THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN GOWER

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK

Oxford

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1899

Oxford
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

BY HORACE HART, M.A.
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

The publication of this book may most conveniently be explained by a short account of the circumstances which brought it about.

While engaged some years ago in studying the Chaucer manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, I incidentally turned my attention also to those of the Confessio Amantis. The unsatisfactory character of the existing editions of that poem was sufficiently well known, and it was generally recognized that the printed text could not safely be referred to by philologists, except so far as those small portions were concerned which happened to have been published from a good manuscript by Mr. A. J. Ellis in his Early English Pronunciation; so that, in spite of the acknowledged importance of the book in the history of the development of standard literary English, it was practically useless for linguistic studies. I was struck by the excellence of the authorities for its text which existed at Oxford, and on further investigation I convinced myself that it was here that the much needed new edition could best be produced. Accordingly I submitted to the Delegates of the University Press a proposal to edit the Confessio Amantis, and this proposal they accepted on the condition that I would undertake to edit also the other works, chiefly in French and Latin, of the same author, expressly desiring that the Speculum Meditantis, which I had lately identified[Pg vi] while searching the Cambridge libraries for copies of the Confessio Amantis, should be included in the publication. To this condition I assented with some hesitation, which was due partly to my feeling that the English text was the only one really needed, and partly to doubts about my own competence to edit the French.

Considering, however, the extent to which the writings of this author in various languages illustrate one another, the help which is to be derived from the French works in dealing with the Romance element in the English not only of Gower, but also of Chaucer and other writers of the time, and the clearer view of the literary position of the Confessio Amantis which is gained by approaching it from the French side, I am now disposed to think that the Delegates were right in desiring a complete edition; and as for my own competence as an editor, I can only say that I have learnt much since I first undertook the work, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have avoided many errors into which I should once have fallen. For the faults that remain (I speak now of the contents of the present volume) I ask the indulgence of those who are more competent Romance scholars than myself, on the ground that it was clearly desirable under the circumstances that the French and the English should have the same editor. Moreover, I may fairly claim to have given faithful and intelligible texts, and if I have gone wrong in other respects, it has been chiefly because I have wished to carry out the principle of dealing with all difficulties fairly, rather than passing them over without notice.

The English works will occupy the second and third volumes of this edition. From what has been said it will be understood that to publish a correct text of the Confessio Amantis has been throughout the main object. For this the materials are so excellent, though hitherto almost completely neglected, that we may with some confidence claim that the work is now presented almost exactly as it left the hand of the author, and that a higher degree of[Pg vii] security has been attained about the details of form and orthography than is possible (for example) in regard to any part of the writings of Chaucer. It is evident, if this be so, that the text must have a considerable value for students of Middle English, and none the less because it is here accompanied by a complete glossary. Besides this, the meaning of the text has been made clear, where necessary, by explanation and illustration, and above all by improved punctuation, and the sources of the stories and the literary connexions of the work generally have been traced as far as possible.

In the edition of the Vox Clamantis, which with the other Latin Works will form the fourth volume of this edition, the most important new contribution, besides the account of the various manuscripts, is perhaps the view presented of the author’s political development, as shown in the successive variations of the text. The historical references generally, both in this work and in the Cronica Tripertita, have been compared with the accounts given of the same events by other contemporary writers. This volume will also contain a statement of such facts as it is possible to gather with regard to the life of the author.

To a great extent this edition breaks fresh ground, and there are unfortunately but few direct obligations to be acknowledged to former workers in precisely the same field. At the same time the very greatest help is afforded to the editor of Gower by the work that has been done upon Chaucer and other fourteenth-century writers both by societies and individuals, work for which in this country Dr. Furnivall and Professor Skeat, and on the Continent Professor ten Brink, are perhaps most largely responsible.

Much of my work has been done in the Bodleian Library and with Bodleian manuscripts, and I should like to acknowledge the courtesy which I have always received there from the Librarian. My thanks are also due to the Librarians of those Colleges, both at Oxford and Cambridge, which possess Gower manuscripts, and to Dr. Young of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, for the trouble which[Pg viii] they have taken in giving me facilities for the use of their books, and especially to the Cambridge University Librarian, Mr. Jenkinson, for assistance of various kinds in connexion with the manuscript of the Mirour de l’Omme. I am obliged to the Provost and Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, for the loan of their manuscript of the Vox Clamantis, and to several private owners, the Duke of Sutherland, the Marquess of Salisbury, the Marquess of Bute, the Earl of Ellesmere, Lord Middleton, and J. H. Gurney, Esq., for having allowed me to make use of their manuscripts.

Finally, my thanks are due to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press for having undertaken the publication of a book which can hardly be very profitable, and for the consideration which they have shown for me in the course of my work.

From a statement in Latin which is found in many of the Gower manuscripts, and undoubtedly proceeds from the author himself, we learn that the poet desired to rest his fame upon three principal works, the first in French, the second in Latin, and the third in English. These are the three volumes which, lying one upon another, form a pillow for the poet’s effigy in the church of Saint Saviour, Southwark, where he was buried. They are known by the Latin names, Speculum Meditantis, Vox Clamantis, Confessio Amantis, but the first of the three has until recently been looked upon as lost. In addition there are minor poems in each of the three languages, among which are two series of French balades. It will be my duty afterwards to prove the identity of the Mirour de l’Omme printed in this volume with our author’s earliest principal work, commonly known as Speculum Meditantis, but named originally Speculum Hominis; in the mean time I shall ask leave to assume this as proved, in order that a general view may be taken of Gower’s French writings before we proceed to the examination of each particular work.

The Anglo-Norman[A] literature, properly so called, can hardly[Pg xii] be said to extend beyond the limits of the fourteenth century, and these therefore are among its latest productions. The interest of this literature in itself and its importance with a view to the Romance element in the English language have been adequately recognized within recent years, though the number of literary texts printed is still too small. It is unnecessary therefore to do more here than to call attention to the special position occupied by the works published in this volume, and the interest attaching to them, first on their own merits, then on account of the period to which they belong and the author from whom they proceed, and lastly from the authenticity and correctness of the manuscripts which supply us with their text.

As regards the work which occupies the greater part of the present volume, it would be absurd to claim for it a high degree of literary merit, but it is nevertheless a somewhat noticeable and interesting performance. The all-embracing extent of its design, involving a complete account not only of the moral nature of Man, but of the principles of God’s dealings with the world and with the human race, is hardly less remarkable than the thoroughness with which the scheme is worked out in detail and the familiarity with the Scriptures which the writer constantly displays. He has a far larger conception of his subject as a whole than other authors of ‘Specula’ or classifiers of Vices and Virtues which the age produced. Compare the Mirour de l’Omme with such works as the Speculum Vitae or the Manuel des Pechiez, and we shall be struck not only with the greater unity of its plan, but also with its greater comprehensiveness, while at the same time, notwithstanding its oppressive lengthiness, it has in general a flavour of literary style to which most other works of the same class can lay no claim. Though intended, like the rest, for edification, it does not aim at edification alone: by the side of the moralist there is occasionally visible also a poet. This was the work upon which Gower’s reputation rested when Chaucer submitted Troilus to his judgement, and[Pg xiii] though he may have been indulging his sense of humour in making Gower one of the correctors of his version of that—

which the moralist had thought only good enough for the indolent worshipper to dream of in church (Mir. 5253), yet the dedication must have been in part at least due to respect for the literary taste of the persons addressed.

If however we must on the whole pronounce the literary value of the Speculum Meditantis to be small, the case is quite different with regard to the Balades, that is to say, the collection of about fifty love-poems which is found in the Trentham manuscript. These will be discussed in detail later, and reasons will be given for assigning them to the later rather than to the earlier years of the poet’s life. Here it is enough to say that they are for the most part remarkably good, better indeed than anything of their kind which was produced in England at that period, and superior in my opinion to the balades of Granson, ‘flour of hem that make in France,’ some of which Chaucer translated. But for the accident that they were written in French, this series of balades would have taken a very distinct place in the history of English literature.

The period to which the Speculum Meditantis belongs, about the beginning of the last quarter of the fourteenth century, is that in which the fusion of French and English elements from which the later language grew may be said to have been finally accomplished. Thanks to the careful work of English and German philologists in recent years, the process by which French words passed into the English language in the period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the fourteenth century has been sufficiently traced, so far as regards the actual facts of their occurrence in English texts. Perhaps however the real nature of the process has not been set forth with sufficient clearness. It is true that before the end of the reign of Edward III the French element may be said to have been almost fully introduced into the vocabulary; the materials lay ready for those writers, the Wycliffite translators of the Bible, Chaucer, and Gower himself, who were to give the stamp of their authority to the language which was to be the literary language of England. Nevertheless, French words were still French for these writers,[Pg xiv] and not yet English; the fact that the two languages were still used side by side, and that to every Englishman of literary culture the form of French which existed in England was as a second mother tongue, long preserved a French citizenship for the borrowed words. In the earlier part of this period they came in simply as aliens, and their meaning was explained when they were used, ‘in desperaunce, that is in unhope and in unbileave,’ ‘two manere temptaciuns, two kunne vondunges’; and afterwards for long, even though they had been repeatedly employed by English writers, they were not necessarily regarded as English words, but when wanted they were usually borrowed again from the original source, and so had their phonetic development in French rather than in English. When therefore Anglo-Norman forms are to be cited for English etymology, it is evidently more reasonable that the philologist should look to the latter half of the fourteenth century and give the form in which the word finally passed into the literary language, than to the time of the first appearance of the word in English, under a form corresponding perhaps to the Anglo-Norman of the thirteenth century, but different from that which it assumed in the later Anglo-Norman, and thence in English. More precision in these citations is certainly to be desired, even though the time be past when etymologists were content to refer us vaguely to ‘Old French,’ meaning usually the sixteenth-century French of Cotgrave, when the form really required was of the fourteenth century and Anglo-Norman. It is not unreasonable to lay down the rule that for words of Anglo-Norman origin which occur in the English literary language of the Chaucer period, illustration of forms and meanings must first be looked for in the Anglo-Norman texts of that period, since the standard writers, as we may call them, that is those who contributed most to fix the standard of the language, in using them had the Anglo-Norman of their own day before their minds and eyes rather than any of the obscure English books in various dialects, where the words in question may have been already used to supply the defects of a speech which had lost its literary elements. Moreover, theories as to the pronunciation of the English of Chaucer’s day have been largely supported by reference to the supposed pronunciation of the French words imported into English and the manner in which they are used in rhyme.[Pg xv] Evidently in this case the reference ought to be to the Anglo-Norman speech of this particular period, in the form in which it was used by those writers of English to whose texts we refer.

But this is not all: beside the question of language there is one of literary history. At the beginning of the fourteenth century Anglo-Norman literature had sunk into a very degraded condition. Pierre de Peccham, William of Waddington, Pierre de Langtoft, and the authors of the Apocalypse and the Descente de Saint Paul make the very worst impression as versifiers upon their modern French critics, and it must be allowed that the condemnation is just. They have in fact lost their hold on all the principles of French verse, and their metres are merely English in a French dress. Moreover, the English metres which they resemble are those of the North rather than of the South. If we compare the octosyllables of the Manuel des Pechiez with those of the Prick of Conscience we shall see that their principle is essentially the same, that of half-lines with two accents each, irrespective of the number of unaccented syllables, though naturally in English the irregularity is more marked. The same may be said of Robert Grosseteste’s verse a little earlier than this, e.g.

It cannot be proved that all the writers of French whom I have named were of the North, but it is certain that several of them were so, and it may well be that the French used in England was not really so uniform, ‘univoca,’ as it seemed to Higden, or at least that as the South of England had more metrical regularity in its English verse, witness the octosyllables of The Owl and the Nightingale in the thirteenth century, so also it retained more formal correctness in its French. However that may be, and whether it were by reason of direct continental influence or of the literary traditions of the South of England, it is certain that Gower represents a different school of versification from that of the writers whom we have mentioned, though he uses the same (or nearly the same) Anglo-Norman dialect, and writes[Pg xvi] verse which, as we shall see, is quite distinguishable in rhythm from that of the Continent. Thus we perceive that by the side of that reformation of English verse which was effected chiefly by Chaucer, there is observable a return of Anglo-Norman verse to something of its former regularity, and this in the hands of the very man who has commonly been placed by the side of Chaucer as a leader of the new school of English poetry.

