THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN GOWER

G. C. MACAULAY

* * THE ENGLISH WORKS

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK

THE COMPLETE WORKS

OF

JOHN GOWER

EDITED FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS WITH INTRODUCTIONS, NOTES, AND GLOSSARIES

BY

G. C. MACAULAY, M.A. FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

* * THE ENGLISH WORKS

(Confessio Amantis, Prol.—Lib. V. 1970)

‘O gentile Engleterre, a toi j’escrits.’

Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1901

Oxford PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS BY HORACE HART, M.A. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

[Pg v]

PREFATORY NOTE

The circumstances under which this edition was undertaken have already been stated in the Preface to the volume containing the French Works, where mention is also made of the editor’s obligations to many librarians and private owners of manuscripts.

At present it need only be said that the editor has become more and more convinced, as his work went on, of the value and authentic character of the text given by the Fairfax MS. of the Confessio Amantis, which as proceeding directly from the author, though not written by his hand, may claim the highest rank as an authority for his language.

It is hoped that the list of errata, the result chiefly of a revision made during the formation of the Glossary, may be taken to indicate not so much the carelessness of the editor, as his desire to be absolutely accurate in the reproduction of this interesting text.

The analysis of the Confessio Amantis which is printed in the Introduction, was undertaken chiefly at the suggestion of Dr. Furnivall. With reference to this it may be observed that in places where the author is following well-known sources, the summaries are intentionally briefer, and in the case of some of the Biblical stories a reference to the original has been thought sufficient.

Oxford, 1901.[Pg vi]

INTRODUCTION

The Confessio Amantis has been the subject both of exaggerated praise and of undue depreciation. It was the fashion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to set Gower side by side with Chaucer, and to represent them as the twin stars of the new English poetry, a view which, however it may be justified by consideration of their language and literary tendencies, seems to imply a very uncritical estimate of their comparative importance. Some of these references are collected below, and they serve to indicate in a general way that the author had a great literary reputation and that his book was very popular, the latter being a conclusion which is sufficiently vouched for also by the large number of manuscripts which existed, and by the three printed editions. We shall confine ourselves here to drawing attention to a few facts of special significance.

In the first place the Confessio Amantis is the earliest English book which made its way beyond the limits of its own language. There exists a Spanish translation, dating apparently from the very beginning of the fifteenth century, in which reference is made also to a Portuguese version, not known to be now in existence, on which perhaps the Castilian was based. This double translation into contemporary languages of the Continent must denote that the writer’s fame was not merely insular in his life-time.

Secondly, with regard to the position of this book in the sixteenth century, the expressions used by Berthelette seem to me to imply something more than a mere formal tribute. This printer, who is especially distinguished by his interest in language, in the preface to his edition of the Confessio Amantis most warmly sets forth his author as a model of pure English, contrasting his native simplicity with the extravagant affectations of style and[Pg viii] language which were then in fashion. In fact, when we compare the style of Gower in writing of love with that which we find in some of the books which were at that time issuing from the press, we cannot help feeling that the recommendation was justified.

Again, nearly a century later a somewhat striking testimony to the position of Gower as a standard author is afforded by Ben Jonson’s English Grammar. The syntax contains about a hundred and thirty illustrative quotations, and of these about thirty are from Gower. Chaucer is cited twenty-five times, Lydgate and Sir Thomas More each about fourteen, the other chief authorities being Norton, Jewel, Fox, Sir John Cheke and the English Bible.

Finally, our author’s popularity and established position as a story-teller is decisively vouched for by the partly Shakesperian play of Pericles. Plots of plays were usually borrowed without acknowledgement; but here, a plot being taken from the Confessio Amantis, the opportunity is seized of bringing Gower himself on the stage to act as Prologue to four out of the five acts, speaking in the measure of his own octosyllabic couplet,

The book was so well known and the author so well established in reputation, that a play evidently gained credit by connecting itself with his name.

