patrons to divest himself of all fear of the author. In his innocence conceiving that the strokes of his own pen would silently improve an obsolete genius, this merciless interpolator, changing words and syllables at pleasure, has furnished a text which Chaucer never wrote * ! If the worst edition that was ever published contributed to finish Peckwater Quadrangle, it is amusing to be reminded that causes are often strangely disproportionate to their effects. The famous portion of Chaucer's Miscellaneous Volume has been fortunate in the editorial cares of TYRWHIT. Tyrwhit, a scholar as well as an antiquary, was an expert philologer; his extensive reading in the lore of our vernacular vernacular literature and our national antiquities promptly supplied what could not have entered into his more classical studies; and his sagacity seems to have decided on the various * So unskilful or so incurious was Warburton in the language of our ancient poets, that in his notes on Pope he quotes the following lines of Chaucer "Love wol not be constreined by maistrie. Whan maistrie cometh, the God of love anon from Urry's edition, in which they appear thus transformed and corrupted: "Love will not be confined by maisterie. When maisterie comes, the Lord of love anon readings of all the manuscripts, by piercing into the core of the poet's thoughts. It is remarkable that some of the most lively productions of several great writers have been the work of their maturest age. Johnson surpassed all his preceding labours in his last work, the popular Lives of the Poets. The "Canterbury Tales" of Chaucer were the effusions of his advanced age, and the congenial versions of Dryden were thrown out in the luxuriance of his later days. Milton might have been classed among the minor poets, had he not lived to be old enough to become the most sublime. Let it be a source of consolation, if not of triumph, in a long studious life of true genius, to know that the imagination may not decline with the vigour of the frame which holds it; there has been no old age for many men of genius. We must lament that at such an early period in our vernacular literature, we have to record that the two fathers of our poetry, congenial spirits as they were, too closely resembled most of their sons-in one of the most painful infirmities of genius. I have said elsewhere that jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, is not however confined to them. We do not possess the secret history of the two great poets, Chaucer and Gower; but we are told by Berthelet in his edition of Gower's "Confessio Amantis," when he quotes the commendatory lines on Gower by Chaucer, that the poets "were both excellently learned, both great frendes together." Ancient biographers usually fall into this vague style of eulogy, which served their purpose rather than a more critical research. True it is that "" they were both great friends," but, what Berthelet has not told, they became also "both great enemies." We know that Chaucer has commemorated the dignified merits of "the moral Gower," and that Gower has poured forth an effusion not less fervid than elegant from the lips of Venus, who calls Chaucer “her own clerk, who in the flower of his youth had made ditees and songes glad which have filled the land." Did this little passion of poetic jealousy creep into their great souls? Else how did it happen that Chaucer, who had once solicited the correcting hand of his friend, in his latest work reprehended the sage and the poet, and that Gower, who had not stinted the rich meed of his eulogy which appeared in the first copies of his "Confessio Amantis," erased the immortality which he had bestowed. The justice of their reciprocal praise neither of these rivals could efface, for that outlives their little jealousies. 283 GOWER. IN the church of St. Saviour in Southwark may be viewed an ancient monument with its sculptured and Gothic canopy; pictured on its side, the three visionary virgins, Charity, Mercy, and Pity, solicit the prayer of the passenger for the soul of the suppliant whose image lies extended on the tomb, with folded hands, and in his damask habit flowing to his feet. His head reposes on three mighty tomes, and is decked with a garland, either of roses which proclaim his knighthood, or the wreath of literature which would more justly distinguish the wearer,-JOHN GOWER, the poet. In the life of this poet, almost the only certain incident seems to be his sepulchral monument; and even this it had been necessary to repair after the malignity of the Iconoclasts; and of the three sculptured volumes which support the poet's head, a single one only has been opened by the world, for the tomb has perpetuated what the press has not. The three tomes on the tomb of Gower represent his three great works; but what is remarkable, and shows the unsettled state of our literature, each of these great works is written in a different language, though equally graced with Latin titles. The first, in French, is the Speculum Meditantis; the moral reflections relieved by historical examples. The second, in Latin verse, is Vox Clamantis; this "Voice" comes not from the desert, for it is that of the clamours of the people; a satire on all ranks, and an exhortation to the youthful monarch to check his own self-indulgence ; it includes a chronicle of the insurrection of the populace, or "the clowns," as they were called in Richard the Second's reign. The vernacular style, rather than Latin verse, would have more aptly celebrated the feats of Wat Tyler, of Bet and Sim, Gibbe and Hyke, Hudde and Judde, Jack and Tib. The reporter had no doubt been present at the active scene. The swarm rush on to the call of one another, in hexameters and pentameters. The singularity of the subject, which gives no bad picture of the hurry of a disorderly mob, and the felicity of an old translation, induce me to preserve a partial extract from the manuscript. Our own age has witnessed similar scenes. Watte vocat, cui Thome venit, neque Symme retardat, Colle furit, quem Gibbe juvat nocumenta parantes, Cum quibus ad dampnum Wille coire vovet. Grigge rapit, dum Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe, Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Tebbe juvatur, |