In what follows I shall endeavour to indicate those points connected with versification and language which are suggested by a general view of Gower’s French works. Details as to his management of particular metres are reserved for consideration in connexion with the works in which they occur.

Gower’s metre, as has already been observed, is extremely regular. He does not allow himself any of those grosser licences of suppression or addition of syllables which have been noticed in Anglo-Norman verse of the later period. Like William of Waddington, he apologizes for his style on the ground that he is an Englishman, but in his case the plea is very much less needed. His rhyming also, after allowance has been made for a few well-established Anglo-Norman peculiarities, may be said to be remarkably pure, more so in some respects than that of Frère Angier, for example, who wrote at least a century and a half earlier and was a decidedly good versifier. It is true that, like other Anglo-Norman writers, he takes liberties with the forms of words in flexion in order to meet the requirements of his rhyme, but these must be regarded as sins against grammar rather than against rhyme, and the French language in England had long been suffering decadence in this respect. Moreover, when we come to examine these vagaries, we shall find that they are by no means so wild in his case as they had been in that of some other writers, and that there is a good deal of method in the madness. The desired effect is attained principally by two very simple expedients. The first of these is a tolerably extensive disregard of gender, adjectives being often used indifferently in the masculine or the feminine form, according to convenience. Thus in the Balades[B] we have ‘chose humein’ xxiv. 3, but ‘toute autre chose est veine’ xxxiii. 2, ‘ma fortune[Pg xvii] est assis’ ix. 5, ‘la fortune est faili’ xx. 3, ‘corps humeine’ xiv. 1, ‘l’estée vient flori’ ii. 1, ‘l’estée beal flori’ xx. 2, but ‘La cliere estée’ xxxii. 2, and the author says ‘ce (ceo) lettre’ (ii. 4, iii. 4), or ‘ceste lettre’ (xv. 4), according as it suits his metre. Similarly in the Mirour l. 92 ff.,

for estraite, perdu, l. 587 hony for honie, 719 ‘la Char humein,’ 911 replenis for replenies, 1096 ‘deinz son cuer maliciouse.’ From the use of du, au by our author nothing must be inferred about gender, since they are employed indifferently for the masculine or feminine combination, as well as for the simple prepositions de, à; and such forms as celestial, in Bal. Ded. i. 1, cordial, enfernals, mortals, Mir. 717, 1011, 1014, are perhaps reminiscences of the older usage, though the inflected feminine is also found. The question of the terminations é, ée will be dealt with separately.

No doubt the feeling for gender had been to some extent worn away in England; nevertheless the measure in which this affects our author’s language is after all rather limited. A much more wide-reaching principle is that which has to do with the ‘rule of s.’ The old System of French noun inflexion had already been considerably broken up on the Continent, and it would not have been surprising if in England it had altogether disappeared. In some respects however Anglo-Norman was rather conservative of old forms, and our author is not only acquainted with the rule, but often shows a preference for observing it, where it is a matter of indifference in other respects. Rhyme however must be the first consideration, and a great advantage is obtained by the systematic combination of the older and the newer rule. Thus the poet has it in his power either to use or to omit the s of inflexion in the nominatives singular and plural of masculine nouns, according as his rhymes may require, and a few examples will show what use he makes of this licence. In Bal. Ded. i. 3 he describes himself as

but in rhyme with this the same form of inflexion stands for the plural subject, ‘u sont les ditz floriz,’ and in xxvi. 1 he gives us nearly the same expression, ‘q’est tout vostre soubgit,’ without[Pg xviii] the inflexion. So in iv. 3 we have ‘come tes loials amis’ (sing. nom.), but in the very same balade ‘ton ami serrai,’ while in Trait. iii. 3 we have the further development of s in the oblique case of the singular, ‘Loiale amie avoec loials amis.’ In Bal. xviii. 1 menu is apparently fem. pl. for menues, while avenu, rhyming with it, is nom. sing. masc.; but so also are conuz, retenuz, venuz, in xxxix, while veeuz is sing. object., and in the phrase ‘tout bien sont contenuz’ there is a combination of the uninflected with the inflected form in the plural of the subject. Similarly in the Mirour we have principals, desloyals, ll. 63, 70, as nom. sing., and so governals, desloyals 627, 630, but espirital 709, principal, Emperial, 961 ff., are forms used elsewhere for the same. Again as nom. sing. we have rejoïz 462, ruez, honourez, malurez 544 ff., &c., and as nom. plur. enamouré 17, retorné 792, marié (f) 1010, née 1017, maluré 1128, il 25064; but also enamouré 220, privé 496, mené 785, &c., as nom. singular, and perturbez, tuez, 3639 ff., travaillez, abandonnez, 5130 ff., as nom. plural: ‘ce dist ly sage’ 1586, but ‘il est nounsages’ 1754, and ‘Ly sages dist’ 3925, ly soverein 76, but ly capiteins 4556, and so on. We also note occasionally forms like that cited above from the Traitié, where the s (or z) of the termination has no grammatical justification at all; e.g. enginez 552, confondus 1904, ‘fort et halteins’ (obj.) 13024, cp. offenduz, Bal. xxxix. 2, and cases where the rules which properly apply to masculine nouns only are extended to feminines, as in perdice (pl.) 7831, humilités, pités (sing.), 12499, 13902.

Besides these two principal helps to rhyme the later Anglo-Norman versifier might occasionally fall back upon others. In so artificial a language as that in which he wrote, evidently the older forms of inflexion might easily be kept up for literary purposes in verbs also, and used side by side with the later. Thus in the 1st pers. pl. of the present tense we find lison (lisoun) repeatedly in rhyme, and occasionally other similar forms, as soion 18480. The 1st pers. sing. of the present tense of several strong verbs is inflected with or without s at pleasure: thus from dire we have di, dy, as well as dis; faire gives fai or fais; by the side of suis (sum), sui or suy is frequently found; and similarly we have croy, say, voi. In the same part of first-conjugation verbs the atonic final e is often dropped, as pri, appell, mir, m’esmai, suppli. In the third person singular of[Pg xix] the preterite of i verbs there is a variation in the ending between -it (-ist) and -i (-y). Thus in one series of rhymes we have nasquit, s’esjoït (in rhyme with dit, &c.), 268 ff., in another s’esjoÿ, chery, servi (in rhyme with y), 427 ff.; in one stanza fuÿt, partist, 11416 ff., and in the next respondi, 11429; so chaït (chaïst) and chaÿ, obeït and obeï, &c. It may be doubted also whether such words as tesmoignal, surquidance, presumement, bestial (as subst.), relinquir, &c., owe their existence to any better cause than the requirements of rhyme or metre. In introducing ent, 11471, for the usual en the poet has antiquity on his side: on the other hand when he writes a repeatedly in rhyme for the Anglo-Norman ad (which, except in these cases, is regularly used) he is no doubt looking towards the ‘French of Paris,’ which naturally tended to impose itself on the English writers of French in the fourteenth century. By the same rule he can say either houre or heure, flour or fleur, crestre or croistre, crere or croire; but on the whole it is rather surprising how little his language seems to have been affected by this influence.

The later Anglo-Norman treatment of the terminations -é and -ée in past participles and in verbal substantives would seem to demand notice chiefly in connexion with rhyme and metre, but it is really a question of phonology. The two terminations, as is well known, became identified before the beginning of the fourteenth century, and it is needless to quote examples to show that in Gower’s metre and rhymes -ée was equivalent to -é. The result of this phonetic change, consisting in the absorption of the atonic vowel by the similar tonic which immediately preceded it, was that -é and -ée were written indiscriminately in almost all words with this ending, and that the distinction between the masculine and feminine forms was lost completely in pronunciation and to a very great extent also in writing. For example in Mir. 865 ff. we have rhyming together degré, monté (fem.), mué, descolouré (fem.), enbroudé, poudré (fem. plur.); in 1705 ff. there is a series of rhymes in -ée, bealpinée, engalopée, assemblée, ascoultée (pl.), malsenée, doublée, all masculine except the substantive assemblée; and in other stanzas the endings are mixed up anyhow, so that we have aisnée, maluré, 244 f., both feminine, mené, héritée, 922 f., the first feminine and the second masculine, ymaginée, adrescée, Bal. vi, both masculine. In all Gower’s[Pg xx] French verse I can recall only three or four instances where an atonic final e of this kind is counted in the metre: these are a lée chiere, ove lée (liée) chiere, du lée port[C], Mir. 5179, 15518, 17122, 28337, and Et ta pensée celestine 29390. In the last the author perhaps wrote penseie, as in 14404, since the condition under which the sound of this -e survived in Anglo-Norman was usually through the introduction of a parasitic i-sound, which acted as a barrier to prevent the absorption of the final vowel[D]. So Mir. 10117 we have a word pareies, in rhyme with the substantives pareies (walls), veies, &c., which I take to be for parées, fem. plur. of the participle, and in the same stanza journeies, a modification of journées: cp. valeie, journeie, in Middle English.

I proceed to note such further points of the Phonology as seem to be of interest.

i. French e, ie, from Lat. a, ĕ, in tonic syllables.

The French diphthong ie, from Lat. a under the influence of preceding sound and from ĕ, was gradually reduced in Anglo-Norman to ẹ (i.e. close e). Thus, while in the earliest writers ie is usually distinguished in rhyme from e, those of the thirteenth century no longer keep them apart. In the Vie de S. Auban and the writings of Frère Angier the distinction between verbs in -er and those in -ier has been, at least to a great extent, lost: infinitives and participles, &c., such as enseign(i)er, bris(i)er, eshauc(i)er, mang(i)er, jug(i)é, less(i)é, dresc(i)é, sach(i)ez, and substantives such as cong(i)é, pecch(i)é, rhyme with those which have the (French) termination, -er, -é, -ez. At the same time the noun termination -ier comes to be frequently written -er, as in aumosner, chevaler, dener, seculer, &c. (beside aumosnier, chevalier, denier, seculier), and words which had ie in the stem were often written with e, as bref, chef, cher, pere (petram), sé, though the other forms brief, chief, chier, piere, sié, still continued to be used as alternatives in spelling[E]. It is certain that in the fourteenth century no practical distinction was made between[Pg xxi] the two classes of verbs that have been indicated: whether written -ier, -ié, -iez, or -er, -é, -ez, the verbal endings of which we have spoken rhymed freely with one another and with the similar parts of all verbs of the first conjugation, and the infinitives and past participles of all first-conjugation verbs rhymed with substantives ending in -(i)er, -(i)é, -é: thus pecché, enamouré, commencé, bestialité, Mir. 16 ff., resemblé, chargé, sainteté, 1349, coroucié, piée, degré, 5341, are good sets of rhymes, and so also are deliter, seculer, plenier, 27 ff., coroucer, parler, mestier, seculier, considerer, 649 ff., and leger, archer, amender, comparer, 2833 ff. The case is the same with words which have the original (French) ie in the stem, but notwithstanding the fact that the diphthong sound must have disappeared, the traditional spelling ie held its ground by the side of the other, and even extended itself to some words which had never had the diphthong sound at all. Thus in the fourteenth century, and noticeably in Gower’s works, we meet with such forms as clier, clief, mier (mare), miere (matrem), piere (patrem), pier (parem), prophiete, tiel, &c., beside the normal forms cler, clef, mer, mere, &c. This phenomenon, which has caused some difficulty, is to be accounted for by the supposition that ie, having lost its value as a diphthong, came to be regarded as a traditional symbol in many cases for long closed e, and such words as rhymed on this sound were apt to become assimilated in spelling with those that originally had ie and partly preserved it; thus tel in rhyme with ciel, fiel, might easily come to be written tiel, as Mir. 6685; clere, pere, rhyming with maniere, adversiere, &c., might be written cliere, piere, as in Mir. 193 ff., merely for the sake of uniformity, and similarly nef when in rhyme with ch(i)ef, relief, &c., sometimes might take the form nief; and finally these spellings might become established independently, at least as alternatives, so that it was indifferent whether labourer, seculer, bier, or labourier, seculier, ber, stood as a rhyme sequence, whether clere, appere was written or cliere, appiere. It may be noted that pere, mere, frere, belonged to this class and were rhymed with ẹ. They are absolutely separated in rhyme from terre, guerre, enquere, affere, contrere, &c. The adjective ending -el rhymes with -iel and often appears as -iel: so in 3733 ff. we have the rhymes mortiel, Michel, fraternel, viel, in 6685 ff., desnaturel, ciel, fiel, espiritiel, and in 14547 ff. celestiel, mortiel, ciel, temporiel, &c. Questions have been raised about the quality of the e in this termination[Pg xxii] generally[F], but the evidence here is decidedly in favour of ẹ, and the rhymes bel, apell, flaiell, are kept apart from this class. It must be observed however that fel (adj.), spelt also feel, appears in both classes, 4773, 5052. The variation -al, which, as might be expected, is extremely common, is of course from Latin and gives no evidence as to the sound of -el, from which it is quite separate in rhyme. Before a nasal in verbs like vient, tient, ie is regularly retained in writing, and these words and their compounds rhyme among one another and with crient, ghient, nient, fient, &c. Naturally they are separated from the ę of aprent, commencement, sagement, &c. The forms ben, men, ren, which occur for example in the Vie de S. Grégoire for bien, mien, rien, are not found in Gower. Finally it may be noticed that beside fiere, appiere, compiere, from ferir, apparer, &c., we have fere, appere, compere, which in rhyme are as absolutely separated from fere (= faire), terre, requere (inf.), as fiert, piert, quiert, &c., are from apert, overt, pert. More will have to be said on the subject of this ie when we are confronted with Gower’s use of it in English.