The following are the principal references to Gower in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The author of The King’s Quair dedicates his poem to the memory (or rather to the poems) of his masters Gower and Chaucer. Hoccleve calls him ‘my maister Gower,’

John Walton of Osney, the metrical translator of Boethius, writes,

Bokenham in his Lives of the Saints repeatedly speaks of Gower, Chaucer and Lydgate, the last of whom was then still living, as the three great lights[Pg ix] of English literature. Caxton printed the Confessio Amantis in 1483, and it seems to have been one of the most popular productions of his press.

In the sixteenth century Gower appears by the side of Chaucer in Dunbar’s Lament for the Makaris and in Lindsay’s poems. Hawes in the Pastime of Pleasure classes him with Chaucer and his beloved Lydgate, and Skelton introduces him as first in order of time among the English poets who are mentioned in the Garland of Laurel,

a testimony which is not quite consistent with that in the Lament for Philip Sparow,

Barclay in the Preface of his Mirour of Good Manners (printed 1516) states that he has been desired by his ‘Master,’ Sir Giles Alington, to abridge and amend the Confessio Amantis, but has declined the task, chiefly on moral grounds. The work he says would not be suitable to his age and order (he was a priest and monk of Ely),

Leland had some glimmering perception of the difference between Chaucer and Gower in literary merit; but Bale suggests that our author was ‘alter Dantes ac Petrarcha’ (no less), adding the remark, taken perhaps from Berthelette’s preface, ‘sui temporis lucerna habebatur ad docte scribendum in lingua vulgariA.’ In Bullein’s Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence (1564) Gower is represented as sitting next to the Classical poets, Homer, Hesiod, Ennius and Lucan. Puttenham in the Art of English Poesie (1589), and Sidney in the Defence of Poesie (1595), equally class Gower and Chaucer together. The latter, illustrating his thesis that the first writers of each country were the poets, says, ‘So among the Romans were Livius Andronicus and Ennius, so in the Italian language ... the poets Dante, Boccace and Petrarch, so in our English, Gower and Chaucer, after whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our mother tongue, as well in the same kind as in other arts.’

In Robert Greene’s Vision, printed about 1592, Chaucer and Gower appear as the accepted representatives of the pleasant and the sententious styles in story-telling, and compete with one another in tales upon a given subject, the cure of jealousy. The introduction of Gower into the play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre has already been referred to.

The uncritical exaggeration of Gower’s literary merits, which formerly prevailed, has been of some disadvantage to him in[Pg x] modern times. The comparison with Chaucer, which was so repeatedly suggested, could not but be unfavourable to him; and modern critics, instead of endeavouring to appreciate fairly such merits as he has, have often felt called upon to offer him up as a sacrifice to the honour of Chaucer, who assuredly needs no such addition to his glory. The true critical procedure is rather the opposite of this. Gower’s early popularity and reputation are facts to be reckoned with, in addition to the literary merit which we in our generation may find in his work, and neither students of Middle English, nor those who aim at tracing the influences under which the English language and literature developed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, can afford to leave Gower’s English work out of their account.

THE ENGLISH WORKS.

i. Literary Characteristics.—The reason of the success of the Confessio Amantis was naturally the fact that it supplied a popular need. After endeavouring to ‘give an account of his stewardship’ in various ways as a moralist, the author at length found his true vocation, and this time happily in his native tongue, as a teller of stories. The rest is all machinery, sometimes poetical and interesting, sometimes tiresome and clumsy, but the stories are the main thing. The perception of the popular taste may have come to him partly through the success of Chaucer in the Legend of Good Women, and the simple but excellent narrative style which he thereupon developed must have been a new revelation of his powers to himself as well as to others. It is true that he does not altogether drop the character of the moralist, but he has definitely and publicly resigned the task of setting society generally to rights,

