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 (13991408.) 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. 66 THE CONFESSIO AMANTIS." Whan the Sampnitees to him brouht A part in to his honde he tooke, So is it bot a nyce sinne Ben riche of golde, and by this skille, Lo thus he seide and with that worde The golde oute of his honde anon, 63 [reason 54 SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. prisoner at the siege of Retters. On his release and return home, whenever that happened, we find his prospects grow brighter and brighter. One grant following another, showed how dear the man of letters, who could also wield a sword, was to the brave old king. When in his thirty-ninth year (1367), the poet received a pension of 20 marks; which, as each silver mark weighed eight ounces and was worth £10 of our money, was equivalent to £200 a year. Five years later, he was sent with two others to Genoa, on an important commercial mission; during which trip 1372 he is thought to have travelled in northern Italy, to A.D. have visited Petrarch at Padua, and to have heard from the very lips of that "old man eloquent," the story of "Patient Grisilde," which he afterwards embodied in the Clerkes Tale. Then came other royal grants,—a pitcher of wine daily for life the office of Comptroller of Customs of wool, wine, &c., in the Port of London-the wardship of a rich heir, for three years' guardianship of whom he got £104. During this sunshine of kingly favour he married a maid of honour, whose sister afterwards became the wife of his patron, John of Ghent. By this union a pension of 100 shillings, lately conferred on his wife, was added to his income. Two more diplomatic missions, to Flanders and to France, proved the confidence reposed in him by his royal master. Thus rich, honoured, useful, and, we may conjecture, happy, Geoffrey Chaucer saw in 1377 the grey head of the third Edward go down with sorrow to the grave. At first, under the new reign, all was bright, and continued so for some seven years. In the first year of Richard II. his daily gallon of wine was exchanged for a pension of 20 marks, and other gifts were bestowed on the prosperous comptroller. But soon his sun was darkly clouded. It was not likely that he could avoid taking an active part in the difficulties that arose between Richard and Lancaster; and, as his feelings were strongly enlisted on the side of the duke, he fell into disfavour with the king. Embroiled especially in a London riot, raised by John of Northampton, who was a friend of Lancaster, the poet was forced to flee to the Continent. There, in Hainault, in France, and in Zee OLD AGE AND DEATH. 55 land, he lived with his wife and children for eighteen months, becoming at last almost penniless through generosity to his fellow-exiles, and the failure of supplies from home, where his agents had treacherously appropriated his rents. Returning, he was flung into the Tower, and lay there until he was forced to sell his two pensions to save his family from starvation; nor was he freed until, indignant at the base ingratitude of those in whose cause he was suffering, and pressed both by the threats and the entreaties of the Court, he confessed his guilt and denounced his accomplices. Then, Lancaster being once more in the ascendant, royal favour smiled on the poet. He was made Clerk of Works at Westminster and other places, receiving, in lieu of the pensions he had been forced to sell, a pension of £20 and an annual pipe of wine. Wearied with public life, he retired about 1391 to his house at Woodstock, where he sat down in sober age and country quiet to write his great work-The Canterbury Tales. His remaining days were spent at Woodstock and Donnington Castle, both gifts from the princely Lancaster; and within these sheltering walls he rested and wrote. The accession of Henry IV. brought good fortune to the poet, whose pension was doubled; but he did not live long to enjoy this greater wealth. Within a house which is said to have stood in a garden near the site of Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster, he died on the 25th of October, 1400. His body was buried close by in the Abbey, where the dust of England's noblest dead is laid. Chaucer's chequered life was such as to wear off all the little roughnesses and conceits of his earlier character, and bring the fine grain of the manly nature below into full view. He saw both the lights and the shadows of human existence,—at one time the admired of a brilliant Court, at another a prisoner and an exile. But through every change he seems to have borne a heart unsoured by care; and even in old age, when his locks hung in silver threads beneath his buttoned bonnet, a joyous spirit shone in his wrinkled face. A small, fair, round-trimmed beard fringed those lips, whose red fulness was remarked as a special beauty in the hand |