that may be discovered in his poems; but in his poetry. Other things are accidenttal; his poetry is essential. Other interests-historical, philological, antiquarian must be recognized; but the poetical, or (let us say) the spiritual, interest stands first and far ahead of all others.QUILLER-COUCH, A. T., 1895, Adventures in Criticism, p. 6. over this survey of Chaucer's poetical progress, we find scarcely one of his works in which we are not called upon to admire the presence of a powerful and penetrating genius. When the language came into his hands it was rude and inharmonious, inadequate to express either the complex ideas of philosophy or the finer shades of character; when he left it it had been endowed with a copious refined vocabulary, an musical syntax, numbers; it was fitted to become the vehicle of a noble literature.-COURTHOPE, W. J., 1895, A History of English Poetry, vol. I, pp. 247, 286, 296. I may fairly class Chaucer among my passions, for I read him with that sort of personal attachment I had for Cervantes, who resembled him in a certain sweet and cheery humanity. But I do not allege this as the reason, for I had the same feeling for Pope, who was not like either of them. Kissing goes by favor, in literature as in life, and one cannot quite account for one's passions in either; what is certain is, I liked Chaucer and I did not like Spenser; possibly there was affinity between reader and poet, but if there was I should be at a loss to name it, unless it was the liking for reality, and the sense of mother earth in human life. Compared with the meaner poets the greater are the cleaner, and Chaucer was probably safer than any other English poet of his time, but I am. not going to pretend that there are not things in Chaucer which one would be the better for not reading; and so far as these words of mine shall be taken for counsel, I am not willing that they should unqualifiedly praise him. I loved my Chaucer too well, I hope, not to get some good from the best in him; and my reading of criticism had taught me how and where to look for the best, and to know it when I had found it.-HoWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN, 1895, My Literary Passions, pp. 108, 110, 111. In 1500 his popularity was at its height. During the latter part of the sixteenth century it began to decline. From that date till the end of William III.'s reign-in spite of the influence which he undoubtedly exercised over Spenser, and in spite of the respectful allusions to him in Sidney, Puttenham, Drayton, and Milton- his fame had become rather a tradition than a reality. In the following age the good-natured tolerance of Dryden was succeeded by the contempt of Addison and the supercilious patronage of Pope. Between 1700 and 1782 nothing seemed more probable than that the writings of the first of England's narrative poets would live chiefly in the memory of antiquarians. In little more than half a century afterwards we find him placed, with Shakspeare and Milton, on the highest pinnacle of poetic renown. COLLINS, JOHN CHURTON, 1895, Essays and Studies, p. 107. In many ways he was still in bondage to the mediæval, and wholly uncritical, tradition. One classic, we may almost say, was as good to him as another. He seems to have placed Ovid on a line with Virgil; and the company in his House of Fame is undeniably mixed. His judgments have the healthy instinct of the consummate artist. They do not show, as those of his master, Petrarch, unquestionably do, the discrimination and the tact of the born critic.-VAUGHAN, C. E., 1896, English Literary Criticism, Introduction, p. ix. The sweetness, the wholesomeness, the kindliness, the sincerity, the humor, and the humanity of Chaucer can hardly be overpraised.-BATES, ARLO, 1897, Talks on the Study of Literature, p. 152. It is known now that to all intents and purposes the heroic couplet had been brought to a high degree of perfection by Chaucer about 250 years before Waller had written a line.-TOVEY, DUNCAN C., 1897, Reviews and Essays in English Literature, p. 93. Chaucer was to him* a kindred spirit, as a lover of nature and as a word-painter of character: and he enjoyed reading him aloud more than any poet except Shakespeare and Milton.-TENNYSON, HALLAM, 1897, Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir, vol. II, p. 284. Chaucer continues to be one of the great masters of verse in the literature, Dryden's monstrous chatter about the progress of English verse to the contrary notwithstanding. In the use of the rhyming couplet, Chaucer surpasses immeasurably both Dryden and Pope. His thought is not so paddocked therein. In his hands, it is not the "rocking horse," as Keats characterizes it, which it is in the hands of Dryden and Pope. . . His sensitiveness as to melody did not allow him to run into a mechanical uniformity.