He covers his retreat indeed by dwelling upon the all-pervading influence of Love in the world and the fact that all the evils of society may be said to spring from the want of it; but this is little more than a pretext. Love is the theme partly because it supplies[Pg xi] a convenient framework for the design, and partly perhaps out of deference to a royal command. There is no reason to doubt the statement in the first version of the Prologue about the meeting of the author with Richard II on the river, and that he then received suggestions for a book, which the king promised to accept and read. It may easily be supposed that Richard himself suggested love as the subject, being a matter in which, as we know from Froissart, he was apt to take delight. ‘Adont me demanda le roy de quoy il traittoit. Je luy dis, “D’amours.” De ceste response fut-il tous resjouys, et regarda dedens le livre en plusieurs lieux et y lisyB.’ It was certainly to the credit of the young king that he should have discerned literary merit in the work

of the grave monitor who had so lectured him upon his duties in the Vox Clamantis, and should have had some part in encouraging him to set his hand to a more promising task; and if it be the fact that he suggested love as the subject, we cannot but admire both the sense of humour displayed by the prince and the address with which our author acquitted himself of the task proposed.

The idea of the Confession was no doubt taken from the Roman de la Rose, where the priest of Nature, whose name is Genius, hears her confession; but it must be allowed that Gower has made much better use of it. Nature occupies herself in expounding the system of the universe generally, and in confessing at great length not her own faults but those of Man, whom she repents of having made. Her tone is not at all that of a penitent, though she may be on her knees, and Genius does little or nothing for her in reply except to agree rather elaborately with her view that, if proper precautions had been taken, Mars and Venus might easily have outwitted Vulcan. Gower on the other hand has made the Confession into a framework which will conveniently hold any number of stories upon every possible subject, and at the same time he has preserved for the most part the due propriety of character and situation in the two actors. By giving the scheme an apparent limitation to the subject of love he has not in fact necessarily limited the range of narrative, for there is no impropriety in

illustrating by a tale the general nature of a vice or virtue before making the special application to cases which concern lovers, and this special application, made with all due solemnity, has often a character of piquancy in which the moral tale[Pg xii] pure and simple would be wanting. Add to this that the form adopted tends itself to a kind of quasi-religious treatment of the subject, which was fully in accordance with the taste of the day, and produces much of that impression of quaintness and charm with which we most of us associate our first acquaintance with the Confessio Amantis.

The success of the work—for a success it is in spite of its faults—is due to several merits. The first of these is the author’s unquestionable talent for story-telling. He has little of the dramatic power or the humour which distinguish Chaucer, but he tells his tales in a well-ordered and interesting manner, does not break the thread by digressions, never tires of the story before it is finished, as Chaucer does so obviously and so often, and carries his reader through with him successfully to the end in almost every case. His narrative is a clear, if shallow, stream, rippling pleasantly over the stones and unbroken either by dams or cataracts. The materials of course are not original, but Gower is by no means a slavish follower in detail of his authorities; the proportions and arrangement of the stories are usually his own and often show good judgement. Moreover he not seldom gives a fresh turn to a well-known story, as in the instances of Jephthah and Saul, or makes a pretty addition to it, as is the case in some

of the tales from Ovid. Almost the only story in which the interest really flags is the longest, the tale of Apollonius of Tyre, which fills up so much of the eighth book and was taken as the basis of the plot of Pericles; and this was in its original form so loose and rambling a series of incidents, that hardly any skill could have completely redeemed it. There is no doubt that this gift of clear and interesting narrative was the merit which most appealed to the popular taste, the wholesome appetite for stories being at that time not too well catered for, and that the plainness of the style was an advantage rather than a drawback.

