,4 the true chronicle of John le Bel, canon of St Lambert, of Liege/ Thefe chronicle* have not been, handed down to us i and I cannot difcover any thing more, either concerning the work or its* author, but what Froiflart tells us. He ipeaks #f him as of one wha no longer exifted i but he boafts his exa&nefs, and the pains he took in comparing his chronicles,, and the coofkierable expenfea he was at on this fubjeéh He reprefent&hioias the favourite and confidant •f John of Hainault, incompany with whom he might have-witneflea lèverai great events,. wMcbh feys. he* lhall in the end be «Jatedi foc tteearl,. mïm 311