ii. French ai in tonic syllables.

(a) ai before a nasal was in Anglo-Norman writing very commonly represented by ei. This is merely a question of spelling apparently, the sound designated being the same in either case. Our author (or his scribe) had a certain preference for uniformity of appearance in each set of rhymes. Thus he gives us first solein, plein, soverein, certein, mein, Evein, in Mir. 73 ff., then vain, grain, main, gain, pain, vilain, 2199 ff.; or again haltaines, paines, acompaines, compaines, restraines, certaines, 603 ff., but peine, constreine, vileine, peine (verb), aleine, procheine, 2029 ff. Sometimes however the two forms of spelling are intermixed, as vein, pain, main, &c., 16467 ff., or meine, humeine, capitaine, 759 ff. Some of the words in the ai series, as pain, gain, compaine, are spelt with ai only, but there are rhyme-sequences in -ain without any of these words included, as 6591 ff., main, prochain, vilain, certain, vain, sain; also words with original French ei, such as peine, constreine, restreines, enseigne, plein (plenus), veine[Pg xxiii] (vena), meinz (minus), atteins, feinte, exteinte, enter into the same class. Thus we must conclude that before a nasal these two diphthongs were completely confused. It must be noted that the liquid sound of the nasal in such words as enseigne, plaigne, had been completely lost, but the letter g with which it was associated in French continued to be very generally written, and by the influence of these words g was often introduced without justification into others. Thus we have the rhymes ordeigne, meine, semeigne (= semaine), desdeigne, peine, 2318 ff.; peigne (= peine), compleigne, pleine, meine, halteigne, atteigne, in Bal. iii; while in gaign, bargaign, rhyming with grain, prochain, &c., g is omitted at pleasure. Evidently in the Anglo-Norman of this period it had no phonetic value.

(b) When not before a nasal, ai and ei do not interchange freely in this manner. Before l, ll, it is true, ei has a tendency to become ai, as in conseil consail (also consal), consei(l)ler consail(l)er, merveille mervaille; also we have contrefeite, souffreite, 6305 ff., eie for aie (avoir), eir for air 13867, gleyve 14072, meistre 24714, eide (eyde) for aide in the rubric headings, paleis (palois) for palais, and vois (representing veis) sometimes for vais (vado); also in ante-tonic syllables, cheitif, eiant, eysil, leiter, meisoun, meistrie, oreisoun, peisible, pleisir, seisine, veneisoun, beside chaitif, allaiter, maisoun, maistrie, paisible, plaisir, saisine. This change is much less frequent, especially in tonic syllables, than in some earlier texts, e.g. the Vie de S. Grégoire.

The Anglo-Norman reduction of the diphthong ai and sometimes ei to e, especially before r and s, still subsists in certain words, though the Continental French spelling is found by its side. Thus we have fere, affere, forsfere, mesfere, plere, trere, attrere, retrere, tere, debonere, contrere, rhyming with terre, guerre, quer(r)e, &c.; also mestre, nestre, pestre, rhyming with estre, prestre; and pes, fes (fascem), fetz, mes, jammes, reles(s), in rhyme with ades, pres, apres, deces(s), Moÿses, dess, mess, confess. (This series of rhymes, which has ę, is of course kept distinct from that which includes the terminations -és (-ez) in participles, &c., and such words as ées, dées, lées, prées, asses, malfés, &c., which all have ẹ.) We find also ese (with the alternative forms aese, ease, as well as aise), frel, ele, megre, plee (plai, plait), trete, vinegre, and in ante-tonic syllables appeser, enchesoun,[Pg xxiv] esance, feture, lesser, mesoun, mestrie, phesant, pleder, plesance, plesir, sesoun, tresoun, treter. In the case of many of these words the form with ai is also used by our author, but the two modes of spelling are kept apart in rhymes (except l. 18349 ff., where we have tere, terre, aquerre, faire, mesfaire), so that affere, attrere, rhyme with terre, but affaire, attraire, with haire, esclaire, adversaire, and, while jammes is linked with apres, ades, pes, we find jammais written when the rhyme is with essais, lais, paix. This may be only due to the desire for uniformity in spelling, but there is some reason to think that it indicates in these words an alternative pronunciation.

It is to be observed that on the neutral ground of e some words with original ei meet those of which we have been speaking, in which ai was reduced to e in rather early Anglo-Norman times. Thus we have crere rhyming with terre, affere, &c.; crestre, acrestre, descrestre, with estre, nestre; and encres, descres, malves, with apres, pes. These forms, which have descended to our author from his predecessors, are used by him side by side with the (later) French forms croire, croistre, acroistre, descroistre, encrois, descrois, and these alternative forms must undoubtedly be separated from the others in sound as well as in spelling. This being so, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the case was the same with the ai words, and that in adopting the Continental French forms side by side with the others the writer was bringing in also the French diphthong sound, retaining however the traditional Anglo-Norman pronunciation in both these classes of words where it happened to be more convenient or to suit his taste better.

(c) The French terminations -aire and -oire, from Lat. -arius, -oria, -orius, are employed by Gower both in his French and English works in their Continental forms, the older Anglo-Norman -arie, -orie, which passed into English, being hardly found in his writings. The following are some of the words in question, most of which occur in the Confessio Amantis in the same form: adversaire, contraire (contrere), doaire, essamplaire, lettuaire, necessaire, saintuaire; consistoire, Gregoire, histoire, memoire, purgatoire, victoire. We have however exceptionally rectorie 16136, accented to rhyme with simonye, and also (from Lat. -erium) misterie (by the side of misteire) accented on the ante-penultimate.

[Pg xxv]

iii. French ei not before a nasal.

This diphthong, which appears usually as ei in the Anglo-Norman texts of the thirteenth century, is here regularly represented by oi and levelled, as in the French of the Continent, with original French oi. In its relations to e and ai it has already been spoken of; at present we merely note that the later French form is adopted by our author with some few exceptions both in stems and flexion. Isolated exceptions are deis (debes) for dois, heir by the side of hoir, lampreie, malveis (also malvois, malves), teille, and vei (vide) from veoir; also in verbs of the -ceivre class and in derivatives from them it is often retained, as resceivre (but reçoit, resçoivre), receipte, conceipt (also conçoit), conceive, deceite, &c. Under the influence of rhyme we have in 6301 ff. espleite, estreite, coveite, rhyming with deceite, contrefeite, souffreite, and 10117 ff. pareies (parietes), veies, preies, moneies rhyming with pareies and journeies (for parées, journées); but elsewhere the forms are exploite, estroite, covoite, voie, proie, monoie, and, in general, Anglo-Norman forms such as mei, rei, fei, treis, Engleis, have disappeared before the French moi, roi, foy, trois, &c.

The terminations of infinitives in -eir have become -oir, except where the form has been reduced to that of the first conjugation; and those of imperfects and conditionals (imperfects reduced all to one form) have regularly oi instead of ei. There is no intermixture of ei and oi inflexions, such as we find in Angier, in the Vie de S. Auban, and in Bozon. In a few isolated instances we have ai for this oi of inflexion, as poait in Mir. 795, solait 10605 &c. (which last seems to be sometimes present rather than imperf.), and volait 13763. Also occasionally in other cases, as curtais, 5568, in rhyme with mais, mesfais, &c., elsewhere curtois, array, 18964, rhyming with nay, essay, usually arroy, and desplaie, manaie, Bal. xxvii. 2, elsewhere desploie, manoie. There is however nothing like that wholesale use of ai for ei (oi) which is especially characteristic of Langtoft, who besides the inflexion in -ait has (for example) may, cray, ray, for moi, croy, roi.

In ante-tonic syllables we may note the ei of beneiçoun, freidure, leisir (usually loisir), Malveisie, peitrine (also poitrine), veisin (beside voisin), veisdye, &c., and ai in arraier, braier.

iv. The diphthong oe (ue) is written in a good many words,[Pg xxvi] but it may be doubted whether it had really the pronunciation of a diphthong. The following list contains most of the words in which it is found in the tonic syllable: avoec, boef, coecs (coquus), coer, controeve, demoert, doel, joefne, moeble, moel, moet moeve (from movoir), moers moert moerge (from morir), noeces, noef, noet, oef, oel, oeps, oevre, poeple, poes poet, proesme, soe, soeffre, soen, troeffe, troeve, voegle, voes (also voels), voet (also voelt). In the case of many of these there are variations of form to o, u, ue, or ui; thus we have cuer (the usual form in the Mirour), controve, jofne, noces, owes (dissyll. as plur. of oef, also oefs, oes), ovre, pueple, pus (also puiss), puet (also poot), prosme, sue, truffe, trove, volt, and (before an original guttural) nuit, oill (oculum). Two of these words, cuer and oel, occur in rhyme, and they both rhyme with ẹ: mortiel, oel, fraternel, viel, 3733 ff., and cuer, curer, primer, 13129 ff., by which it would appear that in them at least the diphthong sound had been lost: cp. suef in rhyme with chief, relief, Bal. L. 2. The same rhyming of cuer (quer) occurs in the Vie de S. Auban, in Langtoft and in Bozon (see M. Meyer’s introduction to Bozon’s Contes Moralizés). With avoec we also find aveoc and avec, veot occurs once for voet, and illeoc, illeoque(s), are the forms used from Lat. illuc.

v. French ọ (eu, ou) from Latin ō (not before nasal).

The only cases that I propose to speak of here are the terminations of substantives and adjectives corresponding to the Latin -orem, -osus, or in imitation of these forms. Our author has here regularly ou; there is hardly a trace of the older forms in -or, -ur, and -os, -us, and surprisingly few accommodated to the Continental -eur and -eus. The following are most of the words of this class which occur with the -eur, -eus, endings: pescheur (piscatorem), fleur, greigneur, honeur, meilleur, seigneur (usually flour, greignour, honour, meillour, seignour); boscheus, honteus (usually hontous), joyeuse (fem.) but joyous (masc.), oiceus (oiseus), perceus, piteus (more often pitous). We have also blasphemus, 2450, which may be meant for blasphemous, and prodegus, 8425 ff., which is perhaps merely the Latin word ‘prodigus.’ Otherwise the terminations are regularly -our, -ous, except where words in -our vary to -ure, as chalure, for the sake of rhyme. The following are some of them, and it will be seen that those which passed into[Pg xxvii] the literary English of the fourteenth century for the most part appeared there with the same forms of spelling as they have here. Indeed not a few, especially of the -ous class, have continued unchanged down to the present day.