Tastes will differ of course as to the merits of the particular stories, but some may be selected as incontestably good. The tale of Mundus and Paulina in the first book is excellently told, and so is that of Alboin and Rosemund. The best of the second book are perhaps the False Bachelor and the legend of Constantine and Silvester, in the latter of which the author has greatly improved upon his materials. In the third book the tale of Canace is most pathetically rendered, far better than in Ovid, so that in[Pg xiii] spite of Chaucer’s denunciation his devoted follower Lydgate could not resist the temptation of borrowing it. The fourth book, which altogether is of special excellence, gives us Rosiphelee, Phyllis, and the very poetically told tale of Ceix and Alceone. The fifth has Jason and Medea, a most admirable example of sustained narrative, simple and yet effective and poetical, perhaps on the whole Gower’s best performance: also the oriental tale of Adrian and Bardus, and the well told story of Tereus and Philomela.

In the seventh we shall find the Biblical story of Gideon excellently rendered, the Rape of Lucrece, and the tale of Virginia. These may be taken as specimens of Gower’s narrative power at its best, and by the degree of effectiveness which he attains in them and the manner in which he has used his materials, he may fairly be judged as a story-teller.

As regards style and poetical qualities we find much that is good in the narratives. Force and picturesqueness certainly cannot be denied to the tale of Medea, with its description of the summer sea glistening in the sun, which blazes down upon the returning hero, and from the golden fleece by his side flashes a signal of success to Medea in her watch-tower, as she prays for her chosen knight. Still less can we refuse to recognize the poetical power of the later phases of the same story, first the midnight rovings of Medea in search of enchantments,

and again later, when the charms are set in action, 4059 ff., a passage of extraordinary picturesqueness, but too long to be quoted here. We do not forget the debt to Ovid, but these descriptions are far more detailed and forcible than the original.

[Pg xiv]

For a picture of a different kind, also based upon Ovid, we may take the description of the tears of Lucrece for her husband, and the reviving beauty in her face when he appears,

a passage in which Gower, with his natural taste for simplicity, has again improved upon his classical authority, and may safely challenge comparison with Chaucer, who has followed Ovid more literally.

It is worth mention that Gower’s descriptions of storms at sea are especially vivid and true, so that we are led to suppose that he had had more than a mere literary acquaintance with such things. Such for instance is the account of the shipwreck of the Greek fleet, iii. 981 ff., and of the tempests of which Apollonius is more than once the victim, as viii. 604 ff., and in general nautical terms and metaphors, of some of which the meaning is not quite clear, seem to come readily from his pen.

Next to the simple directness of narrative style which distinguishes the stories themselves, we must acknowledge a certain attractiveness in the setting of them. The Lover decidedly engages our interest: we can understand his sorrows and his joys, his depression when his mistress will not listen to the verses which he has written for her, and his delight when he hears men speak her praises. We can excuse his frankly confessed envy, malice and hatred in all matters which concern his rivals in her love. His feelings are described in a very natural manner, the hesitation and forgetfulness in her presence, and the self-reproach[Pg xv] afterwards, the eagerness to do her small services, to accompany her to mass, to lift her into her saddle, to ride by her carriage, the delight of being present in her chamber, of singing to her or reading her the tale of Troilus, or if no better may be, of watching her long and slender fingers at work on her weaving or embroidery. Sometimes she will not stay with him, and then he plays with the dog or with the birds in the cage, and converses with the

page of her chamber—anything as an excuse to stay; and when it grows late and he must perforce depart, he goes indeed, but returns with the pretence of having forgotten something, in order that he may bid her good-night once more. He rises in the night and looks out of his window over the houses towards the chamber where she sleeps, and loses himself in imagination of the love-thefts which he would commit if by any necromancy he had the power. Yet he is not extravagantly romantic: he will go wherever his lady bids him, but he will not range the world in arms merely in order to gain renown, losing his lady perhaps in the meantime at home. We take his side when he complains of the Confessor’s want of feeling for a pain which he does not himself experience, and his readiness to prescribe for a wound of the heart as if it were a sore of the heel. Even while we smile, we compassionate the lover who is at last disqualified on account of age, and recommended to make a ‘beau retret’ while there is yet time.