-CORSON, HIRAM, 1897, ed. Selections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Introduction, p. lii. The prosody of Chaucer's later and more elaborate works is not, as was so long supposed, an arbitrary or a loose one. Even Dryden knew no better than to discover in the verse of the "Canterbury Tales" "a rude sweetness of a Scotch tune"; it is obvious that he was quite unable to scan it. It was, on the contrary, not merely not "rude," but an artistic product of the utmost delicacy and niceness, a product which borrowed something from the old national measure, but was mainly an introduction into English of the fixed prosodies of the French and the Italians, the former for octosyllabic, the latter for decasyllabic verse. *Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The rules of both, but especially the latter, are set, and of easy comprehension; to learn to read Chaucer with a fit appreciation of the liquid sweetness of his versification is as easy an accomplishment as to learn to scan classical French verse, or easier. But it must be remembered that, in its polished art, it was a skill fully known only to its founder, and that, with Chaucer's death, the power to read his verses as he wrote them seems immediately to have begun to disappear. Chaucer gave English poetry an admirable prosody, but it was too fine a gift to be appreciated by those for whom it was created. GOSSE, EDMUND, 1897, Short History of Modern English Literature, p. 24. The notion of Chaucer as having flooded the language with French words in contradistinction to the sound Saxon vocabulary of his contemporary Langland died hard, and perhaps simulates life even yet; but its obstinacy in surviving is merely Partridgean. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 110. sane, Chaucer's philosophy is of a practical mind. practical mind. Nature is delightful, but it is the quiet, reposeful nature of southern England. That the sea or the storms or any exhibition of great force attracted or excited his imagination I can nowhere find. Men and women are entertaining. His idea of virtue is temperance, courage, fidelity to comrades. He hates a cheat or a coward. He has a great deal of tolerance for the faults of others, because men are so interesting to him that he can forgive a good deal of vulgarity for the sake of the unadulterated human nature it illustrates. He detests a hypocrite, especially one who trades in virtue or religion; but it seems to be with an artistic quite as much as an ethical hatred that he regards hypocrisy. He makes his villians physically repulsive, and dangerous only to dupes of little discernment. The profound selfishness and cruelty of Iago covered with an exterior of soldier-like frankness is beyond his horizon. He does not scrutinize moral phenomena very closely, nor does the misery of men condemned to a life of hopeless toil oppress his imagination.— JOHNSON, CHARLES F., 1898, Elements of Literary Criticism, p. 105. 172 John Gower Born about 1325: died in the priory of St. Mary Overies, Southwark, 1408. An English poet. Little is known of his early life, but he appears to have lived in Kent and to have been a man of wide reading. He was well known at court in his later years. His principal work, the "Confessio Amantis" (written in English, probably in 1386), was originally dedicated to Richard II., but in 1394 he changed the dedication to Henry of Lancaster (afterward Henry IV.). Caxton printed it in 1483. Among his other works are "Speculum Meditantis" (written in French, recently found) and "Vox Clamantis" (a poem written in Latin, begun in 1381). After the accession of Henry VI., Gower, then an old man, added a supplement, the "Tripartite Council.” It treats of occurrences of the time, and the strength of its aspirations and teaching caused Chaucer to call him "the moral Gower." "Ballades" and other poems (mostly in French) were printed in 1818.-SMITH, BENJAMIN E., ed. 1894-97, The Century Cyclopedia of Names p. 451. PERSONAL Having written on the vanities of the world, I am about to leave the world. In my last verse I write that I am dying. Let him that comes after me write more discreetly than I have done, for now my hand and pen are silencing. I can do nothing of any value now with my hands. The labour of prayers is all that I can bear. I pray then with my tears, living, but blind. O God! protect the future reigns which thou hast established, and give me to share thy holy light.