If this king come in mankind will be fetch, And lead it where Lazar is and lightly me bind. That such a lord and a light · shall lead them all hence. 2 That Belial thy bel-sire beat, with thy dam1, and His light stop. be blent bar we the gates! and each chine' stop, at louvre nor at loop. And thou, Ashtaroth, hoot out and have out our knaves, Brimstone boiling burning out-cast it All hot on their heads that enter nigh the walls. and mill-stones throw, a-cloy 13 we them each one!' 'Listen!' quoth Lucifer for I this lord know, For, by right and by reason the renks 17 that be here Body and soul be mine both good and ill. that Sire is of hell, If that they touched a tree or took thereof an apple. Thus this lord of light such a law made; And, since He is so leal a Lord I 'lieve that He will not And, since we have been seised seven thousand winters, He were unwrast of1 His word that witness is of truth!' 'That is sooth,' said Satan 'but I me sore doubt, For thou got them with guile Against His love and His leave and His garden broke, on His land yedest3, Not in form of a fiend but in form of an adder; And behightest her and him after to know, As two gods, with God both good and ill; 9 through false Thus haddest thou them out and hither at the last. fetch; And, as thou beguiledest God's image in going of an adder, So hath God beguiled us all in going of a wy 11' anon undo the gates, * the king's son of heaven.' 'What lord art Thou?' quoth Lucifer a voice aloud said, brake with all Belial's bars; ecce agnus Dei! so light him ablent 13; They durst not look on our Lord the least of them all, Many hundreds of angels harped then and sang, Culpat caro, purgat caro, Regnat Deus Dei caro. Then piped Peace of poetry a note, Clarior est solito post maxima nebula Phebus, Post inimicitias clarior est et amor. 'After sharpest showers,' quoth Peace most sheen is the sun, Is no weather warmer than after watery clouds, Nor love liefer nor liefer friends, Than after war and wrack when Love and Peace be masters. Was never war in this world • nor wickeder envy, But Love, if him list to laughing it brought, And Peace, through patience all perils stopped.' And then luted Love in a loud note, Ecce quam bonum et quam iocundum est habitare fratres in unum! Till the day dawned these damsels danced, That men rung to the resurrection and with that I awaked, And called Kitte my wife and Calote my daughter, 'Arise! and go reverence And creep on knees to the cross and kiss it for a jewel, And rightfullest relic • none richer on earth! For God's blessed body it bare, for our boot1, And it a-feareth 2 the fiend; for such is the might, May no grisly ghost glide where it shadoweth !' 1 help, remedy. 2 frightens away. JOHN GOWER. [John Gower seems to have been born about 1330, and died in 1408, having been blind for eight or nine years before his death. He was a gentleman of ancient family, owning estates in Kent and Suffolk. The place of his birth is unknown; he is believed to have died in the priory of St. Mary Overies, Southwark, in the church of which, now called St. Saviour's, his tomb may still be seen. The earliest of his three principal works, Speculum Meditantis, was in French verse, but it has not come down to posterity, nor is the precise time of its composition known. The second, Vox Clamantis, in Latin elegiac verse, was written between 1382 and 1384, and commemorates the rising of the commons under Wat Tyler in the former year, moralizing upon it and improving the occasion with astonishing prolixity. The third, Confessio Amantis, one of the best known of early English poems, was written between 1385 and 1393.] It was The poetry of Gower has been variously estimated. a practice with the poets of the sixteenth century to link his name in a venerated trio with those of Chaucer and Lydgate, just as in the seventeenth century the names of Shakspere, Jonson, and Fletcher were often joined together as the great dramatic lights of the preceding age. In each case the effect of closer study has been to lead men to think that they have been joining gold with iron and clay. Shakspere, read attentively, rises high above the standard reached by Jonson and Fletcher; and in a yet greater degree has the genius of Chaucer, accurately studied and rightly felt, impressed the present age with the sense of his unrivalled eminence among his contemporaries. Gower, a man of birth and fortune, must have lived in the cultivated society of his day. Of that society, French poetry, in its various forms of Fabliau, Rondel, Romance, Epigram, Chanson, &c., was one of the chief delights and distractions. With much imitative power, with the faculty of sustained attention, with a high appreciation for his own thoughts, and remarkable linguistic facility, Gower, when he betook himself to poetry, was sure to become a copious and prolific writer. But, possessing no originality, he was equally sure to remain pent within the imprisoning bounds of fashion and conventionality, to follow, not take the lead, to interpret, not modify opinion. He seems to have been without the sense of humour; we doubt if a single jest of his own making can be found throughout his writings. From this cause, although he may justly be called a moralist and a didactic writer, (Chaucer and Lydgate both speak of him as the 'moral' Gower), the higher intellectual rank of a satirist must be denied him. The moralist declaims, the satirist paints; we are convinced of the deformity of vice in the one case, but we see it in the other. The faculties of the first dispose him to subjective estimates of men and things, those of the second to objective estimates. The one describes the offenders, the other makes them exhibit themselves. The moralist inveighs against the selfish cowardice of a degraded proletariat; the satirist puts a few simple words in their mouths, and we know them and their kind for evermore. 'Curramus praecipites, et Dum jacet in ripa, calcemus Caesaris hostem.' Several MSS. of the Confessio Amantis, Gower's principal poem, contain a passage in Latin prose in which he describes the three books which he had written, all with a didactic motive, 'doctrinae causa.' The first of these, Speculum Meditantis, was in French verse. It was probably written between 1360 and 1370, at a period when the ladies at Edward III's court and their admirers would hardly have condescended to read a poem couched in their native English, a tongue not then believed to be suited to themes of love, mysticism, and chivalry. It was a strictly moral poem, treating of virtues and vices, and the methods of penitence and amendment; but it has absolutely vanished; and since from the account we have of the contents it is impossible not to believe that it was exceedingly dull, we may be reconciled to the loss. Gower's next considerable effort, the Vox Clamantis, a Latin elegiac poem in seven books, was suggested by the rising of the commons under Wat Tyler and others in 1381. Why he chose to write it in Latin it is impossible to say, unless we suppose that he wished to hide from the objects of them, under the veil of a learned language, the sharp censures on the classes of knights, burghers, and cultivators, which the poem contains. In a passage |