So that mi Court it mai recorde.
In the final form, completed in 1392-3, Richard's name disappears from the Prologue; the dedication to his popular rival, Henry of Lancaster, is made prominent; the eulogy in the Epilogue is dropped; and with it the compliment to Chaucer. Whether this last omission is due to chance, or to some change in the relations between the two poets, is not clear.
In his own day Gower was ranked with Chaucer. His reputation was still high among the Elizabethans; and he has the distinction of appearing as Chorus in a Shakespearian play—Pericles—of which his story of Apollonius of Tyre, in Bk. viii of the Confessio, was the immediate source.
A selection gives a very favourable impression of his work. He has a perfect command of the octosyllabic couplet; an easy style, well suited to narrative; and a classic simplicity of expression for which the work of his predecessors in Middle English leaves us unprepared. Throughout the whole of the Confessio Amantis, more than 30,000 lines, the level of workmanship is remarkable, and almost every page shows some graceful and poetical verses.
Yet the poem as a whole suffers from the fault that Gower tried to avoid:
It dulleth ofte a mannes wit
To him that schal it aldai rede.
One defect, obvious to a modern reader, would hardly be noticed by his contemporaries: he often incorporates in his poetry matter proper only to an encyclopaedia, such as the discourse on the religions of the world in Bk. v, or that on Philosophy in Bk. vii. Another is more radical: for all his wide reading, his leading ideas lack originality. It is hardly a travesty to say that the teaching of his works amounts to this: 'In the moral world, avoid the Seven Deadly Sins in the five sub-classifications of each; in the political world keep your degree without presuming'. Such a negative and conventional message cannot sustain the fabric of three long poems. Their polished and facile moralizing becomes almost exasperating if it be remembered that the poet wrote when a whole system of society was falling, and falling noisily, about him. Modern taste rejects Gower the moralist and political writer, and his claim to present as apart from historical value rests on the delightful single stories which served as embroidery to his serious themes.
The extracts are taken from the admirable edition by G. C. Macaulay: 'The Works of John Gower', 4 vols., Oxford 1899-1902.