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that he should remember his old age and leave off such 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 mediaval hiftories of the fiege of Troy, of the feats of Alexander the Great-from the oldeft collections of novels, known under the name of the Gesta 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 sources, 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 discourse 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 philosopher's stone. 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 ftudied 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 faid before, the reader may eafily imagine. The accumulation of such stores, 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 diverfified 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 verfes evince a correct ear and a happy power, by the affiftance of which he enhances the interest in a tale, and frequently terminates it with fatisfaction to the reader.*

The ftyle 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 ufe 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.

obfolete, or have altogether changed their meaning. There are very few examples of alliteration and other characteristics of pure Saxonism. Some of his words, the pronunciation of which is frequently regulated by the rhyme, or may perhaps be referred to his provincial dialect, are curious. For instance, instead of I saw, he invariably wrote I figh; for not, he always wrote nought. In many inftances, especially where words change their vowels in deference to the preceding rhyme, he fets all rules at defiance, and verbs of the ftrong conjugation are frequently used indifcriminately in the present or preterite tense without the slightest regard to the sense of the period. His fentences are often diffufe, andungrammatical; and it was evidently no easy task for him to compose this long poem in English.

In spite of all these defects the Confeffio Amantis very foon became a favourite in England. Copies were transcribed for the court, the nobility, and the general reader. The work is among the earliest productions of the English prefs, and retained its admirers until brighter stars made their appearance above the horizon of our national literature.

We have already feen, how Chaucer characterized the style of his brother poet. Even a contemporary chronicler feems to borrow occafionally from the Confeffio Amantis. The Monk of Evesham, in the Life of Richard II. fays of the prelates: "Dimiferunt oves expofitas luporum rictibus, fet nullus erexit baculum ad abigendum,"* which agrees with Gower's Prologue 2.:

"For if the wolf come in the way,
Their goftly staffe is than away,

Whereof they fhuld her flock defende ;”

* Ed. Hearne, p. 114.

and again: "Sed domina fortuna, quæ rotam inftabilem non finit femper in fuo ftatu permanere, proiecit eum Regem quafi fubito a fumma ufque ad "* which at leaft resembles Gower's Prologue 1.:

yma,'

"After the torning of the whele,

Which blinde fortune overthroweth,
Wherof the certain no man knoweth."

Towards the end of the fifteenth century, Skelton dedicated a few lines to Gower, which are not without interest as descriptive of his poetry; in the Boke of Philip Sparrow, he says:

"Gowers englyfhe is olde,

And of no value is tolde;

His matter is worth gold,

And worthy to be enrold,"

and again in the Crowne of Laurell

"Gower, that first garnished our English rude, And maifter Chaucer, that nobly enterprised, How that Englishe myght freshely be ennewed." At laft Shakespeare, or whoever wrote or touched with true Shakespearean genius the play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, took his fubject directly from the story of Appollinus of Tyre, as told in the eighth book of the Confeffio Amantis, and introduced in the place of Chorus old Gower himself, prologuizing and epiloguizing in his own lively metre. The words by which the drama is opened

"To fing a fong that old was fung,
From ashes ancient Gower is come,
Affuming man's infirmities,

To glad our ear and please our eyes,”

* Ed. Hearne, p. 149.

d

are a fufficient proof, that at the date of this play, (1596 or 1598,) the name and poem of Gower were familiar to many who went to fee the performance of Pericles. Gower appears alfo in the second part of Shakespeare's King Henry IV. as one of the king's party, and in the scene with Falstaff is evidently treated as a perfon of confiderable importance.

III. MANUSCRIPTS AND EDITIONS OF THE CONFESSIO AMANTIS.

THE Manuscripts of Gower's English work are very numerous; there are copies at Oxford, at Cambridge, at Dublin, in the British Museum, and in private collections. At the first-mentioned place there are no less than ten, for a short notice of which the editor is indebted to the Rev. H. O. Coxe, of the Bodleian Library.

MS. Laud, 609, MS. Bodl. 693, MS. Selden, B. 11. and MS. Corp. Chr. Coll. 67, contain the version addreffed to Richard II. with the complimentary verses on Chaucer at the end.

MS. Fairfax, 3, MS. Hatton, 51, MS. Wadham Coll. 13, and MS. New Coll. 266, contain the Lancaster copy.

Befides these there are two hybrids: MS. Bodl. 294, which has the dedication to Richard at the commencement, and omits the verfes on Chaucer; and MS. New Coll. 326, which is dedicated to Henry of Lancaster, and compliments Chaucer at the end. The first of these has the fame scribe and illuminator throughout; the latter part of the second appears to have been written by a different hand. All these MSS. are of the fifteenth century.

The four copies at Cambridge have been briefly described by Todd, in his Illuftrations of Gower and Chaucer.

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