A Literary History of the English People Part 40

He is represented lying with his hands raised as if for prayer, his thick locks are bound by a fillet adorned with roses. The head of the plump, round-cheeked poet rests on his three princ.i.p.al works; he wears about his neck a collar of interwoven SS, together with the swan, emblem of Henry IV. of England.[611]

The worthy man wrote immoderately, and in especial three great poems: the "Speculum Meditantis," in French; the "Vox Clamantis," in Latin; the "Confessio Amantis," in English. The first is lost; only an a.n.a.lysis of it remains, and it shows that Gower treated there of the vices and virtues of his day.[612] The loss is not very great: Gower has told pretty clearly elsewhere what he thought of the vices of his time, and, even had he not, it would have been easy to guess, for he was too right-minded a man not to have thought of them all the evil possible.

Some French works of Gower have, however, come down to us; they are ballads and madrigals, for imaginary Iris,[613] Court poems, imitations of Petrarch,[614] the light verses of a well-taught man. He promises eternal service to his "douce dame"; his "douce dame" being no one in particular. He writes for others, and they are welcome to draw from his works: "The love-songs thus far are composed specially for those who expect love favours through marriage.... The ballads from here to the end of the book are common to all, according to the properties and conditions of lovers who are diversely wrought upon by fickle love."[615] Here and there some fine similes are found in which figure the chameleon, for instance, who was supposed to live on air alone, or the hawk: "Chameleon a proud creature is, that lives upon air without more; thus may I say in similar fashion only through the love hopes which I entertain is my soul's life preserved."[616]

He excused himself, as we have seen, for the mistakes in his French works, but neglected to do the same for his Latin poems: in which he was wrong. The princ.i.p.al one, the "Vox Clamantis,"[617] was suggested to him by the great rising of 1381, which had imperilled the Crown and the whole social order. Gower, being a landowner in Kent, was in the best situation fully to appreciate the danger.

In order to treat this terrible subject, Gower, who is not inventive, adopts the form of a dream, just as if it were a new "Romaunt of the Rose." It is springtime, and he falls asleep. Let us not mind it overmuch, we shall soon do likewise; but our slumber will be a broken one; in the midst of the droning of his sermon, Gower suddenly screams, roars, flies into a pa.s.sion--"Vox Clamantis!" His hearers open an eye, wonder where they are, recognise Gower, and go off to sleep again.

Gower heaps up enormous and vague invectives; he fancies his style resembles that of the apostle in Patmos. Animals and monsters fight and scream; the common people have been turned into beasts, oxen, hogs, dogs, foxes, flies, frogs; all are hideous or dangerous. Cursing as he goes along, Gower drives before him, with hissing distichs, the strange herd of his monsters, who "dart sulphureous flames from the cavern of their mouth."[618]

These disasters are caused by the vices of the time, and Gower lengthily, patiently, complacently, draws up an interminable catalogue of them. A University education has taught him the importance of correct divisions; he divides and subdivides according to the approved scholastic methods. Firstly, there are the vices of churchmen; these vices are of different kinds, as are ecclesiastics themselves; he re-divides and re-subdivides. Some parsons "give Venus the t.i.thes that belong to G.o.d"; others are the terror of hares: "lepus visa pericla fugit," and hearken to no chime but the "vociferations" of the hounds[619]; others trade. Knights are too fond of women "with golden locks"; peasants are slothful; merchants rapacious and dishonest; they make "false gems out of gla.s.s."[620] The king himself does not escape a lecture: let him be upright, pious, merciful, and choose his ministers with care; let him beware of women: "Thou art king, let one sole queen suffice thee."[621]

In one particular, however, this sermon is a remarkable one. What predominates in these long tirades of poor verses is an intense feeling of horror and dismay; the quiet Gower, and the whole community to which he belonged, have suddenly been brought face to face with something unusual and terrifying even for that period. The earth shook, and a gulf opened; hundreds of victims, an archbishop of Canterbury among them, disappeared, and the abyss still yawns; the consternation is general, and no one knows what remedy to expect. Happily the two edges of the chasm have at last united; it has closed again, hiding in its depths a heaving sea of lava, the rumblings of which are still heard, and give warning that it may burst forth at some future day. Gower, in the meantime, scans his distichs.

