Gower

“ When this sort of thing has gone on for five minutes, Gower, feeling he can stand it no longer, draws his breath quickly, and going over to the small ottoman seats himself upon a low chair, quite close to his betrothed; this effort he makes to assert his position, with all the air of a man who is determined to do or die. Her fan is lying on her knee. Taking it up, with a defiant glance at Roger, he opens it, and trifles with it idly, in a sort of proprietary fashion. ”

“ The autumn is already advanced, and our friends who met at Summerford have returned to the neighbourhood of London. The days of damp and fog have arrived. All nature looks sullen and lustreless. As Gower gazes through the streaming pane on the narrowed dripping landscape, he sometimes tries, as sunny Persia and the Sufis recur to him, to transform the slope before his windows into an eastern valley. ”

“ Gower enters the room.
"Ah! how d'ye do!" says Dulce, nestling up to him, her soft skirts making a gentle frou-frou as she moves; "so glad you have come. You are late, are you not?" She gives him her hand, and smiles up into his eyes. To all the others her excessive cordiality means only a desire to chagrin Dare, to Stephen Gower it means—well, perhaps, at this point of their acquaintance he hardly knows what it means—but it certainly heightens her charms in his sight. ”

“ On descending at four p.m., to her cheerful drawing-room, Mrs. Gower has so far conquered her feelings as to cause a casual observer to say, she is quite happy, and at ease; for her dark red gown is becoming, and she has compelled her mind to dwell only on the pleasurable excitement of a re-union with her old friend, Mr. Cole; wondering also what he will think of her new friend, Mr. Blair. The air, redolent of hyacinths and roses, tells her he is in the drawing-room; and the color deepens in her cheeks as her heart throbs faster. ”

“ Should I warn Lady Ellinor? But of what? The character of the servant, or the designs of the fictitious Gower? Against the first I could say, if nothing very positive, still enough to make it prudent to dismiss him. But of Gower or Vivian, what could I say without—not indeed betraying his confidence, for that he had never given me—but without belying the professions of friendship that I myself had lavishly made to him? Perhaps, after all, he might have disclosed whatever were his real secrets to Trevanion ”

“ In the midst of their miserable labour, these poor people saw standing among them a majestic stranger, wrapped in a robe. Gower thought he recognised Swedenborg at once. ‘Stay,’ cried the seer, ‘God hath made a soil already for you. Build no other. Your own stony hearts have made the hill seem to you as iron.’ They heard: each seemed to take a stone out of his bosom, and hurl it down the steep; when straightway every foot sank deep into a rich and kindly earth, and a shout of joy broke forth, echoed far among the cloudy gorges. ”

“ John Gower was too wise a man to hesitate. Had he done so, he knew well enough that he would be suspected of having knowingly harboured the crones, and of being in league with them, a suspicion which would have ruined him for ever in his native parish, and probably driven him from the county.
So he bade Mary mind the house, and keep Jane and Billy at home, and then he set off at best pace with Firminger down the road in the direction of the cottage of the crones. ”

“ He casts a lingering glance round, but providentially Miss Gower has disappeared.
"But toothbrushes! Show me that paper."
"Do you, then, disbelieve in my word?"
"Nobody could want a toothbrush."
"Some people want them awfully," says Mr. Gower. "Haven't you noticed?"
But here Sir Maurice sees it his duty to interfere.
"Miss Bolton, will you play this next set with me?" says he, coming up to Tita.
"Oh, I should love it!" cries she. "You are so good a player. Do get us some decent people to play against, though; I hate a weak game." ”

“ Gower with a slight smile. “I think I may say, with Porthos, that my mountains are very fine—‘mon air est très-beau,’ you know.”
[175] “Tell me, Mrs. Gower,” said Arthur, “who is the lady talking with the man I do not know; the dark man, with broad shoulders?”
“Don’t you know him? That is Lionel Derwent, the great English traveller—writer—soldier—socialist—what shall I say? And she is Mrs. Wilton Hay. You must indeed know her, for you are to take her in to dinner. Shall I introduce you?” ”

