were employed by pope Urban as long as he lived, in his wars in the Milanese. Pope Gregory, successor to Urban, engaged him in the same manner. Sir John had also a profitable employment, under the lord de Coucy, against the count de Vertus and his barons; in which, some say, the lord de Coucy would have been slain, if sir John Hawkwood had not come to his assistance with five hundred combatants, which he was solely induced to do because the lord de Coucy had married one of the king of England's daughters. This sir John Hawkwood was a knight much inured to war, which he had long followed, and had gained great renown in Italy from his gallantry.
"The Romans, therefore, and Urban, who called himself pope, resolved, on Clement leaving Italy, to send for Hawkwood, and appoint him commander-in-chief of all their forces: they made him large offers of retaining him and his whole troop at a handsome subsidy, which he accepted, and acquitted himself loyally for it."—Johnes's Froissart, 4to. II. c. 97.
They are angels, my son.—Page 82.
Incidents similar to that in the text are of frequent occurrence in the old Romances. St. John of Damascus, a Greek writer of the 8th century, has a story of a youth brought up in utter ignorance of all worldly affairs, in order to evade a prophecy which existed against him. Here, however, the compliment paid by Peredur's mother to the knights, in calling them Angels, is far from being returned to her sex. For, in describing to him all the objects he meets on his first going out, and mixing with the world, the Greek writer makes the young man's father apply an appellation to the ladies, which is the very reverse of angelic.
There is another story to the same effect, in a Latin Collection of Materials for composing Sermons, by John Herolt, sirnamed Discipulus, a Dominican friar of Basil, who flourished about 1450.[1]
From these the idea has been adopted and worked up by the Italian novelist.
Possess thyself of it, and give it to another.—Page 83.
- ↑ Hist. Eng. Poe. I. ccxxiv. cclxv.
