vest himself of all fear of the author. In his innocence conceiving that the strokes of his own pen would silently improve an obsolete genius, this merciless interpolator, changing words and syllables at pleasure, has furnished a text which Chaucer never wrote!* If the worst edition that was ever published contributed to finish Peckwater Quadrangle, it is amusing to be reminded that causes are often strangely disproportionate to their effects.

The famous portion of Chaucer's Miscellaneous Volume has been fortunate in the editorial cares of Tyrwhit. Tyrwhit, a scholar as well as an antiquary, was an expert philologer; his extensive reading in the lore of our vernacular literature and our national antiquities promptly supplied what could not have entered into his more classical studies; and his sagacity seems to have decided on the various readings of all the manuscripts, by piercing into the core of the poet's thoughts.

It is remarkable that some of the most lively productions of several great writers have been the work of their maturest age. Johnson surpassed all his preceding labors in his last work, the popular Lives of the Poets. The "Canterbury Tales" of Chaucer were the effusions of his advanced age, and the congenial versions of Dryden were thrown out in the luxuriance of his later days. Milton might have been classed among the minor poets, had he not lived to be old enough to become the most sublime. Let it be a source of consolation, if not of triumph, in a long studious life of true genius, to know that the imagina

* So unskilful or so incurious was Warburton in the language of our ancient poets, that in his notes on Pope he quotes the following lines of Chaucer :

"Love wol not be constreined by maistrie.

Whan maistrie cometh, the God of love anon
Beteth his wings, and farewel, he is gon"-

from Urry's edition, in which they appear thus transformed and corrupted:

"Love will not be confined by maisterie.

When maisterie comes, the Lord of love anon
Flutters his wings, and forthwith is he gone."

tion may not decline with the vigor of the frame which holds it; there has been no old age for many men of genius.

66

We must lament that at such an early period in our vernacular literature, we have to record that the two fathers of our poetry, congenial spirits as they were, too closely resembled most of their sons in one of the most painful infirmities of genius. I have said elsewhere that jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, is not however confined to them. We do not possess the secret history of the two great poets, Chaucer and Gower; but we are told by Berthelet in his edition of Gower's "Confessio Amantis," when he quotes the commendatory lines on Gower by Chaucer, that the poets were both excellently learned, both great frendes together." Ancient biographers usually fall into this vague style of eulogy, which served their purpose rather than a more critical research. True it is that "they were both great friends," but, what Berthelet has not told, they became also "both great enemies." We know that Chaucer has commemorated the dignified merits of "the moral Gower," and that Gower has poured forth an effusion not less fervid than elegant from the lips of Venus, who calls Chaucer "her own clerk, who in the flower of his youth had made ditees and songes glad which have filled the land." Did this little passion of poetic jealousy creep into their great souls? Else how did it happen that Chaucer, who had once solicited the correcting hand of his friend, in his latest work reprehended the sage and the poet, and that Gower, who had not stinted the rich meed of his eulogy which appeared in the first copies of his "Confessio Amantis," erased the immortality which he had bestowed. The justice of their reciprocal praise neither of these rivals could efface, for that outlives their little jealousies.

GOWER.

IN the church of St. Savior in Southwark may be viewed an ancient monument with its sculptured and Gothic canopy; pictured on its one side, the three visionary virgins, Charity, Mercy, and Pity, solicit the prayer of the passenger for the soul of the suppliant whose image lies extended on the tomb, with folded hands, and in his damask habit flowing to his feet. His head reposes on three mighty tomes, and is decked with a garland, either of roses which proclaim his knighthood, or the wreath of literature which would more justly distinguish the wearer,— John Gower, the poet.

In the life of this poet, almost the only certain incident seems to be his sepulchral monument; and even this it had been necessary to repair after the malignity of the Iconoclasts; and of the three sculptured volumes which support the poet's head, a single one only has been opened by the world, for the tomb has perpetuated what the press

has not.

