The complete works of John Gower, volume 2 — Key Ideas to Explore

aucer and Gower in literary merit; but Bale suggests that our author was ‘alter Dantes ac Petrarcha’ (no less), adding the remark, taken perhaps from Berthelette’s preface, ‘sui temporis lucerna habebatur ad docte scribendum in lingua vulgari[A].’ In Bullein’s _Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence_ (1564) Gower is represented as sitting next to the Classical poets, Homer, Hesiod, Ennius and Lucan. Puttenham in the _Art of English Poesie_ (1589), and Sidney in the _Defence of Poesie_ (1595), equally class Gower and Chaucer together. The latter, illustrating his thesis that the first writers of each country were the poets, says, ‘So among the Romans were Livius Andronicus and Ennius, so in the Italian language ... the poets Dante, Boccace and Petrarch, so in our English, Gower and Chaucer, after whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our mother tongue, as well in the same kind as in other arts.’

In Robert Greene’s _Vision_, printed about 1592, Chaucer and Gower appear as the accepted representatives of the pleasant and the sententious styles in story-telling, and compete with one another in tales upon a given subject, the cure of jealousy. The introduction of Gower into the play of _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_ has already been referred to.

The uncritical exaggeration of Gower’s literary merits, which formerly prevailed, has been of some disadvantage to him in modern times. The comparison with Chaucer, which was so repeatedly suggested, could not but be unfavourable to him; and modern critics, instead of endeavouring to appreciate fairly such merits as he has, have often felt called upon to offer him up as a sacrifice to the honour of Chaucer, who assuredly needs no such addition to his glory. The true critical procedure is rather the opposite of this. Gower’s early popularity and reputation are facts to be reckoned with, in addition to the literary merit which we in our generation may find in his work, and neither students of Middle English, nor those who aim at tracing the influences under which the English language and literature developed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, can afford to leave Gower’s English work out of their account.

i. LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS.--The reason of the success of the _Confessio Amantis_ was naturally the fact that it supplied a popular need. After endeavouring to ‘give an account of his stewardship’ in various ways as a moralist, the author at length found his true vocation, and this time happily in his native tongue, as a teller of stories. The rest is all machinery, sometimes poetical and interesting, sometimes tiresome and clumsy, but the stories are the main thing. The perception of the popular taste may have come to him partly through the success of Chaucer in the _Legend of Good Women_, and the simple but excellent narrative style which he thereupon developed must have been a new revelation of his powers to himself as well as to others. It is true that he does not altogether drop the character of the moralist, but he has definitely and publicly resigned the task of setting society generally to rights,

‘It stant noght in my sufficance So grete thinges to compasse, . . . . . . . . . Forthi the Stile of my writinges Fro this day forth I thenke change And speke of thing is noght so strange,’ &c. (i. 4 ff.)

He covers his retreat indeed by dwelling upon the all-pervading influence of Love in the world and the fact that all the evils of society may be said to spring from the want of it; but this is little more than a pretext. Love is the theme partly because it supplies a convenient framework for the design, and partly perhaps out of deference to a royal command. There is no reason to doubt the statement in the first version of the Prologue about the meeting of the author with Richard II on the river, and that he then received suggestions for a book, which the king promised to accept and read. It may easily be supposed that Richard himself suggested love as the subject, being a matter in which, as we know from Froissart, he was apt to take delight. ‘Adont me demanda le roy de quoy il traittoit. Je luy dis, “D’amours.” De ceste response fut-il tous resjouys, et regarda dedens le livre en plusieurs lieux et y lisy[B].’ It was certainly to the credit of the young king that he should have discerned literary merit in the work of the grave monitor who had so lectured him upon his duties in the _Vox Clamantis_, and should have had some part in encouraging him to set his hand to a more promising task; and if it be the fact that he suggested love as the subject, we cannot but admire both the sense of humour displayed by the prince and the address with which our author acquitted himself of the task proposed.