“ All he knew was that his father would have nothing to do with Gower, never mentioned the name voluntarily, let his catch of salmon rot on the beach before he would sell to a Gower cannery boat,—and had enjoined upon his son the same aloofness from all things Gower. Once, in answer to young Jack's curious question, his natural "why," Donald MacRae had said:
"I knew the man long before you were born, Johnny. I don't like him. I despise him. Neither I nor any of mine shall ever truck and traffic with him and his. When you are a man and can understand, I shall tell you more of this." ”

“ In 1365 a John Gower rented the manors of Wygeburgh (i.e. Wigborough) , Essex, and Aldington, Kent. It is possible that this tenant was the poet. But it is extremely doubtful whether the John Gower, ‘clerk,’ who held the rectory of Great Braxted, Essex, from February 1390 to March 1397, is identical with the writer. Professor Morley accepts the identification without hesitation. But there is no other evidence to show that Gower, whose customary title was ‘esquier,’ was in holy orders. The probability is all the other way. ”

“ Gower, in a depressing tone, putting in the plug.
When they reach it, he gives his arm to his aunt, and, in the tenderest fashion, helps her along the short pathway that leads to the house.
In the hall quite a large number of people are assembled, and everyone runs toward them.
"Why, we thought you were lost," says Mrs. Chichester.
"Yes, so we were very nearly," says Mr. Gower, shaking his head and advancing into the hall with the languid airs of one who has just undergone a strange experience. ”

“ A better known poem of Gower—because written in English—was the Confessio Amantis: Old Classic, and Romance tales come into it, and are fearfully stretched out; and there are pedagogic Latin rubrics at the margin, and wearisome repetitions, with now and then faint scent of prettinesses stolen from French fabliaux: but unless your patience is heroic, you will grow tired of him; and the monotonous, measured, metallic jingle of his best verse is provokingly like the “Caw-caw” of the prim, black raven. He had art, he had learning, he had good-will ”

“ He was stripped of his sodden, bloody undershirt and overalls, partly covered by his blanket. He could feel bandages on his legs, on one badly slashed arm. He made out Betty Gower's face with its unruly mass of reddish-brown hair and two rose spots of color glowing on her smooth cheeks. There was also a tall young man, coatless, showing a white expanse of flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled above his elbows. ”

“ SCENE I. France. The English camp. Enter Fluellen and Gower.
GOWER.
Nay, that’s right; but why wear you your leek today?
Saint Davy’s day is past.
FLUELLEN.
There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things. I will tell you ass my friend, Captain Gower. The rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave, Pistol, which you and yourself and all the world know to be no petter than a fellow, look you now, of no merits, he is come to me and prings me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek. ”

“ Of the English poets, with a reference to Laurence Minot, who celebrated the exploits of Edward III. in martial poems, and has, therefore, been styled the Tyitrous of his age, we shall only now mention Gower and Chaucer.
John Gower was of an ancient and opulent family—we believe the Duke of Sutherland claims him as his ancestor—and he consequently received the best education that the age could procure. He was born in 1324, entered the Inner Temple at a suitable age. He rose high in his profession, and indulged himself in his leisure hours in poetry. ”

“ Gower lived in the most democratic city of a democracy; but a democracy lends itself to sudden and extreme social distinctions. The imaginary line, drawn hap-hazard, must be drawn all the deeper to endure a decade. A society which has no Pyrenees must give an extra attention to the artificial forts of its boundaries. Old Mrs. Gower felt deeply these truths. She knew that Mr. Starbuck had been in oil; but she also said to herself that her son would raise Flossie to his own level. ”

“ Miss Blount, with her fingers interlaced, is watching him furtively, a little petulant expression in her eyes.
"It seems to me you think more of your absent cousin than of—of anyone in the world," says Gower, sullenly. Fear of what her answer may be has induced him to leave his own name out of the question altogether.
"As I told you before, one always thinks most of what is unpleasing to one."
"Oh, I daresay!" says Mr. Gower.
"I don't think I quite understand you. What do you mean by that?" asks she, with suspicious sweetness.
"Dulce," says Stephen, miserably, "say you hate Roger." ”

