It is not poffible that both dedications could have been written at the same time; for, if we confider the political fituation in those days, only a very abject mind would have made fimultaneously two such oppofite declarations. Befides it is diftinctly stated in one verfion, which unquestionably is the earlier, that the first idea of the work originated with the king, whereas in the other the poet takes no notice whatever of his having been induced by Richard to write an English work, but merely mentions the year in which he addressed it to earl Henry. It is well known, that Henry as early as the year 1387 had joined the oppofition and had been one of the lords appellants, who forced the king to rule according to the will of parliament. Gower, who was a clofe obferver of the political events of his days, faw how the young king, after attaining his majority, attempted in the years 1386 and 1387 in conjunction with his favourite the young duke of Ireland, to annihilate the oppofition headed by the duke of Gloucester and the earls of Arundel, Warwick, Nottingham, and Derby. He perceived that the king from difpofition and inclination was hurrying himself and the affairs of his realm to ultimate deftruction and ruin. He therefore changed his politics early in the reign of Richard II, altered the dedication of his English work in 1392-3, received in the year next following a collar from Henry of Lancaster, and looked upon him ever afterwards as the final restorer of peace and order. From that time he appears to have been a firm adherer to the Lancastrian intereft, for the same sentiment which he expreffed in the dedication of 1392-3 is found in fome Latin and French scraps, addreffed to king Henry IV. and mentioned above, and also in an English poem of fifty-five stanzas entitled "a Balade to Kyng Henry the fourth," in which he praises him highly and recommends for his imitation the examples of former great rulers.* This is a very fimple folution founded on facts and dates, by which the honour of the poet is entirely saved from the injurious accufation that he was "an ingrate to his lawful fovereign, and a fycophant to the ufurper of his throne."† The date, therefore, when Gower began to write the Confeffio Amantis would fall before the year 1386, and before the young king, who had just become of age, developed those dangerous qualities which estranged from him, amongst others, the poet, who, as he states himself, compofed his work in English in confequence of an invitation from his fovereign. The Confeffio Amantis was certainly complete in the year 1392-3, and was therefore written about the time at which Chaucer was engaged upon the latter part of his immortal work, the Canterbury Tales. We now come to the work itself. It confifts of a prologue and eight books, written entirely, with the exception of a poem at the end of the eighth book, in verses of eight fyllables, rhyming in pairs. The prologue confirms what has just been stated with regard to the author's political opinions. Like his contemporaries, Piers Plowman and Wiclif, he imagines, that in confequence of the absence of all order and juftice, the end of the world is at hand. He accufes the church, especially fince the beginning of the great schism between Rome and Avignon which nurtures "This newe feite of lollardie," as well as the state and the people in general, of being incurably infected with this universal disease. It is not accident or fortune, he fays, which rules the deftinies of the world, but God's governance, as revealed in the vision of * Chaucer's Works, ed. Thynne, 1532, fol. 375. Nebuchadnezzar, and explained by the prophet Daniel, whose interpretation he next largely comments on, bringing all the historical knowledge at his command to bear upon the fubject. The poem opens by introducing the author himself, in the character of an unhappy lover in despair, fmitten by Cupid's arrow. Venus appears to him and, after having heard his prayer, appoints her priest called Genius, like the mystagogue in the Picture of Cebes, to hear the lover's confeffion. This is the frame of the whole work, which is a fingular mixture of claffical notions, principally borrowed from Ovid's Ars Amandi, and of the purely medieval idea, that as a good Catholic the unfortunate lover muft ftate his diftrefs to a father confeffor. This is done in the course of the confeffion with great regularity and even pedantry: all the paffions of the human heart, which generally stand in the way of love, being fyftematically arranged in the various books and fubdivifions of the work. After Genius has fully explained the evil affection, paffion, or vice under confideration, the lover confeffes on that particular point; and frequently urges his boundless love for an unknown beauty, who treats him cruelly, in a tone of affectation which would appear highly ridiculous in a man of more than fixty years of age, were it not a common characteristic of the poetry of the period. After this profeffion, the confeffor opposes him, and exemplifies the fatal effects of each paffion by a variety of appofite ftories, gathered from many fources, examples being then as now a favourite mode of inculcating instruction and reformation. At length, after a frequent and tedious recurrence of the fame process, the confeffion is terminated by some final injunctions of the priest-the lover's petition in a strophic poem addreffed to Venus-the bitter judgment of the goddess, that he should remember his old age and leave off fuch fooleries: "For loves luft and lockes hore In chambre accorden never more" -his cure from the wound caused by the dart of love, and his abfolution, received as if by a pious Roman Catholic. The materials for this extenfive work, and the stories inferted as examples for and against the lover's paffion, are drawn from various fources. Some have been taken from the Bible, a great number from Ovid's Metamorphofes, which must have been a particular favourite with the author, others from the medieval histories of the fiege of Troy, of the feats of Alexander the Great-from the oldest collections of novels, known under the name of the Gefta Romanorum, chiefly in its form as used in England-from the Pantheon and the Speculum Regum of Godfrey of Viterbo-from the romance of Sir Lancelot, and the chronicles of Caffiodorus and Ifidorus. We believe that all the stories in the work may be referred with certainty to one or other of these fources, except one tale, perhaps the latest in date, taken from the apocryphal life of Pope Boniface VIII. In the fixth book the confeffor enters into a long difcourfe on the contents of the Almageft, he explains the doctrines of the age concerning the vegetable, mineral, and animal ftones, and afferts his own belief in the existence of the philofopher's ftone. The seventh book contains an expofition of a great portion of Ariftotle's philofophy, chiefly his phyfics, ethics and metaphyfics, not taken from the original, but very likely borrowed from the medieval Pfeudo-Ariftotelian compendium, known under the name of the Secretum Secretorum. This great amount of knowledge and science, as studied and revered in those days, gives the work the appearance of a cyclopædia, in which the author was anxious and vain enough to amass whatever he had learnt and extracted from his own library, the contents of which from what has been said before, the reader may eafily imagine. The accumulation of fuch ftores, both of narrative and scientific matter, left neceffarily very little space for a display of the author's imagination, and for poetic invention. He did not poffefs the deep love for the beauties of external nature, nor the inimitable humour and diversified natural paffion, which we admire in Chaucer. But wanting these effentially poetical attributes, he indulges freely in reasoning and moralizing on the happiness and miffortunes of love, which in former times he may have amply experienced. But however dry his poetic vein, it is not altogether without its charms. The vivacity and variety of his short verses evince a correct ear and a happy power, by the affistance of which he enhances the interest in a tale, and frequently terminates it with fatisfaction to the reader.* The style in which the Confeffio Amantis is written, bears ftrong marks of the author's labour; but he did not fucceed in blending together the two principal elements of his mother-tongue so skilfully and harmoniously fo as Chaucer, whofe earliest compofitions fhow a confiderable practice in the use of what was then a modern language. As Gower wrote much in French, it is but natural, that there should be in his English a large proportion of Norman-French 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 confiderable number of words, which at present are either • W. W. Lloyd, in Singer's Shakespeare, vol. iv. p. 261. |