The idea of the Confession was no doubt taken from the _Roman de la Rose_, where the priest of Nature, whose name is Genius, hears her confession; but it must be allowed that Gower has made much better use of it. Nature occupies herself in expounding the system of the universe generally, and in confessing at great length not her own faults but those of Man, whom she repents of having made. Her tone is not at all that of a penitent, though she may be on her knees, and Genius does little or nothing for her in reply except to agree rather elaborately with her view that, if proper precautions had been taken, Mars and Venus might easily have outwitted Vulcan. Gower on the other hand has made the Confession into a framework which will conveniently hold any number of stories upon every possible subject, and at the same time he has preserved for the most part the due propriety of character and situation in the two actors. By giving the scheme an apparent limitation to the subject of love he has not in fact necessarily limited the range of narrative, for there is no impropriety in illustrating by a tale the general nature of a vice or virtue before making the special application to cases which concern lovers, and this special application, made with all due solemnity, has often a character of piquancy in which the moral tale pure and simple would be wanting. Add to this that the form adopted tends itself to a kind of quasi-religious treatment of the subject, which was fully in accordance with the taste of the day, and produces much of that impression of quaintness and charm with which we most of us associate our first acquaintance with the _Confessio Amantis_.

The success of the work--for a success it is in spite of its faults--is due to several merits. The first of these is the author’s unquestionable talent for story-telling. He has little of the dramatic power or the humour which distinguish Chaucer, but he tells his tales in a well-ordered and interesting manner, does not break the thread by digressions, never tires of the story before it is finished, as Chaucer does so obviously and so often, and carries his reader through with him successfully to the end in almost every case. His narrative is a clear, if shallow, stream, rippling pleasantly over the stones and unbroken either by dams or cataracts. The materials of course are not original, but Gower is by no means a slavish follower in detail of his authorities; the proportions and arrangement of the stories are usually his own and often show good judgement. Moreover he not seldom gives a fresh turn to a well-known story, as in the instances of Jephthah and Saul, or makes a pretty addition to it, as is the case in some of the tales from Ovid. Almost the only story in which the interest really flags is the longest, the tale of Apollonius of Tyre, which fills up so much of the eighth book and was taken as the basis of the plot of _Pericles_; and this was in its original form so loose and rambling a series of incidents, that hardly any skill could have completely redeemed it. There is no doubt that this gift of clear and interesting narrative was the merit which most appealed to the popular taste, the wholesome appetite for stories being at that time not too well catered for, and that the plainness of the style was an advantage rather than a drawback.

Tastes will differ of course as to the merits of the particular stories, but some may be selected as incontestably good. The tale of Mundus and Paulina in the first book is excellently told, and so is that of Alboin and Rosemund. The best of the second book are perhaps the False Bachelor and the legend of Constantine and Silvester, in the latter of which the author has greatly improved upon his materials. In the third book the tale of Canace is most pathetically rendered, far better than in Ovid, so that in spite of Chaucer’s denunciation his devoted follower Lydgate could not resist the temptation of borrowing it. The fourth book, which altogether is of special excellence, gives us Rosiphelee, Phyllis, and the very poetically told tale of Ceix and Alceone. The fifth has Jason and Medea, a most admirable example of sustained narrative, simple and yet effective and poetical, perhaps on the whole Gower’s best performance: also the oriental tale of Adrian and Bardus, and the well told story of Tereus and Philomela. In the seventh we shall find the Biblical story of Gideon excellently rendered, the Rape of Lucrece, and the tale of Virginia. These may be taken as specimens of Gower’s narrative power at its best, and by the degree of effectiveness which he attains in them and the manner in which he has used his materials, he may fairly be judged as a story-teller.