In -our: ardour, blanchour, brocour, chalour (also chalure), colour, combatour, confessour, conquerour, correctour, currour, desirour, despisour, devorour, dolour, emperour (also empereour, emperere), executour, favour, gouvernour, guerreiour, hisdour, honour, irrour, labour, langour, lecchour (also lecchier), liquour, mockeour, palour, pastour, persecutour, portour, possessour, pourchaçour (also pourchacier), priour, procurour (also procurier), professour, proverbiour (-ier, -er), questour (-ier), rancour, robbeour, seignour, senatour, supplantour, terrour, tricheour, valour, ven(e)our, venqueour, vigour, visitour.

In -ous: amorous, averous, bataillous, bountevous, busoignous, chivalerous, contagious, coragous, corouçous, covoitous, dangerous, despitous, dolourous, enginous, envious, famous, fructuous, glorious, gracious, grevous, irrous, joyous, laborious, leccherous, litigious, malencolious, merdous, merveillous, orguillous, perilous, pitous, precious, presumptuous, ruinous, solicitous, tricherous, venimous, vergondous, vertuous, vicious, victorious, viscous.

vi. French ọ before nasal, Latin ō, ŏ, u.

(a) Except where it is final, on usually remains, whether followed by a dental or not. The tendency towards ou, which produced the modern English amount, account, abound, profound, announce, &c., is here very slightly visible. Once blounde occurs, in rhyme with monde, confonde, &c., and we have also rounge 2886 (runge 3450) and sounge 5604 (also ronge, songe), and in ante-tonic syllables bounté, bountevous, nouncier (also noncier), plunger (also plonger), sounger, and words compounded with noun, as nounsage, nouncertein, &c. On the other hand seconde, faconde, monde, abonde, rebonde, responde, 1201 ff., monde (adj.), bonde, redonde, 4048 ff., suronde, confonde, 8199 ff., monde, onde, confonde, 10838 ff., amonte, honte, accompte, conte, surmonte, demonte, 1501 ff. The -ount termination in verbal inflexion, which is common in Bozon, ount, sount, fount, dirrount, &c., is not found here except in the Table of Contents.

(b) When a word ends with the nasal, -on is usually developed into -oun. In Gower’s French a large proportion of the words with this ending have both forms (assuming always that the abbreviation[Pg xxviii] -o̅n̅ is to be read -oun, a point which will be discussed hereafter), but -oun is the more usual, especially perhaps in rhyme. The older Anglo-Norman -un has completely disappeared. Words in -oun and -on rhyme freely with one another, but the tendency is towards uniformity, and at the same time there is apparently no rhyme sequence on the ending -on alone. The words with which we have to deal are, first, that large class of common substantives with terminations from Lat. -onem; secondly, a few outlandish proper names, e.g. Salomon, Simon, Pharaon, Pigmalion, with which we may class occasional verbal inflexions as lison, soion; and, thirdly, a certain number of other words, chiefly monosyllables, as bo(u)n, doun, mo(u)n, no(u)n (= non), noun (= nom), reboun, renoun, so(u)n (pron.), soun (subst.), to(u)n, also respoun (imperative). In the first and third class -oun is decidedly preferred, but in the second we regularly find -on, and it is chiefly when words of this class occur in the rhyme that variations in the others are found in this position. Thus l. 409 ff. we have the rhymes noun, temptacioun, soun, resoun, baroun, garisoun; 689 ff. contemplacioun, tribulacioun, temptacioun, collacioun, delectacioun, elacioun; so also in 1525 ff., and even when Salomon comes in at ll. 1597 and 1669, all the other rhymes of these stanzas are -oun: presumpcioun, respoun, resoun, noun, doun, &c. At 2401 however we have maison, noun, contradiccioun, lison; 2787 Salomon, leçon, enchesoun, resoun; 4069 noun, tençon, compaignoun, feloun, Catoun, confessioun; and similarly façon 6108, religion (with lison) 7922, lison, lion, giroun, enviroun, leçon, noun, 16801 ff. (yet lisoun is also found, 24526). On the whole, so far as the rhymes of the Mirour are concerned, the conclusion must be that the uniformity is broken chiefly by the influence of those words which have been noted as written always, or almost always, with -on. In the Balades and Traitié, however, the two terminations are more equally balanced; for example in Bal. xxxv we find convocacion, compaignon, comparison, regioun, noun, supplicacion, eleccion, condicioun, &c., without any word of the class referred to, and Traitié xii has four rhymes in -on against two in -oun. On the whole I am disposed to think that it is merely a question of spelling, and it must be remembered that in the MSS. -oun is very rarely written out in full, so that the difference between the two forms is very slight even in appearance.

vii. The Central-French u was apparently identified in sound[Pg xxix] with eu, and in some cases not distinguished from ui. The evidence of rhymes seems quite clear and consistent on this point. Such sequences as the following occur repeatedly: abatu, pourveu, deçu, lieu, perdu, salu, 315 ff.; truis, perduz, Hebrus, us, jus, conclus, 1657 ff.; hebreu, feru, eeu, tenu, neveu, rendu, 4933 ff.; plus, lieus, perdus, conçuz, huiss, truis, 6723 ff.; fu, lu (for lieu), offendu, dieu, in Bal. xviii; and with the ending -ure, -eure: demeure, l’eure, nature, verdure, desseure, mesure, 937 ff.; painture, demesure, aventure, jure, hure, controveure, 1947 ff., &c. This being so, we cannot be surprised at such forms as hebru for hebreu, lu for lieu, fu for feu, hure, demure, plure, for the Continental French heure, demeure, pleure, or at the substitutions of u for ui, or ui for u (eu), in aparçut aparçuit, huiss huss, plus pluis, pertuis pertus, puiss pus, construire construre, destruire destrure, estruis estrus, truis trieus. As regards the latter changes we may compare the various spellings of fruit, bruit, suit, eschuie, suie[G], in Middle English. It should be mentioned however that luy rhymes regularly with -i (-y), as chery, servi, dy. In some cases also ui interchanges with oi, as in buiste beside boiste, enpuisonner beside poisoun. This is often found in early Anglo-Norman and is exemplified in M.E. buyle boyle, fuysoun foysoun, destroye destruien. On this change and on that between ui and u in Anglo-Norman see Koschwitz on the Voyage de Charlemagne, pp. 39, 40.

viii. aun occurs occasionally for an final or before a consonant e.g. in aun (annum) Mir. 6621, Bal. xxiii. 2, saunté(e) Mir. 2522, Ded. ii. 5, &c., dauncer 17610, paunce 8542, fiaunce, sufficaunce, Bal. iv, governaunce, fraunchise, fraunchement, in the Table of Contents; but much more usually not, as Alisandre, an (1932), avant, dance (1697), danger, danter, France, change, fiance (Bal. xiii. &c.), lance, lande, pance (5522 &c.), sergant, sufficance (1738 &c.), vante, and in general the words in -ance.

ix. Contraction or suppression of atonic vowels takes place in certain cases besides that of the termination -ée, which has already been discussed.

(a) When atonic e and another vowel or diphthong come together in a word they are usually contracted, as in asseurer, commeu, eust, receu, veu (2387), vir (for veïr), Beemoth, beneuré,[Pg xxx] benoit, deesce, emperour, mirour, obeissance, rançon, seur, &c., but in many instances contraction does not take place, as cheeu, eeu, veeu, veïr, veoir, empereour (23624), leësce, mireour (23551), tricheour, venqueour, meëment, &c.

(b) In some words with -ie termination the accent falls on the antepenultimate, and the i which follows the tonic syllable is regularly slurred in the metre and sometimes not written. Such words are accidie, contumelie, familie, misterie, perjurie, pluvie, remedie, vituperie, and occasionally a verb, as encordie.

The following are examples of their metrical treatment:—

Several of these words are also written with the ending -e for -ie, as accide, famile, encorde.

Such words are similarly treated in Gower’s English lines, e.g.

cp. Chaucer’s usual treatment of words like victorie, glorie, which are not used in that form by Gower.

(c) In come (comme), sicome, and ove the final e never counts as a syllable in the metre. They are sometimes written com and ou. In another word, ore, the syllable is often slurred, as in Mir. 37, 1775, 3897, &c., but sometimes sounded, as 4737, 11377, Bal. xxviii. 1. So perhaps also dame in Mir. 6733, 13514, 16579, and Bal. ii. 3, xix. 3, xx. 2, &c.

x. The insertion of a parasitic e in connexion with r, and especially between v and r, is a recognized feature of the Anglo-Norman dialect. Examples of this in our texts are avera, devera, saveroit, coverir, deliverer, overir, vivere, livere, oevere, overage, povere, yvere, &c. As a rule this e is not sounded as a syllable in the metre, and in most of these words there is an alternative spelling, e.g. avra, savra, covrir, delivrer, ovrir, vivre, oevre, &c., but it is not necessary to reduce them to this wherever the e is mute. Less usually the syllable counts in the verse, e.g. overaigne in Mir. 3371, overage 8914, enyverer 16448, avera 18532, deveroit, beveroit in 20702 ff. viverai, vivera in Bal. iv.* 1, Mir. 3879, descoverir in Bal. ix. 1.

[Pg xxxi]

xi. About the consonants not much need be said.

(a) Initial c before a varies in some words with ch, as caccher, caitif, camele, camp, carboun, castell, catell, by the side of chacer, chaitif, chameal, champ, charboun, chastel, chateaux; cp. acater, achater. Before e, i, we find sometimes an interchange of c and s, as in ce for se in Mir. 1147, Bal. xviii. 3; c’il for s’il in Mir. 799 &c.; and, on the other hand, sent for cent in Bal. xli. 2, si for ci in the title of the Cinkante Balades, sil for cil in Bal. xlii. 3, sercher for cercher in Mir. 712 &c., also s for sc in septre, sintille, and sc for s in scilence.

(b) We find often qant, qe, qelle, qanqe, &c., for quant, que, &c., and, on the other hand, the spelling quar for the more usual car. In words like guaign, guaire, guaite, guarant, guarde, guarir, guaster, u is very frequently omitted before a, also occasionally before other vowels, as gile, 21394, for guile: w is used in warder, rewarder, way.

(c) The doubling of single consonants, especially l, m, n, p, s, is frequent and seems to have no phonetic significance. Especially it is to be observed that ss for s at the end of a word makes no difference to the quantity or quality of the syllable, thus, whether the word be deces or decess, reles or reless, engres or engress, bas or bass, las or lass, huiss or huis, the pronunciation and the rhyme are the same. The final s was sounded in both cases, and not more when double than when single. The doubling of r in futures and conditionals, as serray, dirray, &c., belongs to the Norman dialect.

(d) The final s of inflexion is regularly replaced by z after a dental, as courtz, desfaitz, ditz, excellentz, fitz, fortz, regentz, seintz, and frequently in past participles of verbs (where there is an original dental), as perturbez, enfanteez, rejoïz, perduz; but also elsewhere, especially with the termination -able, as refusablez, delitablez, in rhyme with acceptables. Sometimes however a dental drops out before s, as in apers, desfais, dis, dolens, presens. In all these cases however the difference is one of spelling only.

(e) Lastly, notice may be directed to the mute consonants either surviving in phonetic change or introduced into the spelling in imitation of the Latin form. The fourteenth century was a time when French writers and copyists were especially prone to the vice of etymological spelling, and many forms both in French and English which have been supposed to be of later date may be traced to this period. I shall point out some instances, etymological and other, most of which occur in rhyme.

