GOWER 



him lii- Ti-uiliu and Cressida, addresses liiin JIM the 

 moral (Jower' an epithet that has buttMohiUy 

 linked itself with IUH name. Near the conclusion 

 if tin- I'mih-^iii Ainniitis Cower makes V (Mills in 

 .-opie-, pay u warm compliment to Chaucer a- 

 li.-r 'disciple linil poet,' which in followed imme- 

 diately l.\ lines expressing warm loyalty towards 

 Kich.-ird II. Both these passages are omitted in 

 the copy dedicate*! to Henry of Lancaster, then 

 I'. nl of Derhy (afterwards Henry IV.), which 

 appeared at a time when Chaucer was in trouble 

 \\ith the government, and this fact, taken in con- 

 junction with Chaucer's expressed dislike (Intro- 

 duction to the Man of Lawes prologue) to a 

 certain kind of sensational stories of 'unkynde 

 mi natural' ) ahhominaciouns,' which he exemplifies 

 l.v the stories of Canace and Apollinus of Tyre 

 tun of the best told tales interspersed in the 

 < '<>,ifnsio Amantis led Tyrwhitt to the conjecture 

 that the friendship between the two poets was 

 interrupted in their old age. But in this there is 

 really no ground for any inference further than 

 that (Jower was merely a timid and time-serving 

 man ; while the conjecture is completely demolished 

 l.v the discovery that Chaucer's poem was written 

 tir-t (before 1385), and. by the fact that Chaucer 

 t.iuk the substance of the Man of Lawes Tale 

 direct from Nicholas Trivet's French prose chronicle 

 of the Life of Constance (written about 1334), and 

 not indirectly through Gower's version of the same, 

 a-~ was supposed by Tyrwhitt, Wright, and most 

 scholars down to the appearance of Mr Brock's 

 English translation of Trivet in Originals and 

 Analogues of some of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 

 published for the Chaucer Society (1872-75). 



Gower wrote three large works in as many 

 languages : the Speculum Meditantis, in French 

 \. i m, not now extant ; the Vox Clamantis, a tedious 

 poem in Latin elegiac verse, written 1382-84, 

 describing the rising of the mob under Wat Tyler 

 in 1381, full of dreary allegorising and moralisation 

 i edited by Rev. H. O. Coxe, Roxburghe Club, 

 1850) ; and the long poem entitled Confessio Amantis, 

 written 'in our English ... for England's sake,' 

 the date uncertain, but at least the poem in 

 existence in 1392-93. In a passage in the earlier 

 edition of the last work, dedicated to Richard II., 

 he tells us how he met the king's barge one day 

 when rowing down the Thames at London, and 

 how the king invited him on board, and commanded 

 him to write a book upon some new matter. There 

 are extant also fifty French ballads, written by 

 Gower in his youth ( Roxburghe Club, 1818). 



Gower's Confessio Amantis consists of a prologue 

 and eight books, written in verses of eight syllables, 

 rhyming in pairs. The long prologue gives a 

 sombre account of the state of the world at that 

 time, and the poem opens by introducing the 

 author himself in the character of an unhappy 

 lover. Venus then appears to him, and appoints 

 her priest called Genius to hear the lover's con- 

 fession of all the sins he has committed against 

 love. Under each several head the confessor con- 

 solos him and gives him warning by relating 

 apposite stories of the fatal effects ot each passion 

 in the experiences of former lovers in like case. It 

 ends with the lover's petition in a strophic poem 

 addressed to Venus, her judgment, and finally the 

 lover's cure and absolution. The stories inserted 

 are taken from < >vid's Metamorphoses, the Gesta 

 ],'<"ii>iii'irint>, th medieval histories of Troy and 

 Alexander the Great, from the Pantheon and 

 Speculum Reaum of Godfrey of Viterbo, the 

 romance of Sir Lancelot, and the Chronicles of 

 Cassiodorus and Isidorus. The mixture of Ovidian 

 and Christian morality is often incongruous enough, 

 and the whole poem is dull and prolix to the last 

 degree. Without originality, narrative power, 



r;o\NN 



333 



pathos, or humour, Gower yet commands renpect 

 for the laborious equality of hi* vente, and hi* 

 work remains a splendid monument of English. 

