GOWER'S " CONFESSIO AMANTIS."*

GOWER'S English poem has received but cold and stinted praises from our own critics, and has been handled by Chaucer's most enthusiastic American eulogist with merciless severity. Yet it seems to us to have deserved more kindly treatment. Although written, as the author himself informs us in some manly and pathetic lines towards the close of the eighth book, in the intervals of sickness, and when his " daies olde " had rendered him "feeble and impotent," the poem cannot justly be charged with general langaor or prolixity; and it certainly has some substantial merits which will not be found too common in English poetry. The prologue is written with the earnestness of one who felt deeply the political and -religious abuses of his age, and has many passages of pithy and shrewd observation and pointed satire. The style of the whole poem is singularly lucid, easy, and masculine ; the • Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins. Being the Confessio Asnantis of John (lower. Edited by Henry Morley, LL.D. London : George Rontledge and Sons. 1899.

verse, though it has not the subtle and varied melody of that of the genuine singer, is almost always fluent, harmonious, and agreeable ; and when, in illustration of any of the seven deadly sins or their adjuncts, the poet's confessor proceeds-

" To telle a tale thereupon Which fell by olds dales gone," the story selected is generally one of romantic or moral interest, and is related with the skilland tact which belong only

to the born story-teller. It is hardly too much to say of Gower that he is one of our best narrators in verse. Greatly inferior as he undoubtedly is to his contemporary Chaucer in all the

higher essentials of the poet, the mere narrative power dis- played in the Confessio is at least as remarkable as that evinced

by Chaucer himself in any poem anterior to The Canterbury Tales, which, as is well known, appeared somewhat later than Gower's masterpiece, and certainly owed something to it. Gower's tales, though mostly borrowed, are not mere transla- tions ; he tells them in a way which is all his own, adding or omitting at pleasure, and both the additions and retrenchments are creditable to the taste and judgment of our author. ' Our attention is arrested by the simple, direct, and unpretentious manner of the narrator ; he seldom vexes us with irrelevant or trifling details ; if he has no brilliancy of description, daring

imagination, or delightful play of fancy, neither does he seek to win vulgar admiration by far-fetched conceits or extravagant metaphors ; he entangles us in no hopeless labyrinths of poetic narrative, but having succeeded in awakening our interest at

the outset, he never suffers it to flag; and if he hardly de- lights, at least he does not disappoint us. He cannot be called a captivating writer, but he is a pleasing one. He is not pro- found, but sensible, learned, and sententious, generally grave, yet not deficient in humour, and ranks with the men of talent

rather than with the men of genius. He is no delineator of character, like Chaucer; he describes the vices accurately enough, but makes no attempt to personify them, as a Dunbar,

a Sackville, or a Spenser would have done ; the imagina- tion which transforms was wholly wanting to him, and his

style has nothing of the supple strength, flexibility, largeness, and delightful naiveté of his great contemporary's.

For word-painting one must not go to the Confessio. In describing a summer or winter scene, a storm at sea, or the changing sky, Gower is contented to give only a few broad outlines, leaving the reader to fill hr the details from his own imagination. His pictures, such as they are, have the merits

of clearness and fidelity, and sometimes are not destitute of a certain rude vigour. The following is a fair sample :— " Within a time, as it betid,

Whan they were in the see amid, Out of the north they sigh a donde, The storme aros, the wind& boucle They blewen many a dredefull blast, The welken was all overcast.

The derke night the Bonne hath under, There was a great tempest of thunder. The mone and eke the sterres bothe In blacks cloudes they hem clothe, Whereof her brighte loke they hide."

There is an unexpected touch of picturesqueness in the account of Jason's departure with the golden fleece, for which the poet is not indebted to his original, Ovid:—

" The flees he toke and goth to bote, The Bonne shineth bright and hote, The flees of gold shone forth with all, The water glistred over all."

The romantic story of Medea is in Gower's happiest manner

throughout, and the passage describing the spells used by her to restore Eson's long-lost youth is probably the most poetical he ever wrote. The opening lines, which are also the best, may be given :—

"Thus it befell upon a night,

Whan there was nought but stern': light, She was van isshed right as her list,

That no wight but herself it moist.

And that was atte midnight tide ; The world was still on every side, With open hede and foot all bare, Her hair to sprad she gan to fare, Upon her clothes gent she was All specheles, and on the Bras She glode forth as an adder doth. None other wise she ne goth, Till she came to the fresshe flood, And there a while she withstood,

Thriis she torna her aboute,

And thries eke she gan down louts,

And in the "Hood she wete her hair, And thries on the water there She gaspeth with a dreeching onde, And tho she toke her speche on honde."

Chaucer has been highly and not undeservedly extolled by Leigh Hunt for his poetic use of the word " snowed" in the line,— "It snowed in his house of meat and drink."

Gower, however, had previously employed the word in a similar sense in the description of the return home of Ulixes, which forms part of " The Story of Ulysses and Circe," in the sixth book of his long poem,- " The presents every day he newed, He was with giftes all besnewed."