[Pg xxxii]

Thus b is mute in doubte (also doute) rhyming with boute, and also in debte beside dette, soubdeinement beside soudeinement, &c.:

p in temps, accompte, corps, hanaps, descript, rhyming with sens, honte, tors, pas, dit, and in deceipte beside deceite;

d before s in ribalds rhyming with vassals;

t before z in such words as fortz, courtz, certz, overtz, fitz, ditz, aletz, decretz, rhyming with tors, destours, vers, envers, sis, dignités, ées;

s in such forms as dist, promist, quidasmes, &c., in rhyme with esjoït, espirit, dames; possibly however the 3 pers. sing. pret. of these verbs had an alternative pronunciation in which s was sounded, for they several times occur in rhyme with Crist, and then are always written -ist, whereas at other times they vary this freely with -it.

g in words like baraign, pleigne, soveraigne, rhyming with gain, peine;

c before s in clercs (also clers) rhyming with vers;

l in almes, ascoulte, moult, which rhyme with fames, route, trestout and in oultrage, estoultie, beside outrage, estoutie.

On the other hand v is sounded in the occasional form escrivre, the word being rhymed with vivre, in Mir. 6480.

As regards the Vocabulary, I propose to note a few points which are of interest with reference chiefly to English Etymology, and for the rest the reader is referred to the Glossary.

A certain number of words will be found, in addition to those already cited in the remarks on Phonology, § v, which appear in the French of our texts precisely as they stand in modern English, e.g. able, annoy, archer, carpenter, claret, courser, dean, draper, ease, fee, haste, host, mace, mess, noise, soldier, suet, treacle, truant, &c., not to mention ‘mots savants’ such as abject, absent, official, parable, and so on.

The doubling of consonants in accordance with Latin spelling in accepter, accord, accuser, commander, commun, &c., is already common in these texts and belongs to an earlier stage of Middle English than is usually supposed.

ambicioun: note the etymological meaning of this word in the Mirour.

appetiter: Chaucer’s verb should be referred directly to this French verb, and not to the English subst. appetit.

[Pg xxxiii]

assalt: usually assaut in 14th cent. French and English.

audit: the English word is probably from this French form, and not directly from Latin: the same remark applies to several other words, as complet, concluder, curet, destitut, elat, &c.

avouer: in the sense of ‘promise.’

begant, beggerie, beguyner, beguinage: see New Eng. Dict. under ‘beg.’ The use of beguinage here as equivalent to beggerie is confirmatory of the Romance etymology suggested for the word: begant seems to presuppose a verb beg(u)er, a shorter form of beguiner; cp. beguard.

braier, M.E. brayen, ‘to bray in a mortar.’ The continental form was breier, Mod. broyer.

brusch: the occurrence of this word in a sense which seems to identify it with brusque should be noted. The modern brusque is commonly said to have been introduced into French from Italy in the 16th century. Caxton however in 1481 has brussly, apparently equivalent to ‘brusquely’; see New Eng. Dict.

buillon, in the sense of ‘mint,’ or ‘melting-house,’ is evidently the same as ‘bullion’ in the Anglo-Norman statutes of Edward III (see New Eng. Dict.). The form which we have here points very clearly to its derivation from the verb builer, ‘boil,’ as against the supposed connexion with ‘bulla.’

chitoun, ‘kitten.’ This is used also in Bozon’s Contes Moralizés. It seems more likely that the M.E. kitoun comes from this form of chatton with hardening of ch to k by the influence of cat, than that it is an English ‘kit’ with a French suffix.

Civile, i.e. ‘civil law’: cp. the use of the word as a name in Piers Plowman.

eneauer, ‘to wet,’ supplies perhaps an etymology for the word enewing or ennuyng used by Lydgate and others as a term of painting, to indicate the laying on or gradation of tints in water-colour, and illustrates the later Anglo-French words enewer, enewage, used apparently of shrinking cloth by wetting; see Godefroy (who however leaves them unexplained).

flaket, the same as the M.E. flakett, flacket (French flaschet). The form flaquet is assumed as a Northern French word by the New Eng. Dict., but not cited as occurring.

leisour, as a variation of loisir, leisir.

lusard: cp. Piers Plowman, B. xviii. 335.

[Pg xxxiv]

menal, meynal, adj. in the sense of ‘subject.’

nice: note the development of sense from ‘foolish,’ Mir. 1331, 7673, to ‘foolishly scrupulous,’ 24858, and thence to ‘delicate,’ ‘pleasant,’ 264, 979.

papir, the same form that we find in the English of Chaucer and Gower.

parlesie, M.E. parlesie, palesie.

perjurie, a variation of perjure, which established itself in English.

phesant: early M.E. fesaun, Chaucer fesaunt.

philosophre, as in M.E., beside philosophe.

queinte, a(c)queintance: the forms which correspond to those used in English; less usually quointe, aquointance.

reverie, ‘revelry,’ which suggests the connexion of the English word with rêver, rather than with reveler from ‘rebellare.’ However, revel and reveller occur also in our texts.

reviler. Skeat, Etym. Dict., says ‘there is no word reviler or viler in French.’ Both are used in the Mirour.

rewarder, rewardie, rewardise, in the sense of the English ‘reward.’

sercher, Eng. ‘search,’ the more usual form for cercher.

somonce: this is the form required to account for the M.E. somouns, ‘summons.’

traicier, traiçour, names given (in England) to those who made it their business to pack juries.

trote, used for ‘old woman’ in an uncomplimentary sense.

université, ‘community.’

voiage (not viage): this form is therefore of the 14th century.

MIROUR DE L’OMME.

Authorship.—The evidence of authorship rests on two distinct grounds: first, its correspondence in title and contents with the description given by Gower of his principal French work; and secondly, its remarkable resemblance in style and substance to the poet’s acknowledged works.

We return therefore to the statement before referred to about the three principal books claimed by our author: and first an explanation should be made on the subject of the title. The[Pg xxxv] statement in question underwent progressive revision at the hands of the author and appears in three forms, the succession of which is marked by the fact that they are connected with three successive editions of the Confessio Amantis. In the two first of these three forms the title of the French work is Speculum Hominis, in the third it is Speculum Meditantis, the alteration having been made apparently in order to produce similarity of termination with the titles of the two other books[H]. We are justified therefore in assuming that the original title was Speculum Hominis, or its French equivalent, Mirour de l’omme. The author’s account, then, of his French work is as follows:

‘Primus liber Gallico sermone editus in decem diuiditur partes, et tractans de viciis et virtutibus, necnon et de variis huius seculi gradibus, viam qua peccator transgressus ad sui creatoris agnicionem redire debet recto tramite docere conatur. Titulus (que) libelli istius Speculum hominis (al. meditantis) nuncupatus est.’

We are here told that the book is in French, that it is divided into ten parts, that it treats of vices and virtues, and also of the various degrees or classes of people in this world, and finally that it shows how the sinner may return to the knowledge of his Creator.

The division of our Mirour into ten parts might have been a little difficult to make out from the work itself, but it is expressly indicated in the Table of Contents prefixed:

‘Cy apres comence le livre François q’est apellé Mirour de l’omme, le quel se divide en x parties, c’est assavoir’ &c.

The ten parts are then enumerated, six of them being made out of the classification of the different orders of society.

The contents of the Mirour also agree with the author’s description of his Speculum Hominis. After some prefatory matter it treats of vices in ll. 841-9720 of the present text; of virtues ll. 10033-18372; of the various orders of society ll. 18421-26604; of how man’s sin is the cause of the corruption of the world ll. 26605-27360; and finally how the sinner may return to God, or, as the Table of Contents has it, ‘coment l’omme peccheour lessant ses mals se doit reformer a dieu et avoir pardoun par l’eyde de nostre seigneur Jhesu Crist et de sa[Pg xxxvi] doulce Miere la Vierge gloriouse,’ l. 27361 to the end. This latter part includes a Life of the Virgin, through whom the sinner is to obtain the grace of God.

The strong presumption (to say no more) which is raised by the agreement of all these circumstances is converted into a certainty when we come to examine the book more closely and to compare it with the other works of Gower. Naturally we are disposed to turn first to his acknowledged French writings, the Cinkante Balades and the Traitié, and to institute a comparison in regard to the language and the forms of words. The agreement here is practically complete, and the Glossary of this edition is arranged especially with a view to exhibit this agreement in the clearest manner. There are differences, no doubt, such as there will always be between different MSS., however correct, but they are very few. Moreover, in the structure of sentences and in many particular phrases there are close correspondences, some of which are pointed out in the Notes. But, while the language test gives quite satisfactory results, so far as it goes, we cannot expect to find a close resemblance in other respects between two literary works so different in form and in motive as the Mirour and the Balades. It is only when we institute a comparison between the Mirour and the two other principal works, in Latin and English respectively, which our author used as vehicles for his serious thoughts, that we realize how impossible it is that the three should not all belong to one author. Gower, in fact, was a man of stereotyped convictions, whose thoughts on human society and on the divine government of the world tended constantly to repeat themselves in but slightly varying forms. What he had said in one language he was apt to repeat in another, as may be seen, even if we leave the Mirour out of sight, by comparison of the Confessio Amantis with the Vox Clamantis. The Mirour runs parallel with the English work in its description of vices, and with the Latin in its treatment of the various orders of society, and apart from the many resemblances in detail, it is worth while here to call attention to the manner in which the general arrangement of the French work corresponds with that which we find in the other two books.

In that part of the Mirour which treats of vices, each deadly sin is dealt with regularly under five principal heads, or, as the author expresses it, has five daughters. Now this fivefold[Pg xxxvii] division is not, so far as I can discover, borrowed from any former writer. It is of course quite usual in moral treatises to deal with the deadly sins by way of subdivision, but usually the number of subdivisions is irregular, and I have not found any authority for the systematic division of each into five. The only work, so far as I know, which shares this characteristic with the Mirour is the Confessio Amantis. It is true that in this the rule is not fully carried out; the nature of the work did not lend itself so easily to a quite regular treatment, and considerable variations occur: but the principle which stands as the basis of the arrangement is clearly visible, and it is the same which we find in our Mirour.

This is a point which it is worth while to exhibit a little more at large, and here the divisions of the first three deadly sins are set forth in parallel columns:

In the latter part of the Confessio Amantis the fivefold division is not strictly observed, and in some books the author does not profess to deal with all the branches; but in what is given above there is quite enough to show that this method of division was recognized and that the main headings are the same in the two works.

Next we may compare the classes of society given in the Mirour with those that we find in the Vox Clamantis. It is not necessary to exhibit these in a tabular form; it is enough to say[Pg xxxviii] that with some trifling differences of arrangement the enumeration is the same. In the Vox Clamantis the estate of kings stands last, because the author wished to conclude with a lecture addressed personally to Richard II; and the merchants, artificers and labourers come before the judges, lawyers, sheriffs, &c., because it is intended to bring these last into connexion with the king; but otherwise there is little or no difference even in the smallest details. The contents of the ‘third part’ of the Mirour, dealing with prelates and dignitaries of the Church and with the parish clergy, correspond to those of the third book of the Vox Clamantis; the fourth part, which treats of those under religious rule, Possessioners and Mendicants, is parallel to the fourth book of the Latin work. In the Mirour as in the Vox Clamantis we have the division of the city population into Merchants, Artificers and Victuallers, and of the ministers of the law into Judges, Advocates, Viscounts (sheriffs), Bailiffs, and Jurymen. Moreover what is said of the various classes is in substance usually the same, most notably so in the case of the parish priests and the tradesmen of the town; but parallels of this kind will be most conveniently pointed out in the Notes.