Chaucer wrote in English, naturally, his sole reason being that it was the language of the country. Gower, when he uses this idiom,[622] offers explanations:

And for that fewe men endite In oure Englishe, I thenke make, A boke for Englondes sake.[623]

He has no idea to what extent this apology, so common a hundred years before, is now out of place after the "Troilus" of Chaucer. His English book is a lengthy compilation, written at the request of the young King Richard,[624] wherein Gower seeks both to amuse and to instruct, giving as he does,

Somwhat of l.u.s.t, somwhat of lore.

In his turn, and after Boccaccio, he invents a plot that will allow him to insert a whole series of tales and stories into one single work; compositions of this sort being the fashion. Gower's collection contains a hundred and twelve short stories, two or three of which are very well told; one, the adventure of Florent, being, perhaps, related even better than in Chaucer.[625] The rest resembles the Gower of the "Vox Clamantis."

What will be the subject of this philosopher's talk? He will tell us of a thing:

... wherupon the world mote stonde, And hath done sithen it began, And shall while there is any man, And that is love.[626]

In order to treat of this subject, and of many others, Boccaccio had conceived the idea of his gathering in the villa near Florence, and Chaucer that of his pilgrimage. Moral Gower remains true to his character, and imagines a confession. The lover seeks a priest of Venus, a worthy and very learned old man, called Genius, who had already figured as confessor in the "Roman de la Rose"[627]: "Benedicite," says the priest; "Dominus," answers the lover; and a miniature shows the lover in a pink gown, kneeling in a meadow at the feet of Genius, a tonsured monk in frock and cowl.[628]

We find ourselves again among vices and virtues, cla.s.sifications, divisions, and subdivisions. Genius condemns the vices (those of his G.o.ddess included, for he is a free speaking priest). He hates, above all things, Lollardry, "this new tapinage," and he commends the virtues; the stories come in by way of example: mind what your eyes do, witness Actaeon; and your ears, witness the Sirens. He pa.s.ses on to the seven deadly sins which were apparently studied in the seminary where this priest of Venus learnt theology. After the deadly sins the mists and marvels of the "Secretum Secretorum" fill the scene. At last the lover begs for mercy; he writes Venus a letter: "with the teres of min eye in stede of inke." Venus, who is a G.o.ddess, deciphers it, hastens to the spot, and scornfully laughs at this shivering lover, whom age and wrinkles have left a lover. Gower then decides to withdraw, and make, as he says, "beau retraite." In a last vision, the poor "olde grisel" gazes upon the series of famous loving couples, who give themselves up to the delight of dancing, in a paradise, where one could scarcely have expected to find them together: Tristan and Iseult, Paris and Helen, Troilus and Cressida, Samson and Dalila, David and Bathsheba, and Solomon the wise who has for himself alone a hundred or so of "Jewes eke and Sarazines."

In spite of the immense difference in their merit, the names of Chaucer and Gower were constantly coupled; James of Scotland, Skelton, Dunbar, always mention them together; the "Confessio" was printed by Caxton; under Elizabeth we find Gower on the stage; he figures in "Pericles,"

and recites the prologue of this play, the plot of which is borrowed from his poem.

FOOTNOTES:

[568] See above, p. 162.

[569] Against those practices Langland strongly protests in his "Visions," text C. x. 133; xvi. 200. See following Chapter.

[570] Rymer, "Foedera," April 24, 1469. The cla.s.sic instrument of the minstrel was the vielle or viol, a sort of violin, which only true artists knew how to use well (one is reproduced in "English Wayfaring Life," p. 202). Therefore many minstrels early replaced this difficult instrument by the common tabor, which sufficed to mark the cadence of their chants. Many other musical instruments were known in the Middle Ages; a list of them has been drawn up by H. Lavoix: "La Musique au temps de St. Louis," in G. Raynaud's "Recueil des motets francais des XIIe et XIIIe Siecles," vol. ii. p. 321.