 Mr Lowell is too severe upon his uniformity of 

 commonplace, his omnipresent tediounneiw, lib 

 imperturbable narrative, the tremendous hydraulic 

 power of his allegory to squeeze out all feeling and 

 freshness, the from levels of bin verne, and the in- 

 evitable recurrence of his rhyme regularly iMTtina- 

 cious as the tick of an eight day elork ; although 

 indeed it cannot altogether be denied that ' he ha* 

 positively raised tedionsness to the precision of 

 science, and has made dullness an heirloom for the 

 students of our literary history.' The bent edition 

 is that by Dr Keinhofd Pauli*(3 vols. Loud. 1857). 

 There is a serviceable reprint by Professor Henry 

 Morley in his ' ( 'arishrooke Library' (1889). 



Gown* a loose upper garment worn by members 

 of universities, civil magistrates, and the like. 

 The use of the gown by ecclesiastics has l>een 

 erroneously derived from the custom of the friare, 

 but is more probably to be traced to the practice 

 of inviting doctors of divinity to preach, and to 

 the power of the university to license graduate 

 preachers. Originally the gown was merely the 

 out-of-door dress ; and after the Reformation the 

 clergy (mostly Puritan) who did not hold degrees, 

 regarding enviously the comely wide-sleeved gown 

 which was the mark of the graduate, adopted a 

 gown of their own or of Genevan devising. In 

 1444 all doctors and graduates of the Benedictine 

 order were authorised to use their scholastic habit 

 when preaching before a large congregation ; and in 

 1571 the gown formed part of the preachers ' com- 

 mon apparel abrode.' Addison, in the Spectator 

 (1714), speaks of the clergy 'equipped with a gown 

 and a cassock ; ' and Itoth garments were retained 

 until within the 19th century. In Edinburgh, at 

 the coronation of Charles I., the Archbishop of 

 Glasgow and others not engaged in the service 

 'changed not their habit, but wore their black 

 gowns without rochets or sleeves ; ' but in the same 

 year a warrant was sent down from London, direct- 

 ing the use of the ' whites ' by bishops and arch- 

 bishops, and ordering all inferior clergymen to 

 preach in their black gowns, but to use their 

 surplices while reading the prayers and in other 

 services. In the 18th century, however, even 

 during the service, the surplice was almost un- 

 known in the Scottish Episcopal Church. The 

 controversy in the Anglican Church as to exchang- 

 ing the surplice for the gown in preaching, which 

 arose about 1840 and exercised the church for a 

 generation, has never received a definitive settle 

 ment. 



The academic gown is a survival of the tabard us. 

 a garment with many folds, which came in when 

 j the doctors began to wear long, priestly robes as a 

 distinctive mark of their standing as clerics. At 

 Padua, for instance, certainly as early as the 

 16th century, the gown and square cap were the 

 insignia of a doctor; and, at a later period, the 

 undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, wore 

 a gown of violet colour to distinguish him from the 

 doctors, who wore a scarlet gown. The purple 

 gown common to all rectors of universities has been 

 described as the livery of the popes : in the word? 

 '; of the Emperor Joseph II., it is a reminiscence ot 

 ' the dark times when the papal see arrogated to 

 itself the exclusive right of establishing univer- 

 sities.' On the Continent the several faculties 

 I possess distinctive colours, although in some uni- 

 ! versities, as at Leipzig and Tubingen, only two 

 colours have been used. In Britain a similar custom 

 obtains in the full dress of doctors; the faculty, 

 like the university, of a graduate is indicated 

 by his hood. The gowns of under-graduates are 

 now black, except at Glasgow, Aberdeen, and 