-GOWER, JOHN, 1400, MS. Cot. Lib. Tib. A 4. Bale makes him Equitem auratum & Poetam Laureatum, proving both from his Ornaments on his Monumental Statue in Saint Mary Overies, Southwark. Yet he appeareth there neither laureated nor hederated Poet (except the leaves of the Bayes and Ivy be withered to nothing since the erection of the Tomb) but only rosated, having a Chaplet of four Roses about his head. Another Author* unknighteth him, allowing him only a plain Esquire, though in my apprehension the Colar of S.S.S. about his neck speak him to be more. Besides (with submission to better judgments) that Colar hath rather a Civil than Military relation, proper to persons in places of Judicature; which makes me guess this Gower some Judge in his old age, well consisting with his original education. - FULLER, THOMAS, 1662, The Worthies of England, ed. Nichols, vol. II, p. 513. This tripartite work is represented by three volumes on Gower's curious tomb in the conventual church of Saint Mary Overee in Southwark, now remaining in its ancient state; and this circumstance *Stowe. furnishes me with an obvious opportunity of adding an anecdote relating to our poet's munificence and piety, which ought not to be omitted. Although a poet, he largely contributed to rebuild that church in its present elegant form, and to render it a beautiful pattern of the lighter Gothic architecture: at the same time he founded, at his tomb, a perpetual chantry. -WARTON, THOMAS, 1778-81, History of English Poetry, sec. xix. In the life of this poet, almost the only certain incident seems to be his sepulchral monument: and even this it had been necessary to repair after the malignity of the iconoclasts; and, of the three sculptured volumes which support the poet's head, a single one only has been opened by the world; for the tomb has perpetuated what the press has not. -DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1841, Gower, Amenities of Literature. CONFESSIO AMANTIS 1386? And who so ever in redynge of this worke doth consider it well, shall fynde that it is plentifully stuffed and fournished with manifolde eloquent reasons, sharpe and quicke argumentes, and examples of great aucthoritie, perswadynge unto vertue, not only taken out of the poets, oratours, historie-writers, and philosophers, but also out of the holy scripture. There is to my dome no man but that he maie by readinge of this worke get righte great knowledge, as well for the understandynge of many and divers auctours, whose reasons, sayenges, and histories, translated in to this worke, as for the pleintie of English words and vulgars, are beside the furtherance of the life to vertue. BERTHELETTE, THOMAS, 1532, ed. Gower's Confessio Amantis, Dedication. As Gower wrote much in French, it is but natural, that there should be in his English a large proportion of NormanFrench words; even in the spelling, in which he adheres, if we go back to the more ancient MSS, to the form used by the French writers of his day. Yet the Saxon ingredient in his language is as large as in the works of his great contemporary, and comprises a considerable number of words, which at present are either obsolete, or have altogether changed their meaning. There are very few examples of alliteration and other characteristics of pure Saxonism. His sentences are often diffuse, and ungrammatical; and it was evidently no easy task for him to compose this long poem in English. PAULI, REINHOLD, 1856, ed. Confessio Amantis, Introductory Essay, vol. 1, pp. xxxv, xxxvi. For the fashionable device of his poem Gower, infirm and elderly, cared little. To the best of his power he used it as a sort of earthwork from behind which he set himself the task of digging and springing a mine under each of the seven deadly sins. MORLEY, HENRY, 1873, First Sketch of English Literature, p. 157. The verse is smooth and fluent, but the reader feels it to be the product of literary skill. It wants what can be imparted only by an unconscious might back of the consciously active and trained powers. CORSON, HIRAM, 1886, An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry, p. 6. Old Classic, and Romance tales come into it, and are fearfully stretched out; and there are pedagogic Latin rubrics at the margin, and wearisome repititions, with now and then faint scent of prettinesses stolen from French fabliaux: but unless your patience is heroic, you will grow tired of him; and the monotonous, measured, metallic jingle of his best verse is provokingly like the "Caw-caw" of the prim, black raven. He had art, he had learning, he had good-will; but he could not weave words into the thrushlike melodies of Chaucer. Even the clear and beautiful type of the Bell & Daldy edition You does not make him entertaining. will tire before you are half through the Prologue, which is as long, and stiff as many a sermon. And if you skip to the stories, they will not win you to liveliness: Pauline's grace, and mishaps are dull; and the sharp, tragic twang about Gurmunde's skull, and the vengeance of Rosemunde (from the old legend which Paul the Deacon tells) does not wake one's blood. MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1889, English Lands Letters and Kings, From Celt to Tudor, p. 128. For if there be one indisputable. fact in literary history, it is that Gower did not have the fame of Chaucer in his own