To proceed, the Mirour will be found to contain a certain number of stories, and of those that we find there by much the greater number reappear in the Confessio Amantis with a similar application. We have the story of the envious man who desired to lose one eye in order that his comrade might be deprived of two (l. 3234), of Socrates and his scolding wife (4168), of the robbery from the statue of Apollo (7093), of Lazarus and Dives (7972), of Ulysses and the Sirens (10909), of the emperor Valentinian (17089), of Sara the daughter of Raguel (17417), of Phirinus, the young man who defaced his beauty in order that he might not be a temptation to women (18301), of Codrus king of Athens (19981), of Nebuchadnezzar’s pride and punishment (21979), of the king and his chamberlains (22765). All these are found in the Mirour, and afterwards, more fully related as a rule, in the Confessio Amantis. Only one or two, the stories of St. Macaire and the devil (12565, 20905), of the very undeserving person who was relieved by St. Nicholas (15757), of the dishonest man who built a church (15553), together with various Bible stories rather alluded to than related, and the long Life of the Virgin at the end of the book, remain the property of the Mirour alone.

[Pg xxxix]

If we take next the anecdotes and emblems of Natural History, we shall find them nearly all again in either the Latin or the English work. To illustrate the vice of Detraction we have the ‘escarbud,’ the ‘scharnebud,’ of the Confessio Amantis, which takes no delight in the flowery fields or in the May sunshine, but only seeks out vile ordure and filth (2894, Conf. Am. ii. 413). Envy is compared to the nettle which grows about the roses and destroys them by its burning (3721, Conf. Am. ii. 401). Homicide is made more odious by the story of the bird with a man’s features, which repents so bitterly of slaying the creature that resembles it (5029, Conf. Am. iii. 2599); and we may note also that in both books this authentic anecdote is ascribed to Solinus, who after all is not the real authority for it. Idleness is like the cat that would eat fish without wetting her paws (5395, Conf. Am. iv. 1108). The covetous man is like the pike that swallows down the little fishes (6253, Conf. Am. v. 2015). Prudence is the serpent which refuses to hear the voice of the charmer, and while he presses one ear to the ground, stops the other with his tail (15253, Conf. Am. i. 463). And so on.

Then again there are a good many quotations common to the Mirour and one or both of the other books, adduced in the same connexion and sometimes grouped together in the same order. The passage from Gregory’s Homilies about man as a microcosm, partaking of the nature of every creature in the universe, which we find in the Prologue of the Confessio and also in the Vox Clamantis, appears at l. 26869 of the Mirour; that about Peter presenting Judea in the Day of Judgement, Andrew Achaia, and so on, while our bishops come empty-handed, is also given in all three (Mir. 20065, Vox. Cl. iii. 903, Conf. Am. v. 1900). To illustrate the virtue of Pity the same quotations occur both in the Mirour and the Confessio Amantis, from the Epistle of St. James, from Constantine, and from Cassiodorus (Mir. 13929, 23055 ff., Conf Am. vii. 3149*, 3161*, 3137). Three quotations referred to ‘Orace’ occur in the Mirour, and of these three two reappear in the Confessio with the same author’s name (Mir. 3801, 10948, 23370, Conf. Am. vi. 1513, vii. 3581). Now of these two, one, as it happens, is from Ovid and the other from Juvenal; so that not only the quotations but also the false references are repeated. These are not by any means all the examples of common quotations, but they will perhaps suffice.

Again, if we are not to accept the theory of common authorship,[Pg xl] we can hardly account for the resemblance, and something more than resemblance, in passages such as the description of Envy (Mir. 3805 ff., Conf. Am. ii. 3095, 3122 ff.), of Ingratitude (Mir. 6685 ff., Conf. Am. v. 4917 ff.), of the effects of intoxication (Mir. 8138, 8246, Conf. Am. vi. 19, 71), of the flock made to wander among the briars (Mir. 20161 ff., Conf. Am. Prol. 407 ff.), of the vainglorious knight (Mir. 23893 ff., Conf. Am. iv. 1627 ff.), and many others, not to mention those lines which occur here and there in the Confessio exactly reproduced from the Mirour, such as iv. 893,

compared with Mir. 5436,

Conf. Am. Prol. 213,

compared with Mir. 18675,

the context in this last case being also the same.

The parallels with the Vox Clamantis are not less numerous and striking, and as many of them as it seems necessary to mention are set down in the Notes to the Mirour, especially in the latter part from l. 18421 onwards.

Before dismissing the comparison with the Confessio Amantis, we may call attention to two further points of likeness. First, though the Mirour is written in stanzas and the Confessio in couplets, yet the versification of the one distinctly suggests that of the other. Both are in the same octosyllabic line, with the same rather monotonous regularity of metre, and the stanza of the Mirour, containing, as it does, no less than four pairs of lines which can be read as couplets so far as the rhyme is concerned, often produces much the same effect as the simple couplet. Secondly, in the structure of sentences there are certain definite characteristics which produce themselves equally in the French and the English work.

Resemblances of this latter kind will be pointed out in the Notes, but a few may be set down here. For example, every reader of Gower’s English is familiar with his trick of setting the conjunctions ‘and,’ ‘but,’ &c., in the middle instead of at the beginning of the clause, as in Conf. Am. Prol. 155,

[Pg xli]

and similarly in the Balades, e.g. xx. i,

Examples of this are common in the Mirour, as l. 100,

cp. 415, 4523, 7739, 7860, &c.

In other cases too there is a tendency to disarrangement of words or clauses for the sake of metre or rhyme, as Mir. 15941, 17996, compared with Conf. Am. ii. 2642, iv. 3520, v. 6807, &c.

Again, the author of the Confessio Amantis is fond of repeating the same form of expression in successive lines, e.g. Prol. 96 ff.,

Cp. Prol. 937, v. 2469, &c.

This also is found often in the Mirour, e.g. 4864-9:

and 8294-8304,

The habit of breaking off the sentence and resuming it in a different form appears markedly in both the French and the English, as Mir. 89, 17743, Conf. Am. iv. 2226, 3201; and in several passages obscure forms of expression in the Confessio Amantis are elucidated by parallel constructions in the Mirour.

Finally, the trick of filling up lines with such tags as en son degré, de sa partie, &c. (e.g. Mir. 373, 865), vividly recalls the similar use of ‘in his degree,’ ‘for his partie,’ by the author of the Confessio Amantis (e.g. Prol. 123, 930).

The evidence of which I have given an outline, which may be filled up by those who care to look out the references set down above and in the Notes, amounts, I believe, to complete demonstration that this French book called Mirour de l’omme is identical with the Speculum Hominis (or Speculum Meditantis) which has been long supposed to be lost; and, that being so, I consider myself at liberty to use it in every way as Gower’s admitted work, together with the other books of which he claims the authorship, for the illustration both of his life and his literary characteristics.

[Pg xlii]

Date.—The Speculum Hominis stands first in order of the three books enumerated by Gower, and was written therefore before the Vox Clamantis. This last was evidently composed shortly after the rising of the peasants in 1381, and to that event, which evidently produced the strongest impression on the author’s mind, there is no reference in this book. There are indeed warnings of the danger of popular insurrection, as 24104 ff., 26485 ff., 27229 ff., but they are of a general character, suggested perhaps partly by the Jacquerie in France and partly by the local disturbances caused by discontented labourers in England, and convey the idea that the writer was uneasy about the future, but not that a catastrophe had already come. In one passage he utters a rather striking prophecy of the evil to be feared, speaking of the strange lethargy in which the lords of the land are sunk, so that they take no note of the growing madness of the commons. On the whole we may conclude without hesitation that the book was completed before the summer of the year 1381.

There are some other considerations which will probably lead us to throw the date back a little further than this. In 2142 ff. it seems to be implied that Edward III is still alive. ‘They of France,’ he says, ‘should know that God abhors their disobedience, in that they, contrary to their allegiance, refuse by way of war to render homage and obedience to him who by his birth receives the right from his mother.’ This can apply to none but Edward III, and we are led to suppose that when these lines were written he was still alive to claim his right. The supposition is confirmed by the manner in which the author speaks of the reigning king in that part of his work which deals with royalty. Nowhere does he address him as a child or youth in the manner of the Vox Clamantis, but he complains of the trust placed by the king in flatterers and of the all-prevailing influence of women, calling upon God to remedy those evils which arise from the monstrous fact that a woman reigns in the land and the king is subject to her (22807 ff.). This is precisely the complaint which might have been expected in the latter years of Edward III. On the other hand there is a clear allusion in one place (18817-18840) to the schism of the Church, and this passage therefore must have been written as late as 1378, but, occurring as it does at the conclusion of the author’s attack upon the Court of Rome, it may well have been added after the rest. The expression in l. 22191,

[Pg xliii]

refers to the Pope and the Emperor, not to the division of the papacy. Finally, it should be observed that the introduction of the name Innocent, l. 18783, is not to be taken to mean that Innocent VI, who died in 1362, was the reigning pope. The name is no doubt only a representative one.

On the whole we shall not be far wrong if we assign the composition of the book to the years 1376-1379.

Form and Versification.—The poem (if it may be called so) is written in twelve-line stanzas of the common octosyllabic verse, rhyming aab aab bba bba, so that there are two sets of rhymes only in each stanza. In its present state it has 28,603 lines, there being lost four leaves at the beginning, which probably contained forty-seven stanzas, that is 564 lines, seven leaves, containing in all 1342 lines, in other places throughout the volume, and an uncertain number at the end, probably containing not more than a few hundred lines. The whole work therefore consisted of about 31,000 lines, a somewhat formidable total.

The twelve-line stanza employed by Gower is one which was in pretty common use among French writers of the ‘moral’ class. It is that in which the celebrated Vers de la Mort were composed by Hélinand de Froidmont in the twelfth century, a poem from which our author quotes. Possibly it was the use of it by this writer that brought it into vogue, for his poem had a great popularity, striking as it did a note which was thoroughly congenial to the spirit of the age[I]. In any case we find the stanza used also by the ‘Reclus de Moiliens,’ by Rutebeuf in several pieces, e. g. La Complainte de Constantinoble and Les Ordres de Paris, and often by other poets of the moral school. Especially it seems to have been affected in those ‘Congiés’ in which poets took leave of the world and of their friends, as the Congiés Adan d’Arras (Barb. et Méon, Fabl. i. 106), the Congié Jehan Bodel (i. 135), &c. As to the structure of the stanza, at least in the hands of our author, there is not much to be said. The pauses in sense very generally follow the rhyme divisions of the stanza, which has a natural tendency to fall into two equal parts, and the last three lines, or in some cases the last two, frequently[Pg xliv] contain a moral tag or a summing up of the general drift of the stanza.

The verse is strictly syllabic. We have nothing here of that accent-metre which the later Anglo-Norman writers sometimes adopted after English models, constructing their octosyllable in two halves with a distinct break between them, each half-verse having two accents but an uncertain number of syllables. This appears to have been the idea of the metre in the mind of such writers as Fantosme and William of Waddington. Here however all is as regular in that respect as can be desired. Indeed the fact that in all these thousands of lines there are not more than about a score which even suggest the idea of metrical incorrectness, after due allowance for the admitted licences of which we have taken note, is a striking testimony not only of the accuracy in this respect of the author, but also to the correctness of the copy which we possess of his work. The following are the lines in question:

This, it will be allowed, is a sufficiently moderate total to be placed to the joint account of author and scribe in a matter of more than 28,000 lines—on an average one in about 1,500 lines. Of these more than half can be corrected in very obvious ways: in 276, 397, we may read ‘grantment’ as in 8931; in 2955, 4832, we should read ‘deliverer,’ and in 9786 ‘metteroit,’ this e being[Pg xlv] frequently sounded in the metre, e.g. 3371, 16448, 18532; we may correct 3160, 9617, by altering to ‘mal,’ ‘autre’; in 4745 ‘plussoudeinement’ is certainly meant; 13503 is to be corrected by reading ‘en la fin,’ as in 15299, for ‘en fin,’ 19108 by substituting ‘avoltre’ for ‘avoltire,’ and 27598 by reading ‘angel,’ as in 27731 and elsewhere, for ‘angle.’ Of the irregularities that remain, one, exemplified in 3116 and 14568, consists in the introduction of an additional foot into the measure, and I have little doubt that it proceeds from the scribe, who wrote ‘predicacioun’ and ‘contemplacioun’ for some shorter word with the same meaning, such as ‘prechement’ and ‘contempler.’ In the latter of these cases I have corrected by introducing ‘contempler’ into the text; in the former, as I cannot be so sure of the word intended, the MS. reading is allowed to stand. There is a similar instance of a hypermetrical line in Bal. xxvii. 1, and this also might easily be corrected. The other irregularities I attribute to the author. These consist, first, in the use of ‘dame’ in several lines as a monosyllable, and I am disposed to think that this word was sometimes so pronounced, see Phonol. § ix (c); secondly, in the introduction of a superfluous unaccented syllable at a pause after the second foot, which occurs in 10623, 10628 (and perhaps 3160); thirdly, in the omission of the unaccented syllable at the beginning of the verse, as:

Considering how often lines of this kind occur in other Anglo-Norman verse, and how frequent the variation is generally in the English octosyllables of the period, we may believe that even Gower, notwithstanding his metrical strictness, occasionally introduced it into his verse. It may be noted that the three lines just quoted resemble one another in having each a pause after the first word.

