Chapter III: Part 3

is thoroughly characteristic of Gower, and on the strength of it he holds a kind of perpetual Last Judgement, in which he is always engaged in separating the sheep from the goats and dealing out to the latter their doom of eternal fire. The sentence sounds like a truism, but it contains in fact one of the grossest of fallacies. In short, our author has little sense of proportion and no dramatic powers.

As regards the invention of his allegory he seems to be to some extent original. There is nothing, so far as I know, to which we can point as its source, and such as it is, he is apparently entitled to the credit of having conceived it. The materials, no doubt, were ready to his hand. Allegory was entirely in the taste of the fourteenth century, dominated as it was by the influence of the _Roman de la Rose_, from which several of Gower’s personifications are taken. The _Mariage des Sept Arts_ was a work of this period, and the marriage of the Deadly Sins was not by any means a new idea. For example in MS. Fairfax 24 (Bodleian Libr.) there is a part of a French poem ‘de Maritagio nouem filiarum diaboli,’ which begins,

‘Li deable se vout marier,
Mauveisté prist a sa moiller:
. . . . . . .
De ceste ix filles engendra
Et diversement les marya,’ &c.

And no doubt other pieces of a similar kind exist.

The same is true as regards the other parts of the book, as has been already pointed out; the combination alone is original.

The style is uniformly respectable, but as a rule very monotonous. Occasionally the tedium is relieved by a story, but it is not generally told in much detail, and for the most part the reader has to toil through the desert with little assistance. It must not be supposed, however, that the work is quite without poetical merit. Every now and then by some touch of description the author betrays himself as the graceful poet of the _Balades_, his better part being crushed under mountains of morality and piles of deadly learning, but surviving nevertheless. For example, the priest who neglects his early morning service is reminded of the example of the lark, who rising very early mounts circling upward and pours forth a service of praise to God from her little throat:

‘Car que l’en doit sanz nul destour
Loenge rendre au creatour
Essample avons de l’alouette,
Que bien matin de tour en tour
Monte, et de dieu volant entour
Les laudes chante en sa gorgette.’ (5635 ff.)

Again, Praise is like the bee which flies over the meadows in the sunshine, gathering that which is sweet and fragrant, but avoiding all evil odours (12853 ff.). The robe of Conscience is like a cloud with ever-changing hues (10114 ff.). Devotion is like the sea-shell which opens to the dew of heaven and thus conceives the fair white pearl; not an original idea, but gracefully expressed:

‘Si en resçoit le douls rosé,
Que chiet du ciel tout en celée,
Dont puis deinz soi ad engendré
La margarite blanche et fine;
Ensi Devocioun en dée
Conceipt, s’elle est continué,
La Contemplacioun divine.’ (10818 ff.)

The lines in which our author describes the life of the beggar show that, though he disapproves, he has a real understanding of the delights of vagabondage, with its enjoyment of the open-air life, the sunshine, the woods, and the laziness:

‘Car mieulx amont la soule mie
Ove l’aise q’est appartenant,
C’est du solail q’est eschaulfant,
Et du sachel acostoiant,
Et du buisson l’erbergerie,
Que labourer pour leur vivant’ &c. (5801 ff.)

Other descriptions also have merit, as for example that of the procession of the Vices to their wedding, each being arrayed and mounted characteristically (841 ff.), a scene which it is interesting to compare with the somewhat similar passage of Spenser, _Faery Queene_, i. 4, that of Murder rocked in her cradle by the Devil and fed with milk of death (4795), and that of Fortune smiling on her friends and frowning on her enemies (22081 ff.).

Contemplation is described as one who loves solitude and withdraws herself from the sight, but it is not that she may be quite alone: she is like the maiden who in a solitary place awaits her lover, by whose coming she is to have joy in secret (10597 ff.). The truly religious man, already dead in spirit to this world, desires the death of the body ‘more than the mariner longs for his safe port, more than the labourer desires his wage, the husbandman his harvest, or the vine-dresser his vintage, more than the prisoner longs for his ransoming and deliverance, or the pilgrim who has travelled far desires his home-coming’ (10645 ff.). Such passages as these show both imagination and the power of literary expression, and the stanzas which describe the agony of the Saviour are not wholly unworthy of their high subject:

‘Par ce q’il ot le corps humein
Et vist la mort devant la mein,
Tant durement il s’effroia,
Du quoy parmy le tendre grein
Du char les gouttes trestout plein
Du sanc et eaue alors sua;
Si dist: O piere, entendes ça,
Fai que la mort me passera,
Car tu sur tout es soverein;
Et nepourqant je vuil cela
Que vous vuilletz que fait serra,
Car je me tiens a toy certein.’ (28669 ff.)

The man who wrote this not only showed some idea of the dignified handling of a tragic theme, but also had considerable mastery over the instruments that he used; and in fact the technical skill with which the stanza is used is often remarkable. There is sometimes a completeness and finish about it which takes us by surprise. The directions which our author gives us for a due confession of our sins are not exactly poetical, but the manner in which all the various points of _Quomodo_ are wrapped up in a stanza, and rounded off at the end of it (14869 ff.) is decidedly neat; and the same may be said of the reference to the lives of the holy fathers, as illustrating the nature of ‘Aspre vie’:

‘Qui list les vies des saintz pieres,
Oïr y puet maintes manieres
De la nature d’Aspre vie:
Les uns souleins en les rocheres,
Les uns en cloistre ove lour confreres,
Chascun fist bien de sa partie;
Cil plourt, cist preche, cil dieu prie,
Cist june et veille, et cil chastie
Son corps du froid et des miseres,
Cist laist sa terre et manantie,
Cil laist sa femme et progenie,
Eiant sur tout leur almes cheres.’ (18253 ff.)

