IV. and imitators afterwards, all the subsequent love CIAP. poetry which fills the volumes of our English Par nassus to the end of the reign of Elizabeth, has POEMS OF principally originated. The chivalric love poetry was the peculiar offspring of the middle ages,3 and may justly claim the Troubadours as its original parents. From them it descended to Cino, Guittone, and Dante; but assumed its purest and most intellectual form in Petrarch, from whom it has also been called the Petrarchian love. The Troubadours, notwithstanding the immorality of their final object, cultivated also its imaginative and mental sensibility. They made it a rich enjoyment of abstract feeling, distinct from that of the common gratification, however ultimately combined with it; and their universal popularity during the period of their prevalence, made all the cultivated minds of Europe cherish, talk, and write upon it, as an intellectual passion, whose emotions exalted at times to verbal veneration the object of their attention, and whose delicacies were studied and enforced as assiduously as their successful result was pursued and contended for. The Italian genius slowly imbibed from them both the spirit of emulation 5 3 Zanotti justly remarks, that Petrarch was not the first to discover the form of this noble love; but that it was unknown to the Greeks and Latins. Arte Poet. Rag. 5. JOHN Abate Ciampi's Life of Cino, p. 165. Fontaninus shows, on the authority of Brunetti, that the popular language of the Provençaux was, in 1260, la piu dilettevolle e la piu commune of all others.' Muratori, Ant. Ital. p. 704. Our Tuscans, not less than the rest of Italy, and indeed all the rest of Europe, were in those times admirers of the Provençals, to whose poetry the preference was given, not only in the courts of the great, but in every place where taste and gentility were valued. No where were the praises of honorable love, nor the amenity and simplicity of rural life, sung with so much applause and beauty, as by the Provençals.' Ciampi, p. 79. VOL. V. U ENGLISHI 8 7 BOOK and the necessary tuition. But a Cino, Guittone, VIII. and Petrarch, gradually arose in Italy to give birth HISTORY OF to a new poetry in that country, and to excite other nations to a similar fertility. These writers, and especially the latter, separated the cultivated sensibility of the Provençals from all the grossness at which it aimed: and poetry became then the companion and the language of honorable love, of purer affection, and of the noblest feelings of the attracted heart. In England, the new spirit and genius burst forth in Gower and Chaucer, and afterwards in Surrey, Wyatt, and Gascoigne; and has produced unto us such an overabundant harvest in its most laudable form, that its best productions have sunk into oblivion or indifference, from our repletion and satiety. But as it pervaded our Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate, it animated them to new forms and subjects of poetical composition. These venerated founders of our real Parnassus discover in several passages of their works that they were benefited from 6. But not having then an uniform and polished language, altho they took from the Provençals, metres, rimes, arguments and certain beautiful and graceful ideas, yet with their unequal and imperfect diction, they composed rather a jargon, than even a middling poetry.' Ciampi, 80. 7 Cino was born in 1270, and was at Toulouse long enough to be familiar with the Provençal language and poetry. Ciampi says of him, No one before Cino knew how to take away from Italian versification its rudeness, roughness and obscurity: to substitute the softness of vowels, beautiful metaphors, easy and natural, without entangled periods and farfetched figures; and to make it flowing, interesting, and clear. Bembo, as well as Dante and Petrarch, has acknowleged Cino to be the best master of language and poetry.' p. 82, 3. 8 M. Raynouard has selected and translated a great number of passages from the poems of the Troubadours, which express' les sentimens tendres et affecteux de ces amants passionées et timides; les vœux, les craintes, la soumission; les esperances et la connoissance de l'amour. On verra l'expression d'une tendresse toujours vive et fidele, souvent ingenieuse d'une franchise delicate; d'une resignation touchante; enfin tout ce qui constitue et distingue le caractere, deleciz passion chevaleres que.' vol. 2. v-li. 9 this source. To them our attention must now be CHAP. turned. · IV. JOHN GOWER. Gower and Chaucer were contemporaries, and for POEMS OF some time friends, and notice each other in their works with affectionate commendation. But Gower was born 10 before Chaucer, and seems to have sur- Gower. vived him. The oldest writers who mention both, usually place Gower first; and Fox, after mentioning Chaucer, says that Gower was a great deale his ancient." That Gower was in established fame when Chaucer published the work that has been deemed one of his earliest, the Troilus, may be presumed from its dedicating expressions. The intimation of Leland, that he was descended from the Gowers of Stittenham, in Yorkshire, seems to be confirmed by the deed dated at that place, on which his name is 'Gower mentions an anecdote of Dante in his 7th book, p. 222. Chaucer tells the famous story of Ugolino, from Dante, and calls him "the grete poete of Itaille.' Monkes Tale, p. 126. Chal. ed. He inserts a song, which appears to be a translation of one of Petrarch's sonnets, in his Troilus; and Mr. Tyrrwhit and Mr. Warton have remarked, that Chaucer's Palemon and Arcite was taken from Boccaccio's Theside. Mr. Tyrrhwit believes that the Troilus and Cressid was taken from Boccaccio's Filostrato. Mr. Godwin repels this supposition; Life Chauc. vol. 1. p. 270; but I think not conclusively. Lydgate thus mentions Petrarch : But O! allas! the retorikes suete Of Petrak ffraunceys that so coude endite. MS. Harl. 629. 