The three tomes on the tomb of Gower represent his three great works; but what is remarkable, and shows the unsettled state of our literature, each of these great works is written in a different language, though equally graced with Latin titles. The first, in French, is the Speculum Meditantis; the moral reflections relieved by historical examples. The second, in Latin verse, is Vox Clamantis ; this "Voice" comes not from the desert, for it is that of the clamors of the people; a satire on all ranks, and an exhortation to the youthful monarch to check his own selfindulgence; it includes a chronicle of the insurrection of the populace, or "the clowns," as they were called in Richard the Second's reign. The vernacular style, rather than

Latin verse, would have more aptly celebrated the feats of Wat Tyler, of Bet and Sim, Gibbe and Hyke, Hudde and Judde, Jack and Tib. The reporter had no doubt been present at the active scene. The swarm rush on to the call of one another, in hexameters and pentameters. The singularity of the subject, which gives no bad picture of the hurry of a disorderly mob, and the felicity of an old translation, induces me to preserve a partial extract from the manuscript. Our own age has witnessed similar scenes.

"Watte vocat, cui Thome venit, neque Symme retardat, Betteque, Gibbe simul Hyke venire jubent.

Colle furit, quem Gibbe juvat nocumenta parantes,

Cum quibus ad dampnum Wille coire vovet.

Grigge rapit, dum Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe,

Lorkin et in medio non minor esse putat.

Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Tebbe juvatur,

Jacke domos que viros vellit, et ense necat."

"Tom comes, thereat, when called by Wat, and Simon as forward we find;

Bet calls as quick to Gibb, and to Hyck that neither would tarry be

hinde.

Gibb, a good whelp of that litter, doth help mad Coll more mischief

to do,

And Will he doth vow, the time is come now, he'll join with their company too.

Davie complains whiles Grigg gets the gains, and Hobb with them doth partake;

Lorkin aloud, in the midst of the crowd, conceiveth as deep as his stake.

Hudde doth spoil, whom Judde doth foile, and Tebbe lends his help

ing hand,

But Jack, the mad-patch, men and horses doth snatch, and kills al at his command."

The third and greater work, and the only printed one of Gower, is the Confessio Amantis, an English poem of about thirty thousand lines; a singular miscellany of allegory, of morality, and of tales. It is studded with sententious maxims and proverbs, and richly diversified with narrations, pleasant and tragic; but the affectation of learning, for

learning in its crude state always obtrudes itself, even in works of recreation, has compressed the Aristotelian philosophy, to edify and surprise the readers of the poet's fairy or romantic tales. Robert de Brunne, to illustrate monachal morals, interspersed domestic stories; and amid the prevalent penury of imagination, that rhyming monk affords the most ancient specimens of English tales in verse: and as Gower's single printed work is of the same species of composition, a system of ethics illustrated by tales, it has been thought that the monk who rhymed in 1300 was the true predecessor of the poet who flourished at the close of that century, however Gower may have purified the “rime doggrel," and elevated the puerile tale. The straw-roof must be raised before the cupola. Genius in its genealogy must not blush at its remote ancestor; the noblest knight may often go back to the mill or the forge. If this rude moralizing rhymer really be the poetical father of Gower, then is this antiquated monk the inventor of that narrative poetry which Chaucer, Spenser, and Dryden, and even some of our contemporaries, have so delightfully diversified. But story-telling has been of all periods.

There is a portion of this volume which concerns the personal history of the poet.

This work was composed at the suggestion of Richard the Second himself, who among other luxuries loved Froissart's romance and Chaucer's rhymes, and was even willing to be taught the grave lessons which he could not practise. As Gower one day was rowed in his boat on the Thames, he met his "liege lord" in the royal barge, who commanded the poet to enter, and in a long unrestrained conversation, desired him "to book some new thing in the way he was used." Probably the youthful monarch alluded to the Vox Clamantis, in which the poet had exhorted his "liege lord" to exercise every kingly virtue, and had without reserve touched on too many imperfections of a court-life. It was to be "a book,” added the young monarch, "in which he himself might often look." The poet