In fact, he is a poet in a different sense altogether from his predecessors, superior to former Anglo-Norman writers both in imagination and in technical skill; but at the same time he is hopelessly unreadable, so far as this book as a whole is concerned, because, having been seized by the fatal desire to do good in his generation, ‘villicacionis sue racionem, dum tempus instat, ... alleuiare cupiens,’ as he himself expresses it, he deliberately determined to smother those gifts which had been employed in the service of folly, and to become a preacher instead of a poet. Happily, as time went on, he saw reason to modify his views in this respect (as he tells us plainly in the _Confessio Amantis_), and he became a poet again; but meanwhile he remains a preacher, and not a very good one after all.

QUOTATIONS.--One of the characteristic features of the _Mirour_ is the immense number of quotations. This citation of authorities is of course a characteristic of medieval morality, and appears in some books, as in the _Liber Consolationis_ and other writings of Albertano of Brescia, in an extreme form. Here the tendency is very pronounced, especially in the part which treats of Vices and Virtues, and it is worth while to inquire what range of reading they really indicate. A very large number are from the Bible, and there can be little doubt that Gower knew the Bible, in the Vulgate version of course, thoroughly well. There is hardly a book of the Old Testament to which he does not refer, and he seems to be acquainted with Bible history even in its obscurest details. The books from which he most frequently quotes are _Job_, _Psalms_, _Proverbs_, _Isaiah_, _Jeremiah_, and _Ecclesiasticus_, the proverbial morality of this last book being especially congenial to him. The quotations are sometimes inexact, and occasionally assigned to the wrong book; also the book of _Ecclesiasticus_, which is quoted very frequently, is sometimes referred to under the name of Sidrac and sometimes of Solomon: but there can be no doubt in my opinion that these Biblical quotations are at first hand. Of other writers Seneca, who is quoted by name nearly thirty times, comes easily first. Some of the references to him seem to be false, but it is possible that our author had read some of his works. Then come several of the Latin fathers, Jerome, Augustin, Gregory, Bernard, and, not far behind these, Ambrose. The quotations are not always easy to verify, and in most cases there is nothing to indicate that the books from which they are taken had been read as a whole. No doubt Gower may have been acquainted with some portions of them, as for instance that part of Jerome’s book against Jovinian which treats of the objections to marriage, but it is likely enough that he picked up most of these quotations at second hand. There are about a dozen quotations from Cicero, mostly from the _De Officiis_ and _De Amicitia_, but I doubt whether he had read either of these books. In the _Confessio Amantis_ he speaks as if he did not know that Tullius was the same person as Cicero (iv. 2648). Boethius is cited four times, one of the references being false; Cassiodorus and Isidore each four times, and Bede three times. Stories of natural history seem to be referred rather indiscriminately to Solinus, for several of these references prove to be false. Three quotations are attributed by the author to Horace (‘Orace’), but of these one is in fact from Ovid and another from Juvenal. He certainly got them all from some book of commonplaces. The same may be said of the passage alleged to be from Quintilian and of the references to Aristotle and to Plato. ‘Marcial,’ who is quoted three times, is not the classical Martial, but the epigrammatist Godfrey of Winchester, whose writings were in imitation of the Roman poet and passed commonly under his name. The distichs of Cato are referred to five times, and it is certain of course that Gower had read them. Ovid is named only once, and that is a doubtful reference, but the author of the _Confessio Amantis_ was certainly well acquainted at least with the _Metamorphoses_ and the _Heroides_. Valerius Maximus is the authority for two stories, but it is doubtful whether he is quoted at first hand. Fulgentius is cited twice, and ‘Alphonses,’ that is Petrus Alphonsi, author of the _Disciplina Clericalis_, twice. ‘Pamphilius’ (i.e. _Pamphilus, de Amore_) is cited once, but not in such a way as to suggest that Gower knew the book itself; and so too Maximian, but the passage referred to does not seem to be in the _Elegies_. The quotation from Ptolemy is, as usual, from the maxims often prefixed in manuscripts to the _Almagest_. Other writers referred to are Chrysostom, Cyprian, Remigius, Albertus Magnus, Hélinand, Haymo, and Gilbert. We know from a passage in the _Confessio Amantis_ that Gower had read some of the works of Albertus, and we may assume as probable that he knew Gilbert’s _Opusculum de Virginitate_, for his reference is rather to the treatise generally than to any particular passage of it.

He was acquainted, no doubt, with the _Legenda Aurea_ or some similar collection, and he seems to refer also to the _Vitae Patrum_. The moral and devotional books of his own day must have been pretty well known to him, as well as the lighter literature, to which he had himself contributed (_Mir._ 27340). On the whole we must conclude that he was a well-read man according to the standard of his age, especially for a layman, but there is no need to attribute to him a vast stock of learning on the strength of the large number of authors whom he quotes.

PROVERBS, &C.--Besides quotations from books there will be found to be a number of proverbial sayings in the _Mirour_, and I have thought it useful to collect some of these and display them in a manner convenient for reference. They are given in the order in which they occur:

1726. ‘Chien dormant n’esveilleras.’

1783. ‘l’en voit grever
Petite mosche au fort destrer.’

1944. ‘Pour tout l’avoir du Montpellers.’

2119. ‘Mais cil qui voet le mont monter,
Ainçois l’estoet le doss courber,
Qu’il truist la voie droite et pleine.’