10 The deed which Mr. Todd, in his Illustrations, remarks that Gower witnessed, is dated 1346. If we suppose him to have then been 18, it will place his birth about 1328. And on this computation he would be 85 when he died. I am not inclined to place him earlier. " See Mr. Todd's Illustrations, Introd. pp. xxvi-xxxii. John the Chaplain mentions Chaucer first. Todd, xxxi. But as this author finished his metrical translation in 1410, and Gower did not die till the latter part of 1408, it is probable that he wrote the passage on both while Gower was alive, and therefore naturally mentioned Chaucer first. The different tenses of the verbs he uses, seem to me to imply that the one was dead and the other living. i To Chawcer that was flour of rhetoryk— BOOK endorsed as a witness.12 He lived to become old, VIII. blind and infirm.13 In 1400, he penned expressions HISTORYOF which imply that he thought he was near death;" but he survived till 1408.15 His will proves that poverty was not among the evils that he was suffering. ENGLISHI His first poems were the fifty Sonnets in French, which frequently exhibit much softness and even elegance.16 His Vox Clamantis and Metrical Chro 12 Todd's Illust. pp. 91, 92. Very little is known of Gower's life. Leland calls him, 'Vir equestris ordinis,' and adds, that he both studied and practised law. De Scrip. Brit. 414. That he was in London at the time of Wat Tyler's insurrection, has been already mentioned. His being a lawyer will account for his flight and trepidation, mentioned before, V. 2. p. 262. 13 After mentioning of himself, that having written the Vox Clamantis and the Chronica Tripartita, to the second year of Henry IV. or 1400, he adds, and now because in many ways depressed by the weight of old age and other infirmities, I am unable to write chronicles any further,' &c. also, It was the second year of king Henry that I cease to write, because I am blind.' MS. Tib. A 4. 14 Having written on the vanities of the world, I am about to leave the world. In my last verse I write that I am dying. Let him that comes after me write more discreetly than I have done, for now my hand and pen are silencing. I can do nothing of any value now with my hands. The labor of prayers is all that I can bear. I pray then with my tears, living, but blind. O God! protect the future reigns which thou hast established, and give me to share thy holy light.' MS. Cot. Lib. Tib. A 4. 15 Mr. Todd has brought this fact to public notice by reprinting his Will, which Gough had inserted in his Sepulchral Monuments, but which had been overlooked, and by adding its probate. The Will is dated in 1408, and proved 24 October 1408, by his wife. See it in Todd, 87-90. It purports to have been made within the priory of St. Marie de Overes,' now St. Saviour's, in Southwark. It gives several legacies to the prior and convent; others to the hospitals of St. Thomas in Southwark, St. Thome Elsingspitell, Bedlem extra Byschopus-gat, and St. Mary Spitell,' near Westminster. To his wife he leaves 100%., some plate, and the rents of the farms of his manors of Southwell in Nottinghamshire, and of Multon in Suffolk. Ib. 6 16 Mr. Todd has printed, more correctly than before, five of these balades, the 30th, 34th, 36th, 43d and 48th, in his Illustrations, pp. 102108, from a MS. of the marquis of Stafford's, of which he says, By an entry on the first leaf, in the hand-writing and under the signature of Thomas lord Fairfax, Cromwell's general, an antiquary, and a lover and collector of curious manuscripts, it appears that this book was presented by the poet Gower, about the year 1400, to Henry the Fourth; and that it was given by lord Fairfax to his friend and kinsman sir Thomas Gower, knight and baronet, in the year 1656.' It appears also to have been in the hands of King Henry the Seventh, while earl of Richmond, from IV. JOHN nicle, both in Latin, have been already noticed." CHAP. The poem which has ranked him among the fathers of English poetry is the Confessio Amantis; it con- POEMS OF tains nearly 35,000 lines. He wrote it by the desire of Richard II.18 But it is not clear at what time he composed it, excepting that he began it after this king's accession, and had finished it before the sixteenth year of his reign,19 or between 1377 and 1393. The merit of Gower stood high in the estimation of our ancestors. He has been characterized as wise, impressive, and almost sublime in his ethical character, but of no estimation as a poet. It is certain that the apostrophe of Chaucer, "O moral Gower!" breathes a volume of praise which language can scarcely exalt, and which few poets have deserved." But Gower is not merely the moralist; he is also the genuine poet. Chaucer was his superior; but of all the authors who attempted narrative poetry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Gower may claim the name Rychemond inserted in another of the blank leaves at the beginning, and explained by this note, Liber Henrici septimi, tunc comitis Richmond, propria manuscript.' Todd, p. 96. Warton's Hist. Poet, v. i. p. 474. 17 See before, v. 2. p. 261. 18 Ib. v. 2. p. 274. 19 From the printed lines of his Prologue it is inferred that he wrote it in the sixteenth year of Richard II. But the original Prologue did not contain these lines; and the substitution of those, which mention the date, for the others, imply that it was at least begun, if not finished, much earlier. It is most probable that so large a poem occupied a considerable portion of his life, and that it was written and made public, at least to his friends, at different periods. Hence Chaucer may have known it before he wrote his Troilus. That we must not take his later dates or dedications as conclusive proofs of the time of the composition of this work, we may reason from his Sonnets, which, tho his first work, yet are addressed to Henry IV. by their Colophon, mentioned by Todd, p. 97. Chaucer says in his Troilus 20 O moral Gower! this boke I direct To thee, and the philosophical Stroode, Troilus, 1. 1. |