[571] "Anatomy of Abuses," ed. Furnivall, London, 1877-79, 8vo, pp. 171, 172.

[572] Chaucer himself expected his poem to be said or _sung_; he says to his book:

And red wher-so thou be, or elles songe; That thou be understonde, I G.o.d beseche!

(Book v. st. 257.)

[573]

I wille yow telle of a knyghte That bothe was stalworthe and wyghte.

(_Isumbras._)

Y schalle telle yow of a knyght That was bothe hardy and wyght.

(_Eglamour._)

And y schalle karppe off a knyght That was both hardy and wyght.

(_Degrevant._)

"The Thornton Romances," ed. Halliwell (Camden Society, 1844, pp. 88, 121, 177), from a MS. preserved in the cathedral of Lincoln, that contains romances, recipes, prayers, &c., copied in the first half of the fifteenth century, on more ancient texts. See notes on many similar romances in Ward's "Catalogue of MS. Romances," 1883, vol. i. pp. 760 ff.

[574] See in "English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare," pp. 57 and 65, facsimiles of woodcuts which served about 1510 and 1560 to represent, the first, Romulus, Robert the Devil, &c., the second, Guy of Warwick, Graund Amoure, and the "Squyr of Lowe Degre."

[575] Both published by the Early English Text Society: "Morte Arthure,"

ed. Brock, 1871; "William of Palerne," ed. Skeat, 1867. Both are in alliterative verse; the first composed about the end, and the second about the middle, of the fourteenth century.

[576] The unique MS. of this poem is in the British Museum: Cotton, Nero A 10. It is of small size, and in a good handwriting of the fourteenth century, but the ink is faded. It contains some curious, though not fine, miniatures, representing the Green Knight leaving the Court, his head in his hand; Gawayne and his hostess; the scene at the Green Chapel; the return to King Arthur. The text has been published, _e.g._, by R. Morris: "Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, an alliterative romance poem," London, Early English Text Society, 1864, 8vo. The date a.s.signed to the poem by Morris (1320-30) seems to be too early; the work belongs more probably to the second half of the century. The immediate original of the tale is not known; it was, however, certainly a French poem. See on this subject Ward, "Catalogue of Romances," 1883, p. 387, and G.

Paris, "Histoire Litteraire de la France," vol. x.x.x.

[577]

Much glam and gle glent up ther-inne, Aboute the fyre upon flat (floor) and on fele (many) wyse, At the soper and after, mony athel songez, As coundutes of Kryst-ma.s.se and caroles newe....

[578]

With merthe and mynstralsye, wyth metez at hor wylle, Thay maden as mery as any men moghten With laghyng of ladies, with lotes of bordes (play upon words).

(l. 1952.)

[579] l. 1746.

[580] "Pearl, an English Poem of the Fourteenth Century, edited with modern rendering by Israel Gollancz," London, 1891, 8vo. The poem is written in stanzas (_a b a b a b a b b c b c_); the author employs both rhyme and alliteration. "Pearl" belongs apparently, like "Sir Gawayne,"

and some other poems on religious subjects, contained in the same MS., to the second half of the fourteenth century; there are, however, doubts and discussions concerning the date. Some coa.r.s.ely-painted miniatures, by no means corresponding to the gracefulness of the poem, represent the chief incidents of "Pearl;" they are by the same hand as those of "Sir Gawayne." See the reproduction of one of them in "Piers Plowman, a contribution to the History of English Mysticism," London, 1894, 8vo, p.

12.

[581]

I entred in that erber grene, In Augoste in a hygh seysoun, Quen corne is corven with crokez kene; On huyle ther perle it trendeled doun; Schadowed this wortes (plants) full schyre and schene, Gilofre, gyngure and gromylyoun, And pyonys powdered ay betwene.

Yif hit wacz semly on to sene, A fayrie tiayr yet fro hit flot. (St. 4.)

[582]