2182. ‘Au despitous despit avient.’

5521. ‘Om dist, manace n’est pas lance.’

5593. ‘Endementiers que l’erbe es vals
Renaist et croist, moert ly chivals.’

5668. ‘Cil qui ne voet quant ad pooir
N’el porra puis qant ad voloir.’

5811. ‘Dieus aide a la charette.’

6660. ‘Poverte parte compaignie.’

7138. ‘Mais l’en dist, qui quiert escorchée
Le pell du chat, dont soit furrée,
Luy fault aucune chose dire.’

7237. ‘Comme cil qui chat achatera
El sac.’

7319. ‘pour le tresor de Pavie.’

7969. ‘Oisel par autre se chastie.’

8789. ‘Aviene ce q’avenir doit.’

8836. ‘Mais en proverbe est contenu,
Ly cous ad tout son fiel perdu
Et ad dieu en son cuer devant.’

9307. ‘Quant fole vait un fol querir,
Du fol trover ne poet faillir.’

9446. ‘Ce que polain prent en danture
Toute sa vie apres dura.’

12724. ‘Escript auci j’en truis lisant,
Au vois commune est acordant
La vois de dieu.’

13116. ‘du mal nage malvois port.’

13489. ‘C’est un proverbe de la gent,
Cil qui plus souffre bonnement
Plus valt.’

14440. ‘l’en dist en essampler
Qe dieus tous biens fait envoier,
Mais par les corns le boef n’apporte.’

15405. ‘Ne fait, comme dire l’en soloit,
De l’autry quir large courroie.’ (Cp. 24995.)

16117. ‘L’en dist ensi communement
Bon fin du bon commencement.’

16511. ‘vendre
Son boef pour manger le perdis.’

16532. ‘Du poy petit.’ (Cp. 15499.)

16943. ‘Qant piere hurte a la viole,
Ou l’ostour luite au russinole,
Savoir poetz q’ad le peiour.’

17257. ‘Om dist, Tant as, tant vals.’

17555. ‘Qant homme ad paié sa monoie,
Quoy valt ce lors a repentir?’

18013. ‘L’en dist ensi communement,
Retrai le fieu bien sagement
Et la fumée exteinderas.’

18020. ‘courser megre ne salt pas.’

20420. ‘Cil qui sanz draps se fait aler,
Mal avera son garçon vestu.’

21085. ‘Ly moigne, ensi comme truis escrit,
Ne sont pas fait de leur habit.’

22927. ‘la fortune a les hardis
S’encline.’

23413. ‘Trop est l’oisel de mesprisure
Q’au son ny propre fait lesure.’

24230. ‘L’un covoitous et l’autre fals
Ils s’entracordont de leger.’

24265. ‘Nul trop nous valt, sicomme l’en dist.’

24962. ‘Sicome crepaldz dist al herice,
Maldit soient tant seigneurant.’

25010. ‘Om doit seignour par la maisnie
Conoistre.’

25015. ‘tiel corsaint, tiel offrendour.’

25302. ‘Te dourra craie pour fourmage.’

27867. ‘qui bien ayme point n’oublie.’

28597. ‘De la proverbe me sovient,
Q’om dist que molt sovent avient
Apres grant joye grant dolour.’

Akin to the proverbs are the illustrations from Natural History, real or fictitious, of which there is a considerable number in the _Mirour_. These are of very various classes, from simple facts of ordinary observation to the monstrous inventions of the Bestiaries, which were repeated by one writer after another with a faith which rested not on any evidence of the facts stated, but upon their supposed agreement with the fitness of things, that is, practically, their supposed aptness as moral lessons, the medieval idea of the animal world being apparently that it was created and kept in being largely for the instruction of mankind. In taking the glow-worm as an illustration of hypocrisy (1130), the lark of joyous thankfulness (5637), the grasshopper of improvidence (5821), the lapwing of female dissimulation (8869), the turtle-dove of constancy (17881), the drone of indolence (5437), the camel of revengeful malice (4417), and the blind kitten of drunken helplessness (8221), the author is merely making a literary use of every-day observation. There are however, as might be expected, plenty of illustrations of a more questionable character. Presumption is like the tiger beguiled with the mirror (1561); the proud man who is disobedient to law is like the unicorn, which cannot be tamed (2101); the devil breaking down the virtue of a man by raising him high in his own conceit is like the osprey, which carries bones high in the air and breaks them by dropping them upon rocks (1849); Envy, who destroys with her breath the honour of all around her, is like the basilisk which kills all vegetation in the place where it is found (3745); the man-faced bird, which pines away because it has slain a man, is produced as a lesson to murderers (5029); the bad father, who teaches his sons to plunder the poor, is like the hawk, which beats its young and drives them from the nest in order that they may learn to kill prey for themselves (7009); the partridge is a lesson against stinginess (7671); the contagiousness of sin is illustrated by the fact that the panther infects other animals with his spots (9253), and yet in another place (12865) the sweetness of the human voice when it utters praise is compared to the fragrance of the panther’s breath. Contemplation is like the ‘chalandre,’ which flies up at midnight to the sky, and when on the earth will not look upon a dying person (10705); the fight between Arimaspians and griffons for emeralds is an image created for our instruction of the contest between the soul of man and the devil (10717); Devotion, who opens herself secretly to heaven and thus attains to the divine contemplation, is like the sea-shell which opens to the dew by night and from it conceives the pearl (10813); the spittle of a fasting man (according to Ambrose) will kill a serpent, and the fast itself will no doubt be effectual against the old serpent our enemy (18025). The bee does not come off well on the whole in these comparisons: he is chosen as the likeness of the idle and luxurious prelate, but this is for reasons which are not in themselves at all obvious, except that he has a sting and is unduly fond of sweets (19345). The prelate who protects his flock from encroachments of the royal or other authority is like the big fish which takes the smaller into its mouth to shelter them from the storm (19909); Humility is like the diamond, which refuses a setting of gold, but is drawn to the lowly iron, a confusion with the load-stone, arising from the name ‘adamant’ applied to both (12463). These are some of the illustrations which are drawn from the domain of Natural History, not original for the most part, but worth noting as part of the literary baggage of the period.

THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES.--We may gather from the _Mirour_ some few facts about the personality of the author, which will serve to supplement in some degree our rather scanty knowledge of Gower’s life. He tells us here that he is a layman (21772), but that we knew already; and that he knows little Latin and little French,--‘Poi sai latin, poi sai romance’ (21775), but that is only his modesty; he knows quite enough of both. He has spent his life in what he now regards as folly or worse; he has committed all the seven deadly sins (27365); moreover he has composed love poems, which he now calls ‘fols ditz d’amour’ (27340); but for all this it is probable enough that his life has been highly respectable. He comes late to repentance (27299), and means to sing a song different from that which he has sung heretofore (27347), to atone, apparently, for his former misdeeds. We may assume, then, that he was not very young at the time when he wrote this book; and we know that he considered himself an old man when he produced the _Confessio Amantis_ (viii. 3068*) in the year 1390. Men were counted old before sixty in those days, and therefore we may suppose him to be now about forty-six. We may perhaps gather from ll. 8794 and 17649 that he had a wife. In the former passage he is speaking of those who tell tales to husbands about their wives’ misconduct, and he says in effect, ‘I for my part declare (Je di pour moi) that I wish to hear no such tales of _my_ wife’; in the second he speaks of those wives who dislike servants and other persons simply because their husbands like them, and he adds, ‘I do not say that mine does so,’ ‘Ne di pas q’ensi fait la moie.’ If the inference is correct, then his union with Agnes Groundolf in his old age was a second marriage, and this is in itself probable enough. We cannot come to any definite conclusion from this poem about his profession or occupation in life. It is said by Leland that Gower was a lawyer, but for this statement no evidence has ever been produced, and if we may judge from the tone in which he speaks of the law and lawyers in the _Mirour_, we must reject it. Of all the secular estates that of the law seems to him to be the worst (24805 ff.), and he condemns both advocates and judges in a more unqualified manner than the members of any other calling. He knows apparently a good deal about them and about the ‘customs of Westminster,’ but, judging by his tone, we shall probably be led to think that this knowledge was acquired rather in the character of a litigant than in that of a member of the legal profession. Especially the suggestion of a special tax to be levied on lawyers’ gains (24337 ff.) is one which could hardly have come from one who was himself a lawyer. Again, the way in which he speaks of physicians, whom he accuses of being in league with apothecaries to defraud patients, and of deliberately delaying the cure in order to make more money (24301, 25621 ff.), seems to exclude him quite as clearly from the profession of medicine, the condemnation being here again general and unqualified.

Of all the various ranks of society which he reviews, that of which he seems to speak with most respect is the estate of Merchants. He takes pains to point out both here and in the _Vox Clamantis_ the utility of their occupation and the justice of their claim to reasonably large profits on successful ventures in consideration of the risks which they run (25177 ff.). He makes a special apology to the honest members of the class for exposing the abuses to which the occupation is liable, pleading that to blame the bad is in effect to praise the good (25213 ff., 25975 ff.), and he is more careful here than elsewhere to point out the fact that honest members of the class exist. These indications seem to suggest that it was as a merchant that Gower made the money which he spent in buying his land; and this inference is supported by the manner in which he speaks of ‘our City,’ and by the fact that it is with members of the merchant class that he seems to be most in personal communication. He has evidently discussed with merchants the comparative value of worldly and spiritual possessions, and he reports the saying of one of them,

‘Dont un me disoit l’autre jour,’

to the effect that he was a fool who did not make money if he might, for no one knew the truth about the world to come (25915 ff.). He feels strongly against a certain bad citizen who aims at giving privileges in trade to outsiders (26380 ff.), and the jealousy of the Lombards which he expresses (25429 ff.) has every appearance of being a prejudice connected with rivalry in commerce. ‘I see Lombards come,’ he says, ‘in poor attire as servants, and before a year has passed they have gained so much by deceit and conspiracy that they dress more nobly than the burgesses of our City; and if they need influence or friendship, they gain it by fraud and subtlety, so that their interests are promoted and ours are damaged at their will and pleasure.’

If we are to go further and ask in what branch of trade our author exercised himself, it is probable that we may see reason to set him down as a dealer in wool, so enthusiastic is he about wool as the first of all commodities, and so much has he to say about the abuses of the staple (25360 ff.). No doubt the business of exporting wool would be combined with that of importing foreign manufactured goods of some kind. It is known from other sources that Gower was a man who gradually acquired considerable property in land, and the references in the _Mirour_ to the dearness of labour and the unreasonable demands of the labourer (24625 ff.) are what we might expect from a man in that position.

