In closing this notice of Chaucer, it should be remarked that no English poet has been more successful in the varied delineation of character, or in fresh and charming pictures of Nature. Witty and humorous, sententious and didactic, solemn and pathetic, he not only pleases the fancy, but touches the heart.
John Gower.—Before entering upon the barren period from Chaucer to Spenser, however, there is one contemporary of Chaucer whom we must not omit to mention; for his works, although of little literary value, are historical signs of the times: this is John Gower, styled variously Sir John and Judge Gower, as he was very probably both a knight and a justice. He seems to owe most of his celebrity to his connection, however slight, with Chaucer; although there is no doubt of his having been held in good repute by the literary patrons and critics of his own age. His fame rests upon three works, or rather three parts of one scheme—Speculum Meditantis, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis. The first of these, the mirror of one who meditates, was in French verse, and was, in the main, a treatise upon virtue and repentance, with inculcations to conjugal fidelity much disregarded at that time. This work has been lost. The Vox Clamantis, or voice of one crying in the wilderness, is directly historical, being a chronicle, in Latin elegiacs, of the popular revolts of Wat Tyler in the time of Richard II., and a sermon on fatalism, which, while it calls for a reformation in the clergy, takes ground against Wiclif, his doctrines, and adherents. In the later books he discusses the military and the lawyers; and thus he is the voice of one crying, like the Baptist in the wilderness, against existing abuses and for the advent of a better order. The Confessio Amantis, now principally known because it contains a eulogium of Chaucer, which in his later editions he left out, is in English verse, and was composed at the instance of Richard II. The general argument of this Lover's Confession is a dialogue between the lover and a priest of Venus, who, in the guise of a confessor, applies the breviary of the Church to the confessions of love.[21] The poem is interspersed with introductory or recapitulatory Latin verses.
Chaucer and Gower.—That there was for a time a mutual admiration between Chaucer and Gower, is shown by their allusion to each other. In the penultimate stanza of the Troilus and Creseide, Chaucer calls him "O Morall Gower," an epithet repeated by Dunbar, Hawes, and other writers; while in the Confessio Amantis, Gower speaks of Chaucer as his disciple and poet, and alludes to his poems with great praise. That they were at any time alienated from each other has been asserted, but the best commentators agree in thinking without sufficient grounds.
The historical teachings of Gower are easy to find. He states truths without parable. His moral satires are aimed at the Church corruptions of the day, and yet are conservative; and are taken, says Berthelet, in his dedication of the Confessio to Henry VIII., not only out of "poets, orators, historic writers, and philosophers, but out of the Holy Scripture"—the same Scripture so eloquently expounded by Chaucer, and translated by Wiclif. Again, Gower, with an eye to the present rather than to future fame, wrote in three languages—a tribute to the Church in his Latin, to the court in his French, and to the progressive spirit of the age in his English. The latter alone is now read, and is the basis of his fame. Besides three poems, he left, among his manuscripts, fifty French sonnets, (cinquantes balades,) which were afterward printed by his descendant, Lord Gower, Duke of Sutherland.
Gower's Language.—Like Chaucer, Gower was a reformer in language, and was accused by the "severer etymologists of having corrupted the purity of the English by affecting to introduce so many foreign words and phrases;" but he has the tribute of Sir Philip Sidney (no mean praise) that Chaucer and himself were the leaders of a movement, which others have followed, "to beautifie our mother tongue," and thus the Confessio Amantis ranks as one of the formers of our language, in a day when it required much moral courage to break away from the trammels of Latin and French, and at the same time to compel them to surrender their choicest treasures to the English.
Gower was born in 1325 or 1326, and outlived Chaucer. It has been generally believed that Chaucer was his poetical pupil. The only evidence is found in the following vague expression of Gower in the Confessio Amantis:
And greet well Chaucer when ye meet
As my disciple and my poete.
For in the flower of his youth,
In sondry wise as he well couth,
Of ditties and of songes glade
The which he for my sake made.
It may have been but a patronizing phrase, warranted by Gower's superior rank and station; for to the modern critic the one is the uprising sun, and the other the pale star scarcely discerned in the sky. Gower died in 1408, eight years after his more illustrious colleague.
Other Writers of the Period of Chaucer.
John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, a Scottish poet, born about 1320: wrote a poem concerning the deeds of King Robert I. in achieving the independence of Scotland. It is called Broite or Brute, and in it, in imitation of the English, he traces the Scottish royal lineage to Brutus. Although by no means equal to Chaucer, he is far superior to any other English poet of the time, and his language is more intelligible at the present day than that of Chaucer or Gower. Sir Walter Scott has borrowed from Barbour's poem in his "Lord of the Isles."