As regards style and poetical qualities we find much that is good in the narratives. Force and picturesqueness certainly cannot be denied to the tale of Medea, with its description of the summer sea glistening in the sun, which blazes down upon the returning hero, and from the golden fleece by his side flashes a signal of success to Medea in her watch-tower, as she prays for her chosen knight. Still less can we refuse to recognize the poetical power of the later phases of the same story, first the midnight rovings of Medea in search of enchantments,

‘The world was stille on every side; With open hed and fot al bare, Hir her tosprad sche gan to fare, Upon hir clothes gert sche was, Al specheles and on the gras Sche glod forth as an Addre doth: Non otherwise sche ne goth, Til sche cam to the freisshe flod, And there a while sche withstod. Thries sche torned hire aboute, And thries ek sche gan doun loute And in the flod sche wette hir her, And thries on the water ther Sche gaspeth with a drecchinge onde, And tho sche tok hir speche on honde.’ (v. 3962 ff.),

and again later, when the charms are set in action, 4059 ff., a passage of extraordinary picturesqueness, but too long to be quoted here. We do not forget the debt to Ovid, but these descriptions are far more detailed and forcible than the original.

For a picture of a different kind, also based upon Ovid, we may take the description of the tears of Lucrece for her husband, and the reviving beauty in her face when he appears,

‘With that the water in hire yhe Aros, that sche ne myhte it stoppe, And as men sen the dew bedroppe The leves and the floures eke, Riht so upon hire whyte cheke The wofull salte teres felle. Whan Collatin hath herd hire telle The menynge of hire trewe herte, Anon with that to hire he sterte, And seide, “Lo, mi goode diere, Nou is he come to you hiere, That ye most loven, as ye sein.” And sche with goodly chiere ayein Beclipte him in hire armes smale, And the colour, which erst was pale, To Beaute thanne was restored, So that it myhte noght be mored’ (vii. 4830 ff.),

a passage in which Gower, with his natural taste for simplicity, has again improved upon his classical authority, and may safely challenge comparison with Chaucer, who has followed Ovid more literally.

It is worth mention that Gower’s descriptions of storms at sea are especially vivid and true, so that we are led to suppose that he had had more than a mere literary acquaintance with such things. Such for instance is the account of the shipwreck of the Greek fleet, iii. 981 ff., and of the tempests of which Apollonius is more than once the victim, as viii. 604 ff., and in general nautical terms and metaphors, of some of which the meaning is not quite clear, seem to come readily from his pen.

Next to the simple directness of narrative style which distinguishes the stories themselves, we must acknowledge a certain attractiveness in the setting of them. The Lover decidedly engages our interest: we can understand his sorrows and his joys, his depression when his mistress will not listen to the verses which he has written for her, and his delight when he hears men speak her praises. We can excuse his frankly confessed envy, malice and hatred in all matters which concern his rivals in her love. His feelings are described in a very natural manner, the hesitation and forgetfulness in her presence, and the self-reproach afterwards, the eagerness to do her small services, to accompany her to mass, to lift her into her saddle, to ride by her carriage, the delight of being present in her chamber, of singing to her or reading her the tale of Troilus, or if no better may be, of watching her long and slender fingers at work on her weaving or embroidery. Sometimes she will not stay with him, and then he plays with the dog or with the birds in the cage, and converses with the page of her chamber--anything as an excuse to stay; and when it grows late and he must perforce depart, he goes indeed, but returns with the pretence of having forgotten something, in order that he may bid her good-night once more. He rises in the night and looks out of his window over the houses towards the chamber where she sleeps, and loses himself in imagination of the love-thefts which he would commit if by any necromancy he had the power. Yet he is not extravagantly romantic: he will go wherever his lady bids him, but he will not range the world in arms merely in order to gain renown, losing his lady perhaps in the meantime at home. We take his side when he complains of the Confessor’s want of feeling for a pain which he does not himself experience, and his readiness to prescribe for a wound of the heart as if it were a sore of the heel. Even while we smile, we compassionate the lover who is at last disqualified on account of age, and recommended to make a ‘beau retret’ while there is yet time.

