George Campbell Macaulay

“ Several occasional Latin pieces also belong to the later years of his life.
On the whole Gower must be admitted to have had considerable literary powers; and though not a man of genius, and by no means to be compared with Chaucer, yet he did good service in helping to establish the standard literary language, which at the end of the 14th century took the place of the Middle English dialects. The Confessio amantis was long regarded as a classic of the language, and Gower and Chaucer were often mentioned side by side as the fathers of English poetry. ”

“ It is a French poem of about 30,000 lines in twelve-line stanzas, and under the form of an allegory of the human soul describes the seven deadly sins and their opposing virtues, and then the various estates of man and the vices incident to each, concluding with a narrative of the life of the Virgin Mary, and with praise of her as the means of reconciliation between God and man. ”

“ These with their several branches are successively described, and the nature of them illustrated by tales, which are directed to the illustration both of the general nature of the sin, and of the particular form which it may take in a lover. ”