Synopses & Reviews
CONTENTS INTRODUCTION vii EPISTOLA i Vox CLAMANTIS 3 CRONICA TRIPERTITA 314 REX CELI DEUS ETC 343 H. AQUILE PULLUS ETC 344 O RECOLENDE ETC 345 CARMEN SUPER MULTIPLICI VICIORUM PESTILENCIA . . 346 TRACTATUS DE Lucis SCRUTINIO 355 ECCE PATET TENSUS ETC 358 EST AMOR ETC 359 QUIA VNUSQUISQUE ETC 360 ENEIDOS BUCOLIS ETC 361 O DEUS IMMENSE ETC 362 LAST POEMS 365 NOTES 369 GLOSSARY 421 INDEX TO THE NOTES 428 PAGE INTRODUCTION LIFE OF GOWER. 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. Saviours 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. Some of them, as Berthelette and Stow, describe from their own observation the tomb with its effigy and inscriptions, as it actually was in their time, and these descriptions supply us with positive information of some value, but the rest is almost entirely worthless. Gowers will was printed in Coughs Sepulchral Monuments 1 796, and in 1828 Sir Harris Nicolas, roused by spirit of Todd, published the article in the Retrospective the uncritical Review which has ever since been regarded as the one source of authentic information on the subject. It does not appear that Nicolas undertook any very extensive searching of records, indeed he seems to have practically confined his attention to the British Museum for wherever he cites theClose Rolls or other documents now in the Record Office, it is either from the abstract of the Close Rolls given in MS. Harl. 1176 or as communicated to him by some other person but he was able to produce several more or less interesting documents connected either with the poet or with somebodywhobore thesamenameand belonged tothe samefamily, and he placed the discussion for the first time upon a sound critical basis. Pauli simply recapitulated the results arrived at by Nicolas with some slight elucidations from the Close Rolls of 1 and Series, vol. ii. pp. 103-117. Ric. II on a matter which had been already mentioned by Nicolas on the authority of Mr. Petrie. As the result of a further examination of the Close Rolls and other records I am able to place some of the transactions referred to in a clearer light, while at the same time I find myself obliged to cast serious doubt on the theory that all the documents in question relate to the poet. In short, the conclusions at which I arrive, so far as regards the records, are mostly of a negative character. It may be taken as proved that the family to which John Gower the poet belonged was of Kent. Caxton indeed says of him that he was born in Wales, but this remark was probably suggested by the name of the land of Gower in Wales, and is as little to be trusted as the further statement that his birth was in the reign of Richard II. There was a natural tendency in the sixteenth century to connect him with the well-known Gowers of Stitenham in Yorkshire, whence the present noble family of Gower derives its origin, and Leland says definitely that the poet was of Stitenham ...