He tells us that he is a man of simple tastes, that he does not care to have ‘partridges, pheasants, plovers, and swans’ served up at his table (26293 ff.); that he objects however to finding his simple joint of meat stuck full of wooden skewers by the butcher, so that when he comes to carve it he blunts the edge of his knife (26237 ff.). We know moreover from the whole tone of his writings that he is a just and upright man, who believes in the due subordination of the various members of society to one another, and who will not allow himself to be ruled in his own household either by his wife or his servants. He thinks indeed that the patience of Socrates is much overstrained, and openly declares that he shall not imitate it:

‘Qui ceste essample voet tenir
Avise soy; car sans mentir
Je ne serray si pacient.’ (4186 ff.)

But, though a thorough believer in the principle of gradation in human society, he emphasizes constantly the equality of all men before God and refuses absolutely to admit the accident of birth as constituting any claim whatever to ‘gentilesce.’ The common descent of all from Adam is as conclusive on this point for him as it was for John Ball (23389 ff.), and he is not less clear and sound on the subject of wealth. Considering that his views of society are essentially the same as those of Wycliff, and considering also his strong views about the corruption of the Church and the misdeeds of the friars, it is curious to find how strongly he denounces ‘lollardie’ in his later writings.

He has a just abhorrence of war, and draws a very clear-sighted distinction between the debased chivalry of his day and the true ideal of knighthood, the one moved only by impulses of vainglorious pride and love of paramours,

‘Car d’orguil ou du foldelit,
Au jour present, sicomme l’en dist,
Chivalerie est maintenue.’ (23986 ff.)

and the other, set only on serving God and righting the wrong, represented finely in the character of Prowess:

‘Il ad delit sanz fol amour,
Proufit sanz tricher son prochein,
Honour sanz orguillous atour.’ (15176 ff.)

Above all, our author has a deep sense of religion, and his study has been much upon the Bible. He deeply believes in the moral government of the world by Providence, and he feels sure, as others of his age also did, that the world has almost reached its final stage of corruption. Whatever others may do, he at least intends to repent of his sins and prepare himself to render a good account of his stewardship.

Let us pass now from the person of the author and touch upon some of those illustrations of the manners of the time which are furnished by the _Mirour_. In the first place it may be said that in certain points, and especially in what is said of the Court of Rome and the Mendicant orders, it fully confirms the unfavourable impression which we get from other writers of the time. Gower has no scruples at any time in denouncing the temporal possessions of the Church as the root of almost all the evil in her, and here as elsewhere he tells the story of the donation of Constantine, with the addition of the angelic voice which foretold disaster to spring from it. Of dispensations, which allow men to commit sin with impunity, he takes a very sound view. Not even God, he says, can grant this, which the Pope claims the power to grant (18493). The Mendicant friars are for him those ‘false prophets’ of whom the Gospel spoke, who should come in sheep’s clothing, while inwardly they were ravening wolves. He denounces their worldliness in the strongest language, and the account of their visits to poor women’s houses, taking a farthing if they cannot get a penny, or a single egg if nothing else is forthcoming (21379), reminds us vividly of Chaucer’s picture of a similar scene. But in fact the whole of the Church seems to our author to be in a wrong state. He does not relieve his picture of it by any such pleasing exception as the parish priest of the _Canterbury Tales_. He thinks that it needs reform from the top to the bottom; the clergy of the parish churches are almost as much to blame as the prelates, monks and friars, and for him it is the corruption of the Church that is mainly responsible for the decadence of society (21685 ff.). These views he continued to hold throughout his life, and yet he apparently had no sympathy whatever with Lollardism (_Conf. Am. Prol._ 346 ff. and elsewhere). His witness against the Church comes from one who is entirely untainted by schism. Especially he is to be listened to when he complains how the archdeacons and their officers abuse the trust committed to them for the correction of vices in the clergy and in the laity. With the clergy it is a case of ‘huy a moy, demain a vous’--that is, the archdeacon or dean, being immoral himself, winks at the vices of the clergy in order that his own may be overlooked; the clergy, in fact, are judges in their own cause, and they stand or fall together. If, however, an unfortunate layman offends, they accuse him forthwith, in order to profit by the penalties that may be exacted. ‘Purs is the erchedeknes helle,’ as Chaucer’s Sompnour says, and Gower declares plainly that the Church officials encourage vice in order that they may profit by it: ‘the harlot is more profitable to them,’ he says, ‘than the nun, and they let out fornication to farm, as they let their lands’ (20149 ff.).

Setting aside the Church, we may glean from the _Mirour_ some interesting details about general society, especially in the city of London. There is a curious and life-like picture of the gatherings of city dames at the wine-shop, whither with mincing steps they repair instead of to church or to market, and how the vintner offers them the choice of Vernazza and Malvoisie, wine of Candia and Romagna, Provence and Monterosso--not that he has all these, but to tickle their fancies and make them pay a higher price--and draws ten kinds of liquor from a single cask. Thus he makes his gain and they spend their husbands’ money (26077 ff.). We find too a very lively account of the various devices of shopkeepers to attract custom and cheat their customers. The mercer, for example, is louder than a sparrow-hawk in his cries; he seizes on people in the street and drags them by force into his shop, urging them merely to view his kerchiefs and his ostrich feathers, his satins and foreign cloth (25285 ff.). The draper will try to sell you cloth in a dark shop, where you can hardly tell blue from green, and while making you pay double its value will persuade you that he is giving it away because of his regard for you and desire for your acquaintance (25321 ff.). The goldsmith purloins the gold and silver with which you supply him and puts a base alloy in its place; moreover, if he has made a cup for you and you do not call for it at once, he will probably sell it to the first comer as his own, and tell you that yours was spoilt in the making and you must wait till he can make you another (25513 ff.). The druggist not only makes profit out of sin by selling paints and cosmetics to women, but joins in league with the physician and charges exorbitantly for making up the simplest prescription (25609 ff.). The furrier stretches the fur with which he has to trim the mantle, so that after four days’ wear it is obvious that the cloth and the fur do not match one another (25705 ff.). Every kind of food is adulterated and is sold by false weights and measures. The baker is a scoundrel of course, and richly deserves hanging (26189), but the butcher is also to blame, and especially because he declines altogether to recognize the farthing as current coin and will take nothing less than a penny, so that poor people can get no meat (26227). Wines are mixed, coloured and adulterated; what they call Rhenish probably grew on the banks of the Thames (26118). If you order beer for your household, you get it good the first time and perhaps also the second, but after that no more; and yet for the bad as high a price is charged as for the good (26161 ff.). Merchants in these days talk of thousands, where their fathers talked of scores or hundreds; but their fathers lived honestly and paid their debts, while these defraud all who have dealings with them. When you enter their houses, you see tapestried rooms and curtained chambers, and they have fine plate upon the tables, as if they were dukes; but when they die, they are found to have spent all their substance, and their debts are left unpaid (25813 ff.).

