John Gower

“ 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, doubtless the same who is buried in Brabourne Church, who died apparently in 1349; that it was ultimately divided, with other property, between his heirs, two daughters named Katherine and Joanna, of whom one, Katherine, died in 1366. Her moiety was then combined with the other in the possession of her sister Joanna, ‘23 years old and upwards,’ then married to William Neve of Wetyng, but apparently soon afterwards to Thomas Syward. As [Pg xiii] to the transaction between John Gower and John Spenythorn with Joanna his wife, we must be content to remain rather in the dark. ”

“ John Gower mentioned in connexion with the parishes of Throwley and Stalesfield, Kent, in 1381-211; John Gower who was killed by Elias Taillour, apparently in 138512; John Gower who was appointed with others in 1386 to receive and distribute the stores at Dover Castle13; none of whom can reasonably be identified with the poet. Therefore it cannot be truly said, as it is said by Pauli, that the surname Gower, or even the combination John Gower, is a very uncommon one in the records of the county of Kent14. ”

“ Dr. Macaulay supposes Gower to have been a dealer in wool, with the natural dislike of the Londoner for foreigners. The jealousy of the Lombards which he expresses has every appearance of being a prejudice connected with rivalry in commerce. ‘I see Lombards come,’ he says, ‘in poor attire as servants, and before a year has passed they have gained so much by deceit and conspiracy that they dress more nobly than the burgesses of our city.’ [60]
John Gower at one time lived at Southwark, and in St. Saviour’s Church his tomb still stands. ”

“ Stow, writing about 1598, says, ‘This church was again newly rebuilt in the reign of Richard II and king Henry IV. John Gower, a learned gentleman and a famous poet, but no knight, as some have mistaken it, was then an especial benefactor to that work, and was there buried in the north side of the said church, in the chapel of St. John, where he founded a chantry. He lieth under a tomb of stone with his image also of stone being over him. The hair of his head brown, long to his shoulders but curling up, collar of esses of gold about his neck ”

“ There were, however, honest men there, as everywhere else; and, although for the most part such people preferred to dwell nearer Mersham-street or immediately below the church, yet the scattered cottages further south were not altogether without inmates, who, having nowhere else to live, lived there.
John Gower was one of these, a respectable middle-aged man, who won his bread by the sweat of his brow, and was proud of the name of a Kentish labourer. ”

“ I counsel thee, my son, to labour no more in things which bring thee no profit. The end of every pleasure is pain. Love is blind, and makes all his servants blind: thou mayest yet withdraw and set thyself under the law of reason.
It is easy to say so, father. My woe is but a game to you, feeling [Pg xc] nothing of that which I feel. The hart that goes free knows not the sorrows of the ox under the yoke. But I entreat you to present for me a Supplication to Venus and Cupid, and bring me a good answer back. ”

“ A word must be said finally about Prof. Morley’s theory that Gower was in holy orders and held the living of Great Braxted in Essex from 1390-7. This is founded on the fact that the parson of Great Braxted for the period named was one John Gower, as Professor Morley learns from Newcourt’s Repertorium Parochiale60. ”

“ To bear such monstrous Wights, the earth did grone and quake.
These pestred most the Western Tract; more fear made thee agast,
O Cornwall, utmost door that art to let in Zephyrus blast. JOHN GOWER.
John Gower, whom some make to be a Knight, though Stow, in his survey of London, unknighteth him, and saith he was only an Esquire; however he was born of a knightly Family, at Stitenham in the North-Riding in Bulmore-Wapentake in Yorkshire. ”

“ An inquiry whether it will be to the prejudice of the king to put John Gower in possession of half the manor of Aldyngton in Kent, acquired by him without licence of the king from William de Septvans, and if so, ‘ad quod damnum.’ This half of Aldyngton is held of the king by the service of paying fourteen shillings a year to the Warden of Rochester Castle on St. ”

“ To write anything like a biography of Gower, with the materials that exist, is an impossibility. Almost the only authentic records of him, apart from his writings, are his marriage-licence, his will, and his tomb in St. Saviour’s Church; and it was this last which furnished most of the material out of which the early accounts of the poet were composed. A succession of writers from Leland down to Todd contribute hardly anything except guesswork, and this is copied by each from his predecessors with little or no pretence of criticism. ”

“ It is only when we institute a comparison between the Mirour and the two other principal works, in Latin and English respectively, which our author used as vehicles for his serious thoughts, that we realize how impossible it is that the three should not all belong to one author. Gower, in fact, was a man of stereotyped convictions, whose thoughts on human society and on the divine government of the world tended constantly to repeat themselves in but slightly varying forms. ”

“ There were no English among them, but Gower deemed it necessary to admonish his countrymen to be very careful in word and deed, especially as an opinion had got abroad that both political parties in England had tampered with the French democrats.
The Revolution had thus already become too stormy for Gower to sing pæans over it; but Huskisson, a witness of the capture of the Bastille, who became his private secretary, was warmly interested in it. Huskisson had been brought up by his great-uncle. Dr. Richard Gem, a Worcestershire man, who went to Paris as physician to the Embassy in 1762. ”

“ As an artist he has set himself to supply suitable forms of expression for the feelings of others, and in doing so he imagines their variety of circumstances and adapts his composition accordingly. For this kind of work it is not necessary, or perhaps even desirable, to be [Pg lxxiii] a lover oneself; it is enough to have been a lover once: and that Gower could in his later life express the feelings of a lover with grace and truth we have ample evidence in the Confessio Amantis. ”

“ Whether or not this conduct justifies the charge of time-serving timidity, which has been made against Gower, I cannot undertake to decide. He was, however, in fact rather of an opposite character, even pedantically stiff in passing judgement severely on those in high places, and not bating a syllable of what he thought proper for himself to say or for a king to hear, though while the king was young and might yet shake himself free from evil influences he was willing to take as favourable a view of his character as possible. ”

