Fro this day forth I thenke change
And speke of thing is noght so strange,’ &c. (i. 4 ff.)
He covers his retreat indeed by dwelling upon the all-pervading influence of Love in the world and the fact that all the evils of society may be said to spring from the want of it; but this is little more than a pretext. Love is the theme partly because it supplies a convenient framework for the design, and partly perhaps out of deference to a royal command. There is no reason to doubt the statement in the first version of the Prologue about the meeting of the author with Richard II on the river, and that he then received suggestions for a book, which the king promised to accept and read. It may easily be supposed that Richard himself suggested love as the subject, being a matter in which, as we know from Froissart, he was apt to take delight. ‘Adont me demanda le roy de quoy il traittoit. Je luy dis, “D’amours.” De ceste response fut-il tous resjouys, et regarda dedens le livre en plusieurs lieux et y lisy[B].’ It was certainly to the credit of the young king that he should have discerned literary merit in the work of the grave monitor who had so lectured him upon his duties in the Vox Clamantis, and should have had some part in encouraging him to set his hand to a more promising task; and if it be the fact that he suggested love as the subject, we cannot but admire both the sense of humour displayed by the prince and the address with which our author acquitted himself of the task proposed.
The idea of the Confession was no doubt taken from the Roman de la Rose, where the priest of Nature, whose name is Genius, hears her confession; but it must be allowed that Gower has made much better use of it. Nature occupies herself in expounding the system of the universe generally, and in confessing at great length not her own faults but those of Man, whom she repents of having made. Her tone is not at all that of a penitent, though she may be on her knees, and Genius does little or nothing for her in reply except to agree rather elaborately with her view that, if proper precautions had been taken, Mars and Venus might easily have outwitted Vulcan. Gower on the other hand has made the Confession into a framework which will conveniently hold any number of stories upon every possible subject, and at the same time he has preserved for the most part the due propriety of character and situation in the two actors. By giving the scheme an apparent limitation to the subject of love he has not in fact necessarily limited the range of narrative, for there is no impropriety in illustrating by a tale the general nature of a vice or virtue before making the special application to cases which concern lovers, and this special application, made with all due solemnity, has often a character of piquancy in which the moral tale pure and simple would be wanting. Add to this that the form adopted tends itself to a kind of quasi-religious treatment of the subject, which was fully in accordance with the taste of the day, and produces much of that impression of quaintness and charm with which we most of us associate our first acquaintance with the Confessio Amantis.
The success of the work—for a success it is in spite of its faults—is due to several merits. The first of these is the author’s unquestionable talent for story-telling. He has little of the dramatic power or the humour which distinguish Chaucer, but he tells his tales in a well-ordered and interesting manner, does not break the thread by digressions, never tires of the story before it is finished, as Chaucer does so obviously and so often, and carries his reader through with him successfully to the end in almost every case. His narrative is a clear, if shallow, stream, rippling pleasantly over the stones and unbroken either by dams or cataracts. The materials of course are not original, but Gower is by no means a slavish follower in detail of his authorities; the proportions and arrangement of the stories are usually his own and often show good judgement. Moreover he not seldom gives a fresh turn to a well-known story, as in the instances of Jephthah and Saul, or makes a pretty addition to it, as is the case in some of the tales from Ovid. Almost the only story in which the interest really flags is the longest, the tale of Apollonius of Tyre, which fills up so much of the eighth book and was taken as the basis of the plot of Pericles; and this was in its original form so loose and rambling a series of incidents, that hardly any skill could have completely redeemed it. There is no doubt that this gift of clear and interesting narrative was the merit which most appealed to the popular taste, the wholesome appetite for stories being at that time not too well catered for, and that the plainness of the style was an advantage rather than a drawback.
Tastes will differ of course as to the merits of the particular stories, but some may be selected as incontestably good. The tale of Mundus and Paulina in the first book is excellently told, and so is that of Alboin and Rosemund. The best of the second book are perhaps the False Bachelor and the legend of Constantine and Silvester, in the latter of which the author has greatly improved upon his materials. In the third book the tale of Canace is most pathetically rendered, far better than in Ovid, so that in spite of Chaucer’s denunciation his devoted follower Lydgate could not resist the temptation of borrowing it. The fourth book, which altogether is of special excellence, gives us Rosiphelee, Phyllis, and the very poetically told tale of Ceix and Alceone. The fifth has Jason and Medea, a most admirable example of sustained narrative, simple and yet effective and poetical, perhaps on the whole Gower’s best performance: also the oriental tale of Adrian and Bardus, and the well told story of Tereus and Philomela. In the seventh we shall find the Biblical story of Gideon excellently rendered, the Rape of Lucrece, and the tale of Virginia. These may be taken as specimens of Gower’s narrative power at its best, and by the degree of effectiveness which he attains in them and the manner in which he has used his materials, he may fairly be judged as a story-teller.
As regards style and poetical qualities we find much that is good in the narratives. Force and picturesqueness certainly cannot be denied to the tale of Medea, with its description of the summer sea glistening in the sun, which blazes down upon the returning hero, and from the golden fleece by his side flashes a signal of success to Medea in her watch-tower, as she prays for her chosen knight. Still less can we refuse to recognize the poetical power of the later phases of the same story, first the midnight rovings of Medea in search of enchantments,
‘The world was stille on every side;
With open hed and fot al bare,
Hir her tosprad sche gan to fare,