Other phrases of Gower have also been appropriated by Chaucer, but it is needless to enumerate them.

As the Confessio is familiar to few readers, a brief outline of the plot may not be unwelcome. The poet represents himself as having the misfortune, when well stricken in years, to fall desperately in love with a lady adorned with every grace of mind and body, but quite obdurate to him. Restless and melancholy, he wends into the woods on a bright morning in May, and there " makes his moan." Venus pre- sents herself to the unhappy poet, and understanding the " sore " of which he " plains," sends for Genius, her " owns clerke," to shrive him. The clerk, or confessor, after ex- plaining the five senses and their delusions, proceeds to treat of the seven deadly sins and the minor vices related to them, illustrating each by tales more or less apposite, culled from various sources. With apparent sincerity, the poet declares himself guiltless of all blame, the reproach of weakness ex- cepted. Towards the object of his affection, despite her utter indifference to him, he has not one disloyal or revengeful thought. The confessor gives the best of advice, but the lover is still inconsolable, and implores the favour of Venus. The goddess sternly refuses this, on the ground that he is no longer young ; but at the intercession of some compassionate lovers, youthful as well as elderly, whom the poet sees in a trance, Cupid extracts the dart from the sufferer's breast, and Venus herself anoints the wound with cold ointment. The cure is completed by a wonderful mirror, in which she bids him behold himself :- "Wherein anone min hertes eye I cast, and sigh my colour fade,

Mine eien dim and all unglade, My chekes thinne, and all my face With elde I mighte se deface, So riveled and so wo besein

That there was nothing full ne plein.

I sigh also min haires hore, My will was tho to se no more."

He returns home somewhat sadly, to spend the remainder of his days in devotion, and the poem concludes with aspirations for the welfare of his country. The chivalrous feeling towards women which the narrative everywhere displays is in curious contrast with the somewhat gibing tone of Chaucer whenever their coldness or capriciousness is the theme of his verse. The unsuccessful lover of the Confessio utters not one re- sentful word against his mistress, despite her singularly harsh treatment of him, nor does his confessor seek to cure him of his passion by disparagement of the sex, but, on the contrary, pays many compliments to women, both living and dead, and after saying of Penelope,- " A better wife there may none be," he gallantly adds,- " And yet there ben inough of good."

Though Gower gives us more " earnest" than " game " in the work which he promises shall be a mixture of both, he some- times, as in his description of the drunkard in the opening of the sixth book, provokes a smile, and there is a gleam of humour in his account of the male flirt who goes in gay habiliments to church, and "as he were a fairie," suddenly presents himself before the dazzled eyes of some maiden of whose heart he is seeking to make a conquest.

Gower has nothing of Chaucer's deep and sympathetic insight into human nature, but many caustic and shrewd re- flections on the " way of the world" show that it was sufficiently familiar to him. Thus, writing of friendship, he says :- " While that a man hath good to give, With greats routes he may live And bath his fiend& over all, And everich of. him tells shall, The while he hath his fulls packe, They say, A good felew is Jacke.' But whaame it faileth atte last, Anon his prise they overcast, For than is there none other lawe, But Jacke was a good felawe.' Whan they him pouer and needy see, They let him passe, and farewell he."

Gower's poem, like The Canterbury Tales, has a prologue which some writers have regarded as the most interesting and important part of his work. It certainly is the most original. Readers, however, who expect to meet in it characters like Chaucer's immortal pilgrims will be disappointed. It is simply a rhymed dissertation on the times, of which the poet takes a somewhat gloomy view, which he justifies by the interpretation of one of Daniel's visions. He believes himself to have fallen on the last and worst age of the world, and though a Conservative in politics and a Roman Catholic in religion, he is strong in his censures of the oppression of the commons by the nobility, and of the corruptions of the Church to which he belonged. Of many of the shepherds of Christ's flock he has no better opinion than Chaucer, describing them as utterly destitute of the charity they preach, and unscrupulously " toosing " and " pulling " upon the back of the sheep " that is full of wulle," while " there is anything to pille." It is noticeable, too, that he unreservedly condemns the "holy wars " which the Pope had sanctioned. The outspokenness of Gower is one of his best qualities, and justifies the epithet of " honest " which Drayton has applied to him.

Though Gower cannot be called a great poet, be has some solid merits which entitle him to more respect than he has received in our day. Mr. Lowell's witty criticism has injured his reputation considerably ; but it should be remembered by those who are disposed, without examination, to accept it as just, that the accomplished critic is almost equally con- temptuous of Dunbar, whom Scott regarded as little, if at all, inferior to Chaucer himself. He to whom Chaucer dedi- cated his Troilus and Cresseide, and to whom Shakespeare did not disdain to be twice indebted, cannot be an altogether contemptible writer.

The present edition of the Confessio deserves all praise. It is printed on good paper, and in comfortable type. All the obso- lete words are explained as they occur, and the accentuation, wherever it varies from that of the present day, is carefully marked. The book is singularly free from misprints. We have detected only two,—" foule " for " soule " on p. 53, and " refon " for " reson " on p. 63.