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.)