With all this ‘correctness,’ however, the verses of the Mirour have an unmistakably English rhythm and may easily be distinguished from French verse of the Continent and from that of the earlier Anglo-Norman writers. One of the reasons for this is that the verse is in a certain sense accentual as well as syllabic, the writer imposing upon himself generally the rule of the alternate[Pg xlvi] beat of accents and seldom allowing absolutely weak syllables[J] to stand in the even places of his verse. Lines such as these of Chrétien de Troyes,

and these of Frère Angier,

are quite in accordance with the rules of French verse, but very few such lines will be found in the Mirour. Some there are, no doubt, as 3327:

or 3645:

So also 2925, 3069, 4310 &c., but they are exceptional and attract our notice when they occur. An illustration of the difference between the usage of our author and that of the Continent is afforded by the manner in which he quotes from Hélinand’s Vers de la Mort. The text as given in the Hist. Litt. de la France, xviii. p. 88, is as follows (with correction of the false reading ‘cuevre’):

Gower has it

He may have found this reading in the original, of which there are several variants, but the comparison will none the less illustrate the difference of the rhythms.

Subject-matter and Style.—The scheme of the Speculum Hominis is, as before stated, of a very ambitious character. It is intended to cover the whole field of man’s religious and moral nature, to set forth the purposes of Providence in dealing with him, the various degrees of human society and the faults chargeable to each class of men, and finally the method which[Pg xlvii] should be followed by man in order to reconcile himself with the God whom he has offended by his sin. This is evidently one of those all-comprehending plans to which nothing comes amiss; the whole miscellany of the author’s ideas and knowledge, whether derived from books or from life, might be poured into it and yet fail to fill it up. Nevertheless the work is not an undigested mass: it has a certain unity of its own,—indeed in regard to connexion of parts it is superior to most medieval works of the kind. The author has at least thought out his plan, and he carries it through to the end in a laboriously conscientious manner. M. Jusserand in his Literary History of the English People conjectured reasonably enough that if this work should ever be discovered, it would prove to be one of those tirades on the vices of the age which in French were known as ‘bibles.’ It is this and much more than this. In fact it combines the three principal species of moral compositions all in one framework,—the manual of vices and virtues, the attack on the evils of existing society from the highest place downwards, and finally the versified summary of Scripture history and legend, introduced here with a view to the exaltation and praise of the Virgin. In its first division, which extends over nearly two-thirds of the whole, our author’s work somewhat resembles those of Frère Lorenz, William of Waddington and other writers, who compiled books intended to be of practical use to persons preparing for confession. For those who are in the habit of constant and minute self-examination it is necessary that there should be a distinct classification of the forms of error to which they may be supposed to be liable, and sins must be arranged under headings which will help the memory to recall them and to run over them rapidly. The classification which is based upon the seven mortal sins is both convenient and rational, and such books as the Somme des Vices et des Vertus and the Manuel des Pechiez, with the English translations or adaptations of them, were composed for practical purposes. While resembling these in some respects, our author’s work is not exactly of the same character. Their object is devotional, and form is sacrificed to utility. This is obvious in the case of the first-named book, the original, as is well known, of the Ayenbite of Inwyt and of Chaucer’s Persones Tale, and it is also true of the Manuel des Pechiez, though that is written in verse[Pg xlviii] and has stories intermingled with the moral rules by way of illustration. The author of this work states his purpose at once on setting forth:

Upon which he proceeds to enumerate the various subjects of which he thinks it useful to treat, which are connected by no tie except that of practical convenience: ‘First we shall declare the true faith, which is the foundation of our law.... Next we shall place the commandments, which every one ought to keep; then the seven mortal sins, whence spring so many evils.... Then you will find, if you please, the seven sacraments of the Church, then a sermon, and finally a book on confession, which will be suitable for every one.’

On the other hand the Mirour de l’omme is a literary production, or at least aspires to that character, and as such it has more regularity of form, more ornaments of style, and more display of reading. The division and classification in this first part, which treats of vices and of virtues, have a symmetrical uniformity; instead of enumerating or endeavouring to enumerate all the subdivisions under each head, all the numerous and irregularly growing branches and twigs which spring from each stem, the author confines himself to those that suit his plan, and constructs his whole edifice on a perfectly regular system. The work is in fact so far not a manual of devotion, but rather a religious allegory. The second part, which is ingeniously brought into connexion with the same general plan, resembles, as has been said, such compositions as the Bible Guiot de Provins, except that it is very much longer and goes into far more elaborate detail on the various classes of society and their distinctive errors. Here the author speaks more from his own observation and less from books than in the earlier part of his poem, and consequently this division is more original and interesting. Many parts of it will serve usefully to confirm the testimony of other writers, and from some the careful student of manners will be able to glean new facts. The last 2,500 lines, a mere trifle compared with the bulk of the whole, contain a Life of the Virgin, as the principal mediator between God[Pg xlix] and man, and the book ends (at least as we have it) with not unpoetical praises and prayers addressed to her.

It remains to be seen how the whole is pieced together.

Sin, we are told, is the cause of all evils, and brought about first the fall of Lucifer and of his following from Heaven, and then the expulsion of Adam from Paradise. In a certain sense Sin existed before all created things, being in fact that void or chaos which preceded creation, but also she was a daughter conceived by the Devil, who upon her engendered Death (1-216). Death and Sin then intermarrying produced the seven deadly Vices, whose names are enumerated, and the Devil, delighted by his progeny, sent Sin and her seven daughters to gain over the World to his side, and then called a conference with a view to defeating the designs of Providence for the salvation of Man, and of consummating the ruin which had already been in part effected (217-396). They resolved to send Temptation as a messenger to Man, and invite him to meet the Devil and his council, who would propose to him something from which he would get great advantage. He came, but before his coming Death had been cunningly hidden away in an inner chamber, so that Man might not see him and be dismayed. The Devil, Sin and the World successively addressed him with their promises, and Temptation, the envoy, added his persuasion, so that at length the Flesh of Man consented to be ruled by their counsels. The Soul, however, rejected them and vehemently expostulated with the Flesh, who was thus resolved to follow a course which would in the end ruin them both (397-612). The Flesh wavered and was in part dismayed, but was unable altogether to give up the promised delights; upon which the Soul informed her of Death, who had been treacherously concealed from her view, and to counteract the renewed enticements of Sin called in Reason and Fear to convince the Flesh of her folly. Reason was overcome in argument by Temptation, but Fear took the Flesh by the hand and led her to the place where Death lay concealed. The Flesh trembled at sight of this horrid creature, and Conscience led her back to Reason, who brought her into agreement with the Soul, and thus for the time the designs of the Devil and of Sin were frustrated (613-756). The Devil demanded that Sin should devise some remedy, and she consulted with the World, who proposed marriage between himself and the seven daughters of Sin, in order that from them offspring might be[Pg l] produced by means of which Man might the more readily be overcome. The marriage was arranged and the daughters of Sin went in procession to their wedding. Each in turn was taken in marriage by the World, and of them the first was Pride (757-1056). By her he had five daughters, each of whom is described at length, namely Hypocrisy, Vainglory, Arrogance, Boasting and Disobedience, and lastly comes the description of Pride herself (1057-2616). The same order is observed with regard to the rest. The daughters of Envy are Detraction, Sorrow for others’ Joy, Joy for others’ Grief, Supplanting and Treachery (Fals semblant) (2617-3852). Anger has for her daughters Melancholy, Contention, Hatred, Strife, and Homicide (3853-5124). Sloth produces Somnolence, Laziness (or Pusillanimity), Slackness, Idleness, Negligence (5125-6180). Avarice bears Covetousness, Rapine, Usury, Simony and Niggardy (6181-7704). Gluttony’s daughters are Voracity, Delicacy, Drunkenness, Superfluity, Prodigality (7705-8616). Finally, Lechery is the mother of Fornication, Rape, Adultery, Incest and Vain-delight (8617-9720). The Devil assembled all the progeny of the Vices and demanded the fulfilment of the promise made by the World, that Man should be made subject to him, and they all together made such a violent attack upon Man, that he surrendered himself to their guidance and came to be completely in the power of Sin, whose evil influence is described (9721-10032). Reason and Conscience prayed to God for assistance against the Vices and their progeny, and God gave seven Virtues, the contraries of the seven Vices, in marriage to Reason, in order that thence offspring might be born which might contend with that of the Vices (10033-10176). Each of these, as may readily be supposed, had five daughters. Humility, who is the natural enemy of Pride, produced Devotion to set against Hypocrisy, Fear against Vainglory, Discretion against Arrogance, Modesty against Boasting, and Obedience against Disobedience, and after the description of all these in succession follows that of Humility herself (10177-12612). So of the rest; the five daughters of Charity, namely Praise, Congratulation, Compassion, Help and Goodwill, are opposed each in her turn to the daughters of Envy, as Charity is to Envy herself (12613-13380). Patience, the opponent of Anger, has for her daughters Good-temper, Gentleness, Affection, Agreement and Mercy (13381-14100). Prowess, the opposite of Sloth, is the mother of[Pg li] Watchfulness, Magnanimity, Resolution, Activity and Learning (or Knowledge), to the description of which last is added an exhortation to self-knowledge and confession of sins (14101-15180). Generosity, the contrary of Avarice, produces Justice, Liberality, Alms-giving, Largess and Holy-purpose, this fifth daughter being the opposite of Simony, the fourth daughter of Avarice, as Largess is of Niggardy, the fifth (15181-16212). Measure, the contrary of Gluttony, is the mother of Dieting, Abstinence, Nourishment, Sobriety, Moderation (16213-16572). Chastity, the enemy of Lechery, has for her daughters Good-care (against Fornication), Virginity, Matrimony, Continence and Hard-life (16573-18372).