In the country the labourers are discontented and disagreeable. They do less work and demand more pay than those of former times. In old days the labourer never tasted wheaten bread and rarely had milk or cheese. Things went better in those days. Now their condition is a constant danger to society, and one to which the upper classes seem strangely indifferent (26425 ff.).

Curious accounts are given of the customs of the legal profession, and when our author comes to deal with the jury-panel, he tells us of a regularly established class of men whose occupation it is to arrange for the due packing and bribing of juries. He asserts that of the corrupt jurors there are certain captains, who are called ‘tracers’ (_traiciers_), because they draw (_treront_) the others to their will. If they say that white is black, the others will say ‘quite so,’ and swear it too, for as the tracer will have it, so it shall be. Those persons who at assizes desire to have corrupt jurymen to try their case must speak with these ‘tracers,’ for all who are willing to sell themselves in this manner are hand and glove with them, and so the matter is arranged (25033 ff.). The existence of a definite name for this class of undertakers seems to indicate that it was really an established institution.

These are a few of the points which may interest the reader in the reflection of the manners of society given by our author’s ‘mirror.’ The whole presents a picture which, though no doubt somewhat overcharged with gloom, is true nevertheless in its outlines.

TEXT.--It remains to speak of the text of this edition and of the manuscript on which it depends.

In the year 1895, while engaged in searching libraries for MSS. of the _Confessio Amantis_, I observed to Mr. Jenkinson, Librarian of the Cambridge University Library, that if the lost French work of Gower should ever be discovered, it would in all probability be found to have the title _Speculum Hominis_, and not that of _Speculum Meditantis_, under which it was ordinarily referred to. He at once called my attention to the MS. with the title _Mirour de l’omme_, which he had lately bought and presented to the University Library. On examining this I was able to identify it beyond all doubt with the missing book.

It may be thus described:

Camb. Univ. Library, MS. Additional 3035, bought at the Hailstone sale, May 1891, and presented to the Library by the Librarian.

Written on parchment, size of leaves about 12” x 7¾”, in eights with catchwords; writing of the latter half of the 14th century, in double column of forty-eight lines to the column; initial letter of each stanza coloured blue or red, and larger illuminated letters at the beginning of the chief divisions, combined with some ornamentation on the left side of the column, and in one case, f. 58 v^o, also at the top of the page. One leaf is pasted down to the binding at the beginning and contains the title and table of contents. After this four leaves have been cut out, containing the beginning of the poem, and seven more in other parts of the book. There are also some leaves lost at the end. The first leaf after those which have been cut out at the beginning has the signature _a_ iiii. The leaves (including those cut out) have now been numbered 1, 1*, 2, 3, 4, &c., up to 162; we have therefore a first sheet, of which half is pasted down (f. 1) and the other half cut away (f. 1*), and then twenty quires of eight leaves with the first leaf of the twenty-first quire, the leaves lost being those numbered 1*, 2, 3, 4, 36, 106, 108, 109, 120, 123, 124, as well as those after 162.

The present binding is of the last century and doubtless later than 1745, for some accounts of work done by ‘Richard Eldridge’ and other memoranda, written in the margins in an illiterate hand, have the dates 1740 and 1745 and have been partly cut away by the binder. The book was formerly in the library of Edward Hailstone, Esq., whose name and arms are displayed upon a leather label outside the binding, but it seems that no record exists as to the place from which he obtained it. From the writing in the margin of several pages it would seem that about the year 1745 it was lying neglected in some farm-house. We have, for example, this memorandum (partly cut away) in the margin of one of the leaves: ‘Margat ... leved at James ... in the year of our Lord 1745 and was the dayre maid that year ... and her swithart name was Joshep Cockhad Joshep Cockhad carpenter.’ On the same page occurs the word ‘glosterr,’ which may partly serve to indicate the locality.

The manuscript is written in one hand throughout, with the exception of the Table of Contents, and the writing is clear, with but few contractions. In a few cases, as in ll. 4109, 4116, 28941 f., corrections have been made over erasure. The correctness of the text which the MS. presents is shown by the very small number of cases in which either metre or sense suggests emendation. Apart from the division of words, only about thirty corrections have been made in the present edition throughout the whole poem of nearly thirty thousand lines, and most of these are very trifling. I have little doubt that this copy was written under the direction of the author.

