Though so that I of makinge entermete;
And Gower, that so craftely doth trete
As in his book<es> of moralite,
Though I to hem in makinge am unmete,
Yit moste I schewe it forth that is in me.’
Bokenham in his Lives of the Saints repeatedly speaks of Gower, Chaucer and Lydgate, the last of whom was then still living, as the three great lights of English literature. Caxton printed the Confessio Amantis in 1483, and it seems to have been one of the most popular productions of his press.
In the sixteenth century Gower appears by the side of Chaucer in Dunbar’s Lament for the Makaris and in Lindsay’s poems. Hawes in the Pastime of Pleasure classes him with Chaucer and his beloved Lydgate, and Skelton introduces him as first in order of time among the English poets who are mentioned in the Garland of Laurel,
‘I saw Gower that first garnysshed our Englysshe rude,
And maister Chaucer,’ &c.,
a testimony which is not quite consistent with that in the Lament for Philip Sparow,