topical start of old favourite

[OC Richard]

Indeed it is the beginning of Sir Nigel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It's a prequel to The White Company, about an eccentric elderly English knight Sir Nigel Loring and his company of soldiers and their exploits in France and Spain. (They were known by their white surcoats.)

Sir Nigel tells of Nigel's youth and how he came to be knighted. But it begins (above) with a beautiful poetic telling of the coming of The Black Death to England.

Doyle hated writing the Sherlock Holmes books, which (being written by Watson) are in a dry newspaper-reporting style completely different from the flowing old-fashioned prose of The White Company and Sir Nigel. These historical novels were Doyle's favourite works.