As regards the manner in which the text of the MS. has been reproduced in this edition, I have followed on the whole the system used in the publications of the ‘Société des Anciens Textes Français.’ Thus _u_ and _v_, _i_ and _j_, have been dealt with in accordance with modern practice, whereas in the MS. (as usual in French and English books of the time) _v_ is regularly written as the initial letter of a word for either _u_ or _v_, and _u_ in other positions (except sometimes in the case of compounds like _avient_, _avoegler_, _envers_, _envie_, &c.), while, as regards _i_ and _j_, we have for initials either _i_ or _I_ (_J_), and in other positions _i_. Thus the MS. has _vn_, _auoir_, while the text gives for the reader’s convenience _un_, _avoir_; the MS. has _ie_ or _Ie_, _iour_ or _Iour_, while the text gives _je_, _jour_. Again, where an elision is expressed, the MS. of course combines the two elements into one word, giving _lamour_, _quil_, _qestoit_, while the text separates them by the apostrophe, _l’amour_, _qu’il_, _q’estoit_. Some other separations have also been made. Thus the MS. often, but by no means always, combines _plus_ with the adjective or adverb to which it belongs: _plusbass_, _plusauant_; and often also the word _en_ is combined with a succeeding verb, as _enmangeast_, _enserroit_: in these instances the separation is made in the text, but the MS. reading is recorded. In other cases, as with the combinations _sique_, _sicomme_, _nounpas_, _envoie_, &c., the usage of the MS. has been followed, though it is not quite uniform.

The final _-é_ (_-és_) and _-ée_ (_-ées_) of nouns and participles have been marked with the accent for the reader’s convenience, but in all other cases accents are dispensed with. They are not therefore used in the terminations _-ez_, _-eez_, even when standing for _-és_, _-ées_, as in _festoiez_, _neez_, nor in _asses_, _sachies_, &c., standing for _assez_, _sachiez_ (except l. 28712), nor is the grave accent placed upon the open _e_ of _apres_, _jammes_, &c. Occasionally the diaeresis is used to separate vowels; and the cedilla is inserted, as in modern French, to indicate the soft sound of _c_ where this seems certain, but there are some possibly doubtful cases, as _sufficance_, _naiscance_, in which it is not written.

With regard to the use of capital letters, some attempt has been made to qualify the inconsistency of the MS. In general it may be said that where capitals are introduced, it has been chiefly in order to indicate more clearly the cases where qualities or things are personified. It has not been thought necessary to indicate particularly all these variations.

The punctuation is the work of the editor throughout; that of the MS., where it exists, is of a very uncertain character.

Contractions, &c., are marked in the printed text by italics, except in the case of the word _et_, which in the MS. is hardly ever written in full except at the beginning of a line. In such words as _ꝑest_, _ꝑfit_, _ꝑfaire_, there may be doubt sometimes between _per_ and _par_, and the spelling of some of them was certainly variable. Attention must be called especially to the frequently occurring _-o̅n̅_ as a termination. It has been regularly written out as _-oun_, and I have no doubt that this is right. In Bozon’s _Contes Moralizés_ the same abbreviation is used, alternating freely with the full form _-oun_, and it is common in the MSS. of the _Confessio Amantis_ and in the Ellesmere MS. of the _Canterbury Tales_ (so far as I have had the opportunity of examining it), especially in words of French origin such as _devocioun_, _contricioun_. In the French texts this mode of writing is applied also very frequently to the monosyllables _mon_, _ton_, _son_, _bon_, _don_, _non_, as well as to _bonté_, _nonpas_, _noncertein_, &c. The scribe of the _Mirour_ writes _doun_ in full once (24625) with _do̅n̅_ in the same stanza, in _Bal._ xxi. 4 _noun_ is twice fully written, and in some MSS. of the _Traitié_ (e.g. Bodley 294) the full form occurs frequently side by side with the abbreviation. A similar conclusion must be adopted as regards _a̅n̅_ (annum), also written _aun_, _gla̅n̅_, _da̅n̅cer_, and the termination _-a̅n̅ce_, which is occasionally found.

BALADES.

The existence of the _Cinkante Balades_ was first made known to the public by Warton in his _History of English Poetry_, Sect. xix, his attention having been drawn to the MS. which contains them by its possessor, Lord Gower. After describing the other contents of this MS., he says: ‘But the _Cinkante Balades_ or fifty French Sonnets above mentioned are the curious and valuable part of Lord Gower’s manuscript. They are not mentioned by those who have written the Life of this poet or have catalogued his works. Nor do they appear in any other manuscript of Gower which I have examined. But if they should be discovered in any other, I will venture to pronounce that a more authentic, unembarrassed, and practicable copy than this before us will not be produced.... To say no more, however, of the value which these little pieces may derive from being so scarce and so little known, they have much real and intrinsic merit. They are tender, pathetic and poetical, and place our old poet Gower in a more advantageous point of view than that in which he has hitherto been usually seen. I know not if any even among the French poets themselves of this period have left a set of more finished sonnets; for they were probably written when Gower was a young man, about the year 1350. Nor had yet any English poet treated the passion of love with equal delicacy of sentiment and elegance of composition. I will transcribe four of these balades as correctly and intelligibly as I am able; although, I must confess, there are some lines which I do not exactly comprehend.’ He then quotes as specimens _Bal._ xxxvi, xxxiv, xliii, and xxx, but his transcription is far from being correct and is often quite unintelligible.