Let us now, says our author, observe the issue of this strife for the conquest of Man, in which the Flesh inclines to the side of the Vices, and the Soul to that of Reason and the Virtues. We must examine the whole of human society, from the Court of Rome downwards, to decide which has gained the victory up to this time, and for my part I declare that Sin is the strongest power in this world and directs all things after her will and pleasure (18373-18420). Every estate of Man, therefore, is passed in review and condemned—the Pope and the Cardinals (18421-19056), the Bishops (19057-20088), the lower dignitaries of the Church, Archdeacons and others (20089-20208), the parish priests, the chantry priests, and those preparing for the priesthood (20209-20832), the members of religious orders, first the monks and then the friars (20833-21780), the secular rulers of the world, Emperors and Kings (21781-23208), great lords (23209-23592), knights and men of arms (23593-24180), the men of the law, pleaders and judges (24181-24816), the sheriffs, reeves and jurymen (24817-25176), the class of merchants and traders (25177-25500), that of artificers (25501-25980), victuallers (25981-26424), labourers (26425-26520). In short, all estates have become corrupted; whether the lay people are more to blame for it or the priests the author will not say, but all agree in throwing the blame on the world (or the age) and in excusing themselves (26521-26604). He addresses the world and asks whence comes all the evil of which he complains. Is it from earth, water, air or fire? No, all these are good in themselves. Is it from the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, stars, planet or comet? No, for the prayer of a good man can overcome all their influences. Is it from plants, birds, or beasts? But these all follow nature and do good.[Pg lii] From what then is this evil? It is surely from that creature to whom God has given reason and submitted all things on earth, but who transgresses against God and does not follow the rules of reason. It is from Man that all the evils of the age arise, and we read in prophecy that for the sin of Man all the world, with the creatures which it contains, shall be troubled. Man is a microcosm, an abridgement of the world, and it is no wonder that all the elements should be disturbed when he transgresses (26605-26964). On the other hand the good and just man can command the elements and the powers of the material world, as Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stand still and as the saints have done at all times by miracles, and he is victorious at last even over Death, and attains to immortality by the grace of God (26965-27120). Surely, then, every man ought to desire to repent of his sin and to turn to God, that so the world may be amended and we may inherit eternal life. The author confesses himself to be as great a sinner as any man; but hope is his shield by the aid and mercy of Jesus Christ, notwithstanding that he has so idly wasted his life and comes so late to repentance (27121-27360). But how can he escape from his sins, how can he dare to pray, with what can he come before his God? Only by the help of his Lady of Pity, Mary, maid and mother, who will intercede for him if he can obtain her favour. Therefore he desires, before finishing his task, to tell of her conception and birth, her life and her death (27361-27480). Upon this follows the tale of the Nativity of the Virgin, as we find it (for example) in the Legenda Aurea, her childhood and espousal, the Nativity of Jesus Christ and the joys of our Lady, the Circumcision and the Purification, the baptism of our Lord, his miracles and his passion, the Resurrection, the sorrows of our Lady and her joys, the Ascension and the descent of the Spirit, the life of the Virgin Mary with St. John, her death, burial, and assumption; and the poet concludes his narrative with a prayer to both Son and Mother that they will have mercy upon his pain because of the pains which they themselves suffered, and give him that joy in which they now rejoice. Especially he is bound to celebrate the praise of his Lady, who is so gentle and fair and so near to God who redeemed us (27481-29904). He begins therefore to tell first of the names by which she is called, and with the praises of her, no doubt, he ended his book, which, as we have it, breaks off at l. 29945.

[Pg liii]

This, it will be seen, is a literary work with due connexion of parts, and not a mere string of sermons. At the same time it must be said that the descriptions of vices and virtues are of such inordinate length that the effect of unity which should be produced by a well-planned design is almost completely lost, and the book becomes very tiresome to read. We are wearied also by the accumulation of texts and authorities and by the unqualified character of the moral judgements. The maxim in l. 25225,

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,

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[Pg liv] 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:

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:

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:

Other descriptions also have merit, as for example that of the[Pg lv] 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:

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[Pg lvi] reference to the lives of the holy fathers, as illustrating the nature of ‘Aspre vie’:

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[Pg lvii] 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,’[Pg lviii] 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:

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[Pg lxi] (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[Pg lxii] 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[Pg lxiii] 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,

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[Pg lxiv] 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:

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,

[Pg lxv]

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

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[Pg lxvi] 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[Pg lxvii] 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,[Pg lxviii] 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[Pg lxix] 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[Pg lxx] 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.

[Pg lxxi]

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[Pg lxxii] 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[Pg lxxiii] 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[Pg lxxiv] 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,

or as in the following,

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,

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

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

This is usually the form that the verse takes in such cases, the[Pg lxxv] 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:

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

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

So with dame, dames, xix. l. 20, xx. l. 13, xxxvii. l. 18, xlvi. l. 15[K]; and with other words, xxv. l. 8, &c., aime, xxxiii. l. 10, nouche, xxxviii. l. 23, grace, xliv. l. 8, fame. In xx. 1 the same thing occurs exceptionally in another part of the line, the word roe counting as one syllable only, though it is a dissyllable in Mir. 10942. Naturally the termination -ée, as in iii. 2,

does not constitute an epic caesura, because, as observed elsewhere, the final e in this case did not count as a syllable in Anglo-Norman verse.

On the whole we may say that Gower treats the caesura with much the same freedom as is used in the English verse of the period, and at the same time he marks the beat of his iambic verse more strongly than was done by the contemporary French poets.

Matter and Style.—As regards the literary character of these compositions it must be allowed that they have, as Warton says, ‘much real and intrinsic merit.’ There is indeed a grace and poetical feeling in some of them which makes them probably the best things of the kind that have been produced by English writers of French, and as good as anything of the kind which had up to that time been written in English. The author himself has[Pg lxxvi] marked them off into two unequal divisions. The poems of the first class (i-v) express for us the security of the accepted lover, whose suit is to end in lawful marriage:

From these he passes to those expressions of feeling which apply to lovers generally, ‘qui sont diversement travailez en la fortune d’amour.’ Nothing can be more graceful in its way than the idea and expression of Bal. viii, ‘D’estable coer, qui nullement se mue,’ where the poet’s thought is represented as a falcon, flying on the wings of longing and desire in a moment across the sea to his absent mistress, and taking his place with her till he shall see her again. Once more, in Bal. xv, the image of the falcon appears, but this time it is a bird which is allowed to fly only with a leash, for so bound is the lover to his lady that he cannot but return to her from every flight. At another time (Bal. xviii) the lover is in despair at the hardness of his lady’s heart: drops of water falling will in time wear through the hardest stone; but this example will not serve him, for he cannot pierce the tender ears of his mistress with prayers, how urgent and repeated soever; God and the saints will hear his prayers, but she is harder than the marble of the quarry—the more he entreats, the less she listens, ‘Com plus la prie, et meinz m’ad entendu.’ Again (xiii) his state is like the month of March, now shine, now shower. When he looks on the sweet face of his lady and sees her ‘gentilesse,’ wisdom, and bearing, he has only pure delight; but when he perceives how far above him is her worth, fear and despair cloud over his joy, as the moon is darkened by eclipse. But in any case he must think of her (xxiv); she has so written her name on his heart that when he hears the chaplain read his litany he can think of nothing but of her. God grant that his prayer may not be in vain! Did not Pygmalion in time past by prayer obtain that his lady should be changed from stone to flesh and blood, and ought not other lovers to hope for the same fortune from prayer? He seems to himself to be in a dream, and he questions with himself and knows not whether he is a human creature or no, so absorbed is his being by his love. God grant that his prayer[Pg lxxvii] may not be in vain! He removes himself from her for a time (xxv) because of evil speakers, who with their slanders might injure her good name; but she must know that his heart is ever with her and that all his grief and joy hangs upon her, ‘Car qui bien aime ses amours tard oblie.’ But (xxix) she has misunderstood his absence; report tells him that she is angry with him. If she knew his thoughts, she would not be so disposed towards him; this balade he sends to make his peace, for he cannot bear to be out of her love. In another (xxxii) he expresses the deepest dejection: the New Year has come and is proceeding from winter towards spring, but for him there is winter only, which shrouds him in the thickest gloom. His lady’s beauty ever increases, but there is no sign of that kindness which should go with it; love only tortures him and gives him no friendly greeting. To this balade there is no Envoy, whether it be by negligence of the copyist, or because the lover could not even summon up spirit to direct it to his mistress. Again (xxxiii), he has given her his all, body and soul, both without recall, as a gift for this New Year of which he has just now spoken: his sole delight is to serve her. Will she not reward him even by a look? He asks for no present from her, let him only have some sign which may bid him hope, ‘Si plus n’y soit, donetz le regarder.’ The coming of Saint Valentine encourages him somewhat (xxxiv) with the reflection that all nature yields to love, but (xxxv) he remembers with new depression that though birds may choose their mates, yet he remains alone. May comes on (xxxvii), and his lady should turn her thoughts to love, but she sports with flowers and pays no heed to the prayer of her prisoner. She is free, but he is strongly bound; her close is full of flowers, but he cannot enter it; in the sweet season his fortune is bitter, May is for him turned into winter: ‘Vous estes franche et jeo sui fort lié.’

Then the lady has her say, and in accordance with the prerogative of her sex her moods vary with startling abruptness. She has doubts (xli) about her lover’s promises. He who swears most loudly is the most likely to deceive, and some there are who will make love to a hundred and swear to each that she is the only one he loves. ‘To thee, who art one thing in the morning and at evening another, I send this balade for thy reproof, to let thee know that I leave thee and care not for thee.’ In xliii she is fully convinced of his treachery, he is falser than Jason to Medea or[Pg lxxviii] Eneas to Dido. How different from Lancelot and Tristram and the other good knights! ‘C’est ma dolour que fuist ainçois ma joie.’ With this is contrasted the sentiment of xliv, in which the lady addresses one whom she regards as the flower of chivalry and the ideal of a lover, and to whom she surrenders unconditionally. The lady speaks again in xlvi, and then the series is carried to its conclusion with rather a markedly moral tone. At the end comes an address to the Virgin, in which the author declares himself bound to serve all ladies, but her above them all. No lover can really be without a loving mistress, for in her is love eternal and invariable. He loves and serves her with all his heart, and he trusts to have his reward. The whole concludes with an Envoy addressed to ‘gentle England,’ describing the book generally as a memorial of the joy which has come to the poet’s country from its noble king Henry, sent by heaven to redress its ills.

Printed Editions.—The Balades have been twice printed. They were published by the Roxburghe Club in 1818, together with the other contents of the Trentham MS. except the English poem, with the title ‘Balades and other Poems by John Gower. Printed from the original MS. in the library of the Marquis of Stafford at Trentham,’ Roxburghe Club, 1818, 4to. The editor was Earl Gower. This edition has a considerable number of small errors, several of which obscure the sense; only a small number of copies was printed, and the book can hardly be obtained.

In 1886 an edition of the Balades and of the Traitié was published in Germany under the name of Dr. Edmund Stengel in the series of ‘Ausgaben und Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der romanischen Philologie.’ The title of this book is ‘John Gower’s Minnesang und Ehezuchtbüchlein: LXXII anglonormannische Balladen ... neu herausgegeben von Edmund Stengel.’ Marburg, 1886. The preface is signed with the initials D. H. The editor of this convenient little book was unable to obtain access to the original MS., apparently because he had been wrongly informed as to the place where it was to be found, and accordingly printed the Balades from the Roxburghe edition with such emendations as his scholarship suggested. He removed a good many obvious errors of a trifling kind, and in a few cases he was successful in emending the text by conjecture. Some important corrections, however, still remained to be made,[Pg lxxix] and in several instances he introduced error into the text either by incorrectly transcribing the Roxburghe edition or by unsuccessful attempts at emendation. I do not wish to speak with disrespect of this edition. The editor laboured under serious disadvantages in not being able to refer to the original MS. and in not having always available even a copy of the Roxburghe edition, so that we cannot be surprised that he should have made mistakes. I have found his text useful to work upon in collation, and some of his critical remarks are helpful.

The present Text.—The text of this edition is based directly on the MS., which remains still in the library at Trentham Hall and to which access was kindly allowed me by the Duke of Sutherland. I propose to describe the MS. fully, since it is of considerable interest, and being in a private library it is not generally accessible.

The Trentham MS., referred to as T., is a thin volume, containing 41 leaves of parchment, measuring about 6¼ in. x 9¼ in., and made up apparently as follows: a⁴, b¹, c⁶, d—f⁸ (one leaf cut out), g¹, h⁴, i² (no catchwords).

The first four leaves and the last two are blank except for notes of ownership, &c., so that the text of the book extends only from f. 5 to f. 39, one leaf being lost between f. 33 and f. 34.

The pages are ruled for 35 lines and are written in single column. The handwriting is of the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century, and resembles what I elsewhere describe as the ‘third hand’ in MS. Fairfax 3, though I should hesitate to affirm that it is certainly the same, not having had the opportunity of setting the texts side by side. There is, however, another hand in the MS., which appears in the Latin lines on ff. 33 v^o and 39 v^o.

The initial letters of poems and stanzas are coloured, but there is no other ornamentