Also the following is given as the epitaph of his wife,
‘Quam bonitas, pietas, elemosina, casta voluntas,
Sobrietas que fides coluerunt, hic iacet Agnes.
Vxor amans, humilis Gower fuit illa Ioannis:
Donet ei summus celica regna Deus.’
These statements seem to be given by Bale on the authority of Nicholas Brigham, to whom we owe the tomb of Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.
The Text and the Manuscripts.
Gower’s principal Latin work, the Vox Clamantis, is found in ten manuscripts altogether. Of these four are evidently contemporary with the author and contain also the Cronica Tripertita and most of the other Latin poems printed in this volume. Some of these last are found also in other MSS. of the Vox Clamantis, some Latin pieces are contained in the Trentham MS. of the Praise of Peace and the Cinkante Balades (described in vol. i. p. lxxix), and the Cronica Tripertita occurs separately in the Bodleian MS. Hatton 92. Copies of the Carmen de multiplici Viciorum Pestilencia are contained in some MSS. of the Confessio Amantis, viz. TBAP₂ of the second recension, and FH₂K of the third, and with regard to these the reader is referred to the account given of the manuscripts in the Introduction to the second volume of this edition.
Of the four manuscripts of the Vox Clamantis with other Latin poems, which have been referred to as contemporary with the author, one is at Oxford, in the library of All Souls College, one at Glasgow in the Hunterian Museum, and two in London. They are proved to be original copies, not only by the handwriting of the text, which in each case is distinctly of the fourteenth century, but also by the fact that they all have author’s corrections written over erasure, and in several cases the same hand is recognizable throughout. The original text of the Vox Clamantis seems to be written in one and the same hand in the All Souls and Glasgow MSS. and this hand is also that of the lines supplied occasionally in the margin of the Harleian: the hand in which the text of the Cronica Tripertita is written in the All Souls MS. appears also in all the other three, and the same is the case with some of the correctors’ hands, as will be seen in the detailed accounts which follow. Of the other manuscripts of the Vox Clamantis two, which are not themselves original copies, give the text in its first (unrevised) form, the rest are more or less in agreement with the revised text, but give it at second or third hand, with no alterations made over erasure.
S. All Souls College, Oxf. 98. Contains, f. 1 vo, Epistle to Archbishop Arundel, ff. 2-116, Vox Clamantis, ff. 116-126 vo, Cronica Tripertita, ff. 126 vo-127 vo, ‘Rex celi deus,’ ‘H. aquile pullus,’ ‘O recolende bone,’ ff. 127 vo-131, Carmen super multiplici Viciorum Pestilencia, f. 131, Tractatus de Lucis Scrutinio (imperfect at the end owing to the loss of a leaf), ff. 132-135, Traitié pour ensampler les Amantz marietz, (imperfect at the beginning), f. 135 vo, ‘Quia vnusquisque,’ ff. 136, 137, ‘Eneidos Bucolis,’ ‘O deus immense,’ ‘Quicquid homo scribat’ (f. 137 vo blank). Parchment, ff. 137 as numbered (and in addition several blank at the beginning and end) measuring 12½ x 8¼ in. Well and regularly written in single column, the Vox Clamantis 48 lines on a page and the succeeding poems 52. The original first quire begins with f. 2, but before this a quire of four leaves (probably) was inserted, of which the first two are blank, the third is cut away, and the fourth has on its verso the Epistle to the Archbishop. The quire which ends with f. 116 has seven leaves only, and that ending with f. 137 six. After this several leaves have been inserted, which remain blank. The book has on f. 1 an ornamental initial S containing a miniature of Abp. Arundel in his robes and mitre, and there are large coloured and gilt capitals at the beginning of each book of the Vox Clamantis, and coloured initials of various sizes for chapters and paragraphs. Original oak binding.