“ On the 20th June 1790, Earl Gower, afterwards Duke of Sutherland, presented Dorset's letters of recall and his own credentials. Gower's despatches speak of the expediency of embassy servants carrying guns or wearing a particular feather in their hats, so as to avoid the insult experienced by the Spanish ambassadress's attendants. English residents applied to him to obtain exemption from the capitation-tax, and information, to which he attached little weight, was offered him of plots for setting fire to English ports or fleets. ”

“ If, however, an unfortunate layman offends, they accuse him forthwith, in order to profit by the penalties that may be exacted. ‘Purs is the erchedeknes helle,’ as Chaucer’s Sompnour says, and Gower declares plainly that the Church officials encourage vice in order that they may profit by it: ‘the harlot is more profitable to them,’ he says, ‘than the nun, and they let out fornication to farm, as they let their lands’ (20149 ff.) .
Setting aside the Church, we may glean from the Mirour some interesting details about general society, especially in the city of London. ”

“ WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL OF STIRLING
Sonnet
WILLIAM DRUMMOND
The River of Forth Feasting
Sonnets
Spiritual Poems
PHINEAS FLETCHER
Description of Parthenia
Instability of Human Greatness
Happiness of the Shepherd's Life
Marriage of Christ and the Church
* * * * *
SPECIMENS, WITH MEMOIRS, OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS. JOHN GOWER Very little is told us (as usual in the beginnings of a literature) of the life and private history of Gower, and that little is not specially authentic or clearly consistent with itself. ”

“ 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 has followed the original more closely than Chaucer, but he diverges from it in a good many points, as will be seen from the following enumeration:
(1) Gower says nothing of the proficiency of Constance in sciences and languages, on which Trivet lays much stress. (2) He abridges the negotiations for marriage with the Souldan (620 ff.) . (3) He does not mention the seven hundred Saracens with whom the Souldan’s mother conspired. (4) He brings Constance to land in Northumberland in the summer instead of on Christmas day (732) . ”

“ Gower agrees with it pretty closely, but the story is not improved in his hands. It loses, of course, the Greek characteristics of which we have spoken, and several of the incidents are related by Gower in a less effective manner than in the original. For example, in the scene near the beginning between Antiochus and Apollonius, the king asks, ‘Nosti nuptiarum conditionem?’ and the young man replies, ‘Novi et ad portam vidi,’ to which there is nothing corresponding in Gower. ”

“ True, my son, except that it helps nature, when it is taken in due measure. But he who sleeps unduly may come by misfortune, as I can show by a tale. (3276-3316.)
Argus and Mercury. Jupiter lay by Io, wherefore Juno changed her into a cow and gave her into the keeping of Argus, who had a hundred eyes. Mercury came to steal the cow, and he piped so cunningly that Argus fell asleep. So Mercury smote off his head and took away Io. Therefore, my son, beware thou sleep not overmuch. (3317-3364.)
[Pg lxiv]
Love will not let me do so, father: but ask further, if there be more. ”

“ Bot for men sein, and soth it is,
That who that al of wisdom writ
It dulleth ofte a mannes wit
To him that schal it aldai rede,
For thilke cause, if that ye rede,
I wolde go the middel weie
And wryte a bok betwen the tweie,
Somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore,
That of the lasse or of the more 20
Som man mai lyke of that I wryte:
And for that fewe men endite
In oure englissh, I thenke make
A bok for Engelondes sake,
The yer sextenthe of kyng Richard. ”

“ This book is very largely based upon Aristotle, with whose works Latini was exceptionally well acquainted, and it is from this that Gower takes his classification of the sciences, though in regard to the place of Rhetoric he does not quite agree with Latini, who brings it in under the head of ‘Politique,’ making Logic the third main branch of philosophy. Gower takes from the Trésor also many of his physical and geographical statements and his reference to the debate on the conspiracy of Catiline. ”

“ Sir Richard Leveson dying without issue, the Trentham estates passed to his sister and co-heiress, who had married Sir Thomas Gower, and in the Gower family they have remained to this day. Sir William Leveson-Gower, his second son, who inherited the estates on the deaths of his elder brother and nephew, married Lady Jane Granville, eldest daughter of the Earl of Bath, by whom he had issue, with others, Sir John Leveson-Gower, who in 1703 was created Baron Gower of Sittenham. He married Catherine, daughter of the first Duke of Rutland, by whom he had four sons and two daughters. ”

“ From January to April 1783 and again from December 1783 to July 1788 Gower was one of the junior lords of the admiralty with Lord Howe, continuing at the admiralty with the Earl of Chatham til January 1790. ”

“ Gower certainly died in advanced age, yet the effigy on his tomb shows us a man in the flower of life. This then is either an ideal representation or must have been executed from rather distant memory, whereas the miniatures in the MSS., which closely resemble each other, were probably from life, and also preserve their original colouring. The miniatures in MSS. of the Confessio Amantis, which represent the Confession, show the penitent usually as a conventional young lover. ”

“ We must not take ‘fere’ in the sense of ‘companion’ or ‘equal,’ because in that case it could not properly rhyme with ‘Ere.’
5690 f.
‘comprensam forcipe linguam
Abstulit ense fero.’ Metam. vi. 556 f.
Gower must be commended for omitting the tasteless lines which follow in Ovid about the severed tongue, and still more the shocking statement, which even Ovid accompanies with ‘vix ausim credere,’ of 561 f.
5709. tyh, preterite of ‘ten,’ from OE. ‘tēon,’ meaning ‘draw,’ and hence ‘come.’
5724. The punctuation follows F, ‘To hire’ meaning ‘in her case,’ cp. l. 4182, vii. 4937. ”