“ Upon Pitt's accession to power Gower once more became lord president of the council on 19 Dec. 1783, but was succeeded by Lord Camden in the following year, and appointed lord privy seal on 24 Nov. 1784. On 1 March 1786 he was created Marquis of the county of Stafford, and resigned the office of privy seal in July 1794, upon the Duke of Portland joining the ministry. He died at Trentham Hall, Staffordshire, on 26 Oct. 1803, in his eighty-third year. Gower was a man of considerable parts, great wealth, and much political influence. ”

“ One of the recalcitrant cushions fell to the floor. They bumped heads in trying to pick it up.
"Traps!" he said. "Never in the world! Don't think it! Why, Gower is just a necessary old bore. Nobody's supposed to know much about him—except instructors and their hapless students."
He added one more sentence to his letter to "Arthur": "She pushes you pretty hard. A little of it goes a good way . . ." ”

“ The lond fulfilled is over all. [610]
Gower was exceedingly pious. When old age came he retired with his wife to the priory of St. Mary Overy's (now St. Saviour) , in that same suburb of Southwark where Chaucer preferred to frequent the "Tabard," and spent his last years there in devout observances. He became blind in 1400, and died eight years after. He bequeathed to his wife three cups, two salt-cellars, twelve silver spoons, all his beds and chests, and the income of two manors; he left a number of pious legacies in order to have lamps kept burning, and masses said for his soul. ”

“ Chichester, turning her thin shoulders, that always have some queer sort of fascination in them, on Gower. She gives him a glance out of her blue-green eyes. She is enjoying herself immensely, in spite of the day, being quite alive to the fact that Captain Marryatt is growing desperate, and that old Miss Gower, whom Tita has insisted on asking to her house party, is thinking dark things of her from the ottoman over there.
"What's it good for, any way?"
"For the ducks," says Mr. Gower, who is always there. An answer to any question under the sun comes as naturally to him as sighing to the sad. ”

“ In 1208 the Welsh and English inhabitants who had frequent cause to complain of their treatment, received each a charter, in similar terms, from King John, who also visited the town of Swansea in 1210 and in 1215 granted its merchants liberal privileges. In 1283 a number of de Braose’s tenants—unquestionably Welshmen—left Gower for the royal lordship of Carmarthen, declaring that they would live under the king rather than under a lord marcher. ”

“ Gower had distinct privileges, and was separate from Glamorgan till the reign of Henry VIII., when, by act of parliament, it was annexed to that county.
Gower is rich in memorials of the olden times, as will appear by the sequel to the present paper—those strongholds of ancient despotism, which, by their very ruin, tell of the nothingness of man's power and ambition. ”

“ The second work, the ‘Vox Clamantis,’ is a Latin elegiac poem in seven books. It was begun in June 1381, but not completed till near the end of Richard II's reign. The first book—a fourth of the whole—treats, in an allegory which (Gower pretends) was revealed to him in a dream, of the insurrection of the serfs which broke out in Gower's neighbourhood in Kent in May 1381. The poet describes the rebels under the names of animals, but the identification of the leaders is obvious, and in some places their names are given. He brings events down to the death of Wat Tyler. ”

“ Gower tragically. "My looks do not belie me."
"Good gracious, Randal!"
"Ruin stares me in the face," says he, "look where I will."
"Very rude of it," says Tita, with an irrepressible laugh. "One should never stare people out of countenance. You should speak to Ruin."
"Oh, it's all very fine making a joke of it!" says Mr. Gower, who is, however, laughing too.
"Where are you going now?" asks Tita, as he moves away from her towards the hall door. ”

“ In this eventful year, Jacobite Johnson was quietly engaged on his Dictionary. Aloof from the fray, he could not forbear flinging a stone on an ex-Jacobite who had ratted. When he came to the word ‘renegade,’ he remembered Lord Gower’s abandonment of the old Jacobite interest, for place at Court; and his prejudice prompted him to make Lord Gower infamous for ever, by adding his name to the vocabulary of slang. ‘When I came to the word renegade,’ he said to Boswell, ‘after telling that it meant “one who deserts to the enemy; a revolter,” I added, “sometimes we say a Gower.” ”