DATE.--The date at which the _Cinkante Balades_ were composed cannot be determined with certainty. Warton, judging apparently by the style and subject only, decided, as we have seen, that they belonged to the period of youth, and we know from a passage in the _Mirour_ (27340) that the author composed love poems of some kind in his early life. Apart from this, however, the evidence is all in favour of assigning the _Balades_ to the later years of the poet’s life. It is true, of course, that the Dedication to King Henry IV which precedes them, and the Envoy which closes them, may have been written later than the rest; but at the same time it must be noted that the second balade of the Dedication speaks distinctly of a purpose of making poems for the entertainment of the royal court, and the mutilated title which follows the Dedication confirms this, so far as it can be read. Again, the prose remarks which accompany _Bal._ v and vi make it clear that the circumstances of the poems are not personal to the author, seeing that he there divides them into two classes, those that are appropriate for persons about to be married, and those that are ‘universal’ and have application to all sorts and conditions of lovers. Moreover, several of these last, viz, xli-xliv and also xlvi, are supposed to be addressed by ladies to their lovers. It is evident that the balades are only to a very limited extent, if at all, expressive of the actual feelings of the author towards a particular person. As an artist he has set himself to supply suitable forms of expression for the feelings of others, and in doing so he imagines their variety of circumstances and adapts his composition accordingly. For this kind of work it is not necessary, or perhaps even desirable, to be a lover oneself; it is enough to have been a lover once: and that Gower could in his later life express the feelings of a lover with grace and truth we have ample evidence in the _Confessio Amantis_. No doubt it is possible that these balades were written at various times in the poet’s life, and perhaps some persons, recognizing the greater spontaneity and the more gracefully poetical character (as it seems to me) of the first thirty or so, as compared with the more evident tendency to moralize in the rest, may be inclined to see in this an indication of earlier date for the former poems. In fact however the moralizing tendency, though always present, grew less evident in Gower’s work with advancing years. There is less of it in the _Confessio Amantis_ than in his former works, and this not by accident but on principle, the author avowing plainly that unmixed morality had not proved effective, and accepting love as the one universally interesting subject. When Henry of Lancaster, the man after his own heart, was fairly seated on the throne, he probably felt himself yet more free to lay aside the self-imposed task of setting right the world, and to occupy himself with a purely literary task in the language and style which he felt to be most suitable for a court. In any case it seems certain that some at least of the balades were composed with a view to the court of Henry IV, and the collection assumed its present shape probably in the year of his accession, 1399, for we know that either in the first or the second year of Henry IV the poet became blind and ceased to write.

FORM AND VERSIFICATION.--The collection consists of a Dedication addressed to Henry IV, fifty-one (not fifty) balades of love (one number being doubled by mistake), then one, unnumbered, addressed to the Virgin, and a general Envoy. The balades are written in stanzas of seven or eight lines, exactly half of the whole fifty-four (including the Dedication) belonging to each arrangement. The seven-line stanza rhymes _ab ab bcc_ with Envoy _bc bc_, or in three instances _ab ab baa_, Envoy _ba ba_; the eight-line stanza ordinarily _ab ab bc bc_ with Envoy _bc bc_, but also in seven instances _ab ab ba ba_ with Envoy _ba ba_. The form is the normal one of the balade, three stanzas with rhymes alike and an Envoy; but in one case, _Bal._ ix, there are five stanzas with Envoy, and in another, xxxii, the Envoy is wanting. Also the balade addressed to the Virgin, which is added at the end, is without Envoy, and there follows a general Envoy of seven lines, rhyming independently and referring to the whole collection.

The balade form is of course taken from Continental models, and the metre of the verse is syllabically correct like that of the _Mirour_. As was observed however about the octosyllabic line of the _Mirour_, so it may be said of the ten-syllable verse here, that the rhythm is not exactly like that of the French verse of the Continent. The effect is due, as before remarked, to the attempt to combine the English accentual with the French syllabic measure. This is especially visible in the treatment of the caesura. In the compositions of the French writers of the new poetry--Froissart, for example--the ten- (or eleven-) syllable line has regularly a break after the fourth syllable. This fourth syllable however may be either accented or not, that is, either as in the line,

‘Se vous voulez aucune plainte faire,’

or as in the following,

‘Prenez juge qui soit de noble afaire.’

The weaker form of caesura shown in this latter line occurs in at least ten per cent. of the verses in this measure which Froissart gives in the _Trésor Amoureux_, and the case is much the same with the _Balades_ of Charles d’Orléans, a generation later. Gower, on the other hand, does not admit the unaccented syllable (mute _e_ termination) in the fourth place at all; no such line as this,

‘De ma dame que j’aime et ameray,’

is to be found in his balades. Indeed, we may go further than this, and say that the weak syllable is seldom tolerated in the other even places of the verse, where the English ear demanded a strongly marked accentual beat. Such a line as

‘Vous me poetz sicom vostre demeine’ (_Bal._ xxxix. 2)

is quite exceptional.

At the same time he does not insist on ending a word on the fourth syllable, but in seven or eight per cent. of his lines the word is run on into the next foot, as

‘Et vous, ma dame, croietz bien cela.’

This is usually the form that the verse takes in such cases, the syllable carried on being a mute _e_ termination, and the caesura coming after this syllable; but lines like the following also occur, in which the caesura is transfered to the end of the third foot:

‘Si fuisse en paradis, ceo beal manoir,’ v. 3.
‘En toute humilité sans mesprisure,’ xii. 4.

So xvi. l. 2, xx. l. 20, &c., and others again in which the syllable carried on is an accented one, as

‘Si femme porroit estre celestine,’ xxi. 2.
‘Jeo ne sai nomer autre, si le noun;’ xxiv. 1.

It must be noticed also that the poet occasionally uses the so-called epic caesura, admitting a superfluous unaccented syllable after the second foot, as