THOUGH ranking far below the great Father of English Poetry, "the moral Gower," as his friend Chaucer calls him in the "Troilus and Creseide," yet holds an honoured place among our earlier bards. We know very little of his personal history.

He was, perhaps, born in 1325. One of the most illustrious houses in the realm now bears his name; and even in the far-off days of the poet's birth the family was of noble blood. Supposed to have been a scion of the gentle Gowers, resident in the twelfth century at Stittenham in Yorkshire, he seems to have studied at Merton College, Oxford, and to have adopted the law as his profession. Indeed there is a story to the effect that he was a judge of the Common Pleas. But evidence is not forthcoming to prove that Sir John Gower the judge and John Gower the poet were one and the same man.

Like Chaucer, with whom he was long very intimate, although it is said that their friendship cooled at last, Gower espoused the cause of one of King Richard's uncles. His patron was the Duke of Gloucester, whose mysterious murder at Calais is one of the darkest spots in a miserable reign. Fired, no doubt, with the strong suspicion, perhaps with the certain knowledge, that his friend and patron was slain by a royal order, Gower seems to have been right glad when the luxurious king was hurled from his throne to die in Pontefract.

During the last nine years of his life, Gower was blind (1399– 1408.) He died rich, leaving to his widow the then large sum of £100, along with the rents of two manors, one in Nottinghamshire

62

GOWER'S THREE WORKS.

and one in Suffolk. His tomb in the Church of St. Saviour, Southwark, which was called in the fourteenth century St. Mary Overies, represents the poet pillowed upon three volumes, in memento of his three great works. His grave face, framed with a mass of long auburn hair, well befits his name of " Moral Gower." Gower's three great works were called, Speculum Meditantis, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis. Of these, the first,

said to have been in French, has been lost; the second, in Latin, is still preserved in manuscript, but has never been printed; the third is that work of the poet which has entitled him to an enduring place in our literature, for it is nearly all in English. There is, in the library of the Duke of Sutherland at Trentham in Staffordshire, a volume, in which there are many French love sonnets, written by Gower when young, so full of sweetness and feeling as to have drawn the warmest praises from Warton. The plot of the Confessio Amantis is rather odd. A lover holds a dialogue with his confessor, Genius, who is a priest of Venus. The priest, before he will grant absolution, probes the heart of his penitent to the core, trying all its weak spots. He plies him with moral tales in illustration of his teaching, giving him, en passant, lessons in chemistry and the philosophy of Aristotle. After all the tedious shrift, when our hero seems to be so arrayed in a panoply of purity and learning as to render his victory a certain thing, we suddenly find that he is now too old to care for the triumph suffered for and wished for so long. Ellis, in his "Specimens of the Early English Poets," characterizes the narrative of Gower as being often quite petrifying. And although this poet's place, as second to Chaucer during the infancy of our literature, cannot be disputed, still it must be confessed that old John is often prosy, and sometimes dull.

FROM GOWER'S "CONFESSIO AMANTIS."

A ROMAN STORY.

In a Croniq I fynde thus,

How that Caius Fabricius

Wich whilome was consul of Rome,

By whome the lawes yede and come,

[went

CC THE CONFESSIO AMANTIS."

Whan the Sampnitees to him brouht
A somme of golde, and hym by souht
To done hem fauoure in the lawe,
Towarde the golde he gan hym drawe:
Whereof in alle mennes loke,

A part in to his honde he tooke,
Wich to his mouthe in alle haste
He put hit for to smelle and taste,
And to his ihe and to his ere,
Bot he ne fonde no comfort there:
And thanne he be gan it to despise,
And tolde vnto hem in this wise:
"I not what is with golde to thryve
Whan none of alle my wittes fyve
Fynt savour ne delite ther inne
So is it bot a nyce sinne
Of golde to ben to coveitous,
Bot he is riche an glorious
Wich hath in his subieccion
The men wich in possession

Ben riche of golde, and by this skille,
For he may alday whan he wille,
Or be him leef or be him loth,
Justice don vppon hem bothe."

Lo thus he seide and with that worde
He threwe to fore hem on the borde

The golde oute of his honde anon,
And seide hem that he wolde none,
So that he kepte his liberte
To do justice and equite.

His poor

THE romantic story of this royal poet is well known. father, Robert III., whose heart had been well-nigh broken by the murder of his darling son Rothesay, put his only remaining son, James, on board a ship bound for France, that the boy might be safe from the wiles of Albany. The ship being seized off the Norfolk coast, the prince was led a captive to the English Court -an event which brought his father's grey head in sorrow to the grave. This happened in 1405, when young James was only eleven years of age. From that time, until his release in 1424, he remained in England, living chiefly at Windsor and receiving an education befitting his royal birth. He seems to have excelled in every study and every sport; but the music of the harp and the making of verses were his chief delights. Chaucer's poetry and Gower's were studied eagerly by the captive king, and "from admiration to imitation there is but a step." But a power greater than delight in Chaucer's verse was at work in the poet's breast. He fell in love; and, while all life was bright with the rosy hue of a new-blown passion, he sang his sweetest song.

Early one morning, looking from a window in the Round Tower of Windsor out upon a garden thick with May leaves, and musical with the liquid song of nightingales, he saw walking below a lady, young, lovely, richly dressed and jewelled. This was Joan Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. His love for her, speedily kindled, inspired his greatest work, The King's Quhair (quire or book). The poem, written in one hundred and ninety-seven

DEATH OF KING JAMES I.

65

stanzas of seven lines each, contains many particulars of the poet's life, the most admired passage being that in which he describes his first glimpse of his future wife walking in the leafy garden. The polish of many stanzas is exquisite.

Although King James ranks so high as a pathetic and amatory poet, he seems equally at home in a broad comic vein of description. Two poems of this class,-Christis Kirk on the Grene and Peblis to the Play,―are ascribed to him rather than to James V. The former is in the Aberdeenshire dialect, the latter in that of Tweeddale, and both humorously describe certain old Scottish country merry-makings.

Ruling not wisely (for himself at least), but too well, this cleverest of the royal Stuarts was stabbed to death in the Monastery of the Dominicans at Perth early in the year 1437. The murderers, chief among them Sir Robert Graham, burst late at night into his private room, found him, where he had hidden, in a vault below the flooring, and after a fearful struggle cut him almost to pieces with their swords and knives.