age, and that he has never had it in any age that followed. Upon this matter enough has been said in the preceding pages to show that the reputation for good sense and good taste of the contemporaries of the two poets needs no defence upon this score. The same remark can be made of their immediate successors. Later times continue to bear testimony similar to that furnished by the earlier. The mere fact that no edition of the "Confessio Amantis" appeared form 1554 until 1857 disposes of itself of the fancy that Gower's popularity ever stood for a moment in rivalry with that of Chaucer. Caxton had, indeed, printed his poem. During the sixteenth century. two other editions of it appeared. These were sufficient to supply the demand both for that time and for the three hundred years that followed. LOUNSBURY, THOMAS R., 1891, Studies in Chaucer, vol. 111, p. 70. Clearly a work of this sort cannot be read through, and as "skipping" must be indulged in, the most sensible course is to peruse only the tales. These tales are introduced nominally as exempla, though, in many instances, Gower ignores the true moral and drags in an application which does not tally; but that is one more reason why the context should be neglected. The "Confessio Amantis," however, is of considerable importance as the first collection of "novels" in English, and it is highly probable that its publication assisted, even more than the "Decameron," in determining the form of the "Canterbury Tales."-SNELL, F. J., 1899, Periods of European Literature, The Fourteenth Century, pp. 323, 324. GENERAL O moral Gower. --CHAUCER, GEOFFREY, c 1380, Troilus and Cresside, v. 1856. Vnto (the) impnis* of my maisteris dere, Gowere and Chaucere, that on the steppis satt Of rethorike quhill thai were lyvand here, In moralitee and eloquence ornate, -JAMES I, 1423? King's Quair, s. 197. Gower, that first garnisshed our Englisshe rude. SKELTON, JOHN, c 1489, Crowne of Laurell. O pensyfe herte, Remembre the of the trace and daunce And nere theim satte old morall Goore, with pleasaunte penne in hande, commendyng honeste love without luste, and pleasure without pride. Holinesse in the Cleargy without hypocrisie, no tyrannie in rulers, no falshode in Lawiers, no usurie in Marchauntes, no rebellion in the Commons and unitie emong kyngdomes. -BULLEIN, WILLIAM, 1564-73, A Dialogue Both Pleasaunt and Pietifull, wherein is a Godlie Regiment against the Fever Pestilence, with a Consolation and Comforte against Death. The first of our English Poets that I haue heard of, was Iohn Gower, about the time of king Rychard the seconde, as it should seeme by certayne coniectures bothe a Knight, and questionlesse a singuler well learned man: whose workes I could wysh they were all whole and perfect among vs, for no doubt they contained very much deepe knowledge and delight which may be gathered by his freend Chawcer, who speaketh of him oftentimes, in diuer(s) places of hys workes.WEBBE, WILLIAM, 1586, A Discourse of English Poetrie, ed. Arber, p. 31. Gower sauing for his good and graue moralities, had nothing in him highly to be commended, for his verse was homely and without good measure, his wordes strained much deale out of the French writers, his ryme wrested, and in his *Hymns. inuentions small subtillitie: the aplications of his moralities are the best in him, and yet those many times very grossely bestowed, neither doth the substance of his workes sufficiently aunswere the subtilitie of his titles.-PUTTENHAM, GEORGE, 1589, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. Arber, p. 76. Enter Gower. Before the Palace of Antioch. To glad your ear, and please your eyes. If you, born in these latter times, Gower being very gracious with King Henrie the fourth, in his time carried the name of the only poet; but his verses, to say truth, were poor and plaine, yet full of good and grave moralitie, but while he affected altogether the French phrase and words, made himself too obscure to his reader, beside his invention cometh far short of the promise of his titles. PEACHAM, HENRY, 1622, The Compleat Gentleman. That he was of all, the first polisher of his paternal tongue. For before his age the English language lay uncultivated, and almost entirely rude. Nor was there any one who had written any work in the vernacular tongue, worthy of an elegant reader. Therefore he thought it worth his while to apply a diligent culture, that thus the rude herbs being extirpated, the soft violet and the purple narcissus might grow instead of the thistle and thorns. LELAND, JOHN, c 1550, Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis, p. 415. He was the first Refiner of our English Tongue, effecting much, but endeavouring more therein. Thus he who sees the Whelp of a Bear but half lickt, will commend it for a comely Creature, in comparison of what it was when first brought forth. Indeed Gower left our |