"Ivanhoe," picturing the days of Richard Cœur de Lion, leapt over all but a couple of centuries to draw upon Froissart. The present romance of Edward the Black Prince's time is well within the barriers of the best of all the romantic chroniclers, and perhaps its chief merit is that it is both historically and romantically an avowed Froissart book. Its author, J. G. Edgar, who was of course not a Walter Scott, wrote and was content to write for "Beeton's Boys' Own Magazine" in its palmy days, between forty and fifty years ago, when its editor had a very distinct idea of bringing English history into holiday range. Edgar was one of his chief contributors, and wrote some capital stories and histories, of which three or four are still in favour, and this story of "Cressy and Poictiers" is the best of them.<br><br>Edgar, being a minor and not a major romancer, gave less rein to his fantasy than Scott, and kept closer to his originals. He conceived in this story the happy idea of accommodating the Black Prince with an adventurous and vain-glorious page, whom he calls Arthur Winram, who is, as a necessity of fiction, bound to be of nobler birth than that name would seem to say, and to be subject to the wicked designs of those who would keep him from his birthright. Through the eyes of this page are viewed the martial events and pageantry in the career of the Black Prince, leading up to the fields of Creçy and Poictiers, and so to the Prince's death. Thus there are three chief fortunes at stake: that of the page and hero, that of the Black Prince, and that of England herself.<br><br>If you turn from the romance to the actual story of the Black Prince, as it is told by the historians, you will find the details in which Edgar differs from them are either those that are necessarily fictitious, or those that are not very essential.