‘To sing a song that old was sung
From ashes ancient Gower is come,’ &c.
The book was so well known and the author so well established in reputation, that a play evidently gained credit by connecting itself with his name.
The following are the principal references to Gower in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The author of The King’s Quair dedicates his poem to the memory (or rather to the poems) of his masters Gower and Chaucer. Hoccleve calls him ‘my maister Gower,’
‘Whos vertu I am insufficient
For to descrive.’
John Walton of Osney, the metrical translator of Boethius, writes,
‘To Chaucer, that is flour of rhethorique
In english tonge and excellent poete,
This wot I wel, no thing may I do like,