He were unwrast of1 His word that witness is of truth!' 'That is sooth,' said Satan 'but I me sore doubt, For thou got them with guile · and His garden broke, Against His love and His leave on His land yedest3, but in form of an adder; Not in form of a fiend 4 And enticedest Eve to eat by herself, Thus haddest thou them out and hither at the last. fetch; And, as thou beguiledest God's image in going of an adder, So hath God beguiled us all · in going of a wy11 * that made all things. 'What lord art Thou?' quoth Lucifer a voice aloud said, That Christ may come in of main And with that breath hell brake with all Belial's bars; Ashtoreth and all others hid them in hernes 14, They durst not look on our Lord the least of them all, Many hundreds of angels harped then and sang, Clarior est solito post maxima nebula Phebus, Post inimicitias clarior est et amor. 'After sharpest showers,' quoth Peace 'most sheen is the sun, Is no weather warmer than after watery clouds, Nor love liefer • nor liefer friends, Than after war and wrack when Love and Peace be masters. Was never war in this world nor wickeder envy, And Peace, through patience all perils stopped.' Truth trumped them, and sang Te Deum laudamus; Ecce quam bonum et quam iocundum est habitare fratres in unum! Till the day dawned these damsels danced, That men rung to the resurrection And called Kitte my wife 'Arise! and go reverence and with that I awaked, and Calote my daughter, God's resurrection, And creep on knees to the cross and kiss it for a jewel, And rightfullest relic none richer on earth! For God's blessed body it bare, for our boot', for such is the might, May no grisly ghost glide where it shadoweth !' 1 help, remedy. • frightens away. GOWER. [JOHN GOWER seems to have been born about 1330, and died in 1408, having been blind for eight or nine years before his death. He was a gentleman of ancient family, owning estates in Kent and Suffolk. The place of his birth is unknown; he is believed to have died in the priory of St. Mary Overies, Southwark, in the church of which, now called St. Saviour's, his tomb may still be seen. The earliest of his three principal works, Speculum Meditantis, was in French verse, but it has not come down to posterity, nor is the precise time of its composition known. The second, Vox Clamantis, in Latin elegiac verse, was written between 1382 and 1384, and commemorates the rising of the commons under Wat Tyler in the former year, moralizing upon it and improving the occasion with as:onishing prolixity. The third, Confessio Amantis, one of the best known of early English poems, was written between 1385 and 1393.] It was The poetry of Gower has been variously estimated. a practice with the poets of the sixteenth century to link his name in a venerated trio with those of Chaucer and Lydgate, just as in the seventeenth century the names of Shakspere, Jonson, and Fletcher were often joined together as the great dramatic lights of the preceding age. In each case the effect of closer study has been to lead men to think that they have been joining gold with iron and clay. Shakspere, read attentively, rises high above the standard reached by Jonson and Fletcher; and in a yet greater degree has the genius of Chaucer, accurately studied and rightly felt, impressed the present age with the sense of his unrivalled eminence among his contemporaries. Gower, a man of birth and fortune, must have lived in the cultivated society of his day. Of that society, French poetry, in its various forms of Fabliau, Rondel, Romance, Epigram, Chanson, &c., was one of the chief delights and distractions. With much imitative power, with the faculty of sustained attention, with a high appreciation for his own thoughts, and remarkable linguistic facility, Gower, when he betook himself to poetry, was sure to become a copious and prolific writer. But, possessing no originality, he was equally sure to remain pent within the imprisoning bounds of fashion and conventionality, to follow, not take the lead, to interpret, not modify opinion. He seems to have been without the sense of humour; we doubt if a single jest of his own making can be found throughout his writings. From this cause, although he may justly be called a moralist and a didactic writer, (Chaucer and Lydgate both speak of him as the 'moral' Gower), the higher intellectual rank of a satirist must be denied him. The moralist declaims, the satirist paints; we are convinced of the deformity of vice in the one case, but we see it in the other. The faculties of the first dispose him to subjective estimates of men and things, those of the second to objective estimates. The one describes the offenders, the other makes them exhibit themselves. The moralist inveighs against the selfish cowardice of a degraded proletariat; the satirist puts a few simple words in their mouths, and we know them and their kind for evermore. 'Curramus praecipites, et Dum jacet in ripa, calcemus Caesaris hostem.' Several MSS. of the Confessio Amantis, Gower's principal poem, contain a passage in Latin prose in which he describes the three books which he had written, all with a didactic motive, 'doctrinae causa.' The first of these, Speculum Meditantis, was in French verse. It was probably written between 1360 and 1370, at a period when the ladies at Edward III's court and their admirers would hardly have condescended to read a poem couched in their native English, a tongue not then believed to be suited to themes of love, mysticism, and chivalry. It was a strictly moral poem, treating of virtues and vices, and the methods of penitence and amendment; but it has absolutely vanished; and since from the account we have of the contents it is impossible not to believe that it was exceedingly dull, we may be reconciled to the loss. Gower's next considerable effort, the Vox Clamantis, a Latin elegiac poem in seven books, was suggested by the rising of the commons under Wat Tyler and others in 1381. Why he chose to write it in Latin it is impossible to say, unless we suppose that he wished to hide from the objects of them, under the veil of a learned language, the sharp censures on the classes of knights, burghers, and cultivators, which the poem contains. In a passage which is grotesque if not dramatic, the poet thus describes the ringleaders of the insurrection : •Watte vocat, cui Thomme venit, neque Symme retardat, Recteque Gibbe simul Hicke venire jubent: Colle furit, quem Geffe juvat, nocumenta parantes, Cum quibus ad damnum Wille coire vovet. Grigge rapit, dum Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe, Lorkin et in medio non minor esse putat.' The murder of Archbishop Sudbury by the rebels is described, but with little of that local or circumstantial colouring which we should desire. All that they succeeded in doing, says Gower, was to send him to heaven, 'Vivere fecerunt, quem mortificare putarunt; Quem tollunt mundo, non potuere Deo.' For several years before the rising of the commons the fame of Chaucer's English poetry must have been growing. Mere fashion could not hold out against the commanding power of that poetry; and Gower, when next he attempted a considerable work, found that he might as well write it in English. The Confessio Amantis was begun, he tells us, at the command of Richard II, who meeting him one day on the Thames, while the tide was flowing, called him into his barge, and bade him in the course of their talk to 'boke some newe thing.' Gower planned a work Whiche may be wisdom to the wise, And play to hem that list to play.' Thus incited, The long prologue is taken up with an account of the then state of the world, in which he repeats much of the censure on the various orders of men that he had introduced into the Vox Clamantis. He deplores the decline of virtue and good customs, and the general tendency of things to grow worse. Love itself is diseased, and no longer the pure passion that it once was. Starting from this point, he devotes the greater part of the voluminous poem which follows to an examination of the various ways in which men offend against the god of love. The seventh or penultimate book only is an exception to this remark, being a sketch of the philosophy of Aristotle. The lover is represented as a penitent, who, being half dead from a wound inflicted by Cupid, and resorting to Venus his mother, is recommended by the goddess to apply to Genius her priest, and confess to him all the sins that |