But there is also another character in whom we are interested, and that is the lady herself. Gower certainly appreciated something of the delicacy and poetical refinement which ideal love requires, and this appreciation he shows also in his _Balades_; but here we have something more than this. The figure of the lady, which we see constantly in the background of the dialogue, is both attractive and human. We recognize in her a creature of flesh and blood, no goddess indeed, as her lover himself observes, but a charming embodiment of womanly grace and refinement. She is surrounded by lovers, but she is wise and wary. She is courteous and gentle, but at the same time firm: she will not gladly swear, and therefore says nay without an oath, but it is a decisive nay to any who are disposed to presume. She does not neglect her household duties merely because a lover insists upon hanging about her, but leaves him to amuse himself how he may, while she busies herself elsewhere. If she has leisure and can sit down to her embroidery, he may read to her if he will, but it must be some sound romance, and not his own rondels, balades, and virelays in praise of her. Custom allows him to kiss her when he takes his leave, but if he comes back on any pretext and takes his leave again, there is not often a second kiss permitted. She lets him lead her up to the offering in church, and ride by her side when she drives out, but she will take no presents from him, though with some of her younger admirers, whose passion she knows is a less serious matter, she is not so strict, but takes and gives freely. Even the description of her person is not offensive, as such descriptions almost always are. Her lover suspects that her soul may be in a perilous state, seeing that she has the power of saving a man’s life and yet suffers him to die, but he admits there is no more violence in her than in a child of three years old, and her words are as pleasant to him as the winds of the South. Usurious dealing is a vice of which he ventures to accuse her, seeing that he has given her his whole heart in return for a single glance of her eye, and she holds to the bargain and will not give heart for heart; but then, as the Confessor very justly replies, ‘she may be such that her one glance is worth thy whole heart many times over,’ and so he has sold his heart profitably, having in return much more than it is worth.

However, the literary characteristic which is perhaps most remarkable in the _Confessio Amantis_ is connected rather with the form of expression than with the subject-matter. No justice is done to Gower unless it is acknowledged that the technical skill which he displays in his verse and the command which he has over the language for his own purposes is very remarkable. In the ease and naturalness of his movement within the fetters of the octosyllabic couplet he far surpasses his contemporaries, including Chaucer himself. Certain inversions of order and irregularities of construction he allows himself, and there are many stop-gaps of the conventional kind in the ordinary flow of his narrative; but in places where the matter requires it, his admirable management of the verse paragraph, the metrical smoothness of his lines, attained without unnatural accent or forced order of words, and the neatness with which he expresses exactly what he has to say within the precise limits which he lays down for himself, show a finished mastery of expression which is surprising in that age of half-developed English style, and in a man who had trained himself rather in French and Latin than in English composition. Such a sentence as the following, for example, seems to flow from him with perfect ease, there is no halting in the metre, no hesitation or inversion for the sake of the rhyme, it expresses just what it has to express, no more and no less:

’Til that the hihe king of kinges, Which seth and knoweth alle thinges, Whos yhe mai nothing asterte,-- The privetes of mannes herte Thei speke and sounen in his Ere As thogh thei lowde wyndes were,-- He tok vengance upon this pride.’ (i. 2803 ff.)

Or again, as an example of a more colloquial kind,

‘And if thei techen to restreigne Mi love, it were an ydel peine To lerne a thing which mai noght be. For lich unto the greene tree, If that men toke his rote aweie, Riht so myn herte scholde deie, If that mi love be withdrawe.’ (iv. 2677 ff.)

There is nothing remarkable about the sentiment or expression in these passages, but they are perfectly simple and natural, and run into rhyming verse without disturbance of sense or accent; but such technical skill as we have here is extremely rare among the writers of the time. Chaucer had wider aims, and being an artist of an altogether superior kind, he attains, when at his best, to a higher level of achievement in versification as in other things; but he is continually attempting more than he can perform, he often aims at the million and misses the unit. His command over his materials is evidently incomplete, and he has not troubled himself to acquire perfection of craftsmanship, knowing that other things are more important,

‘And that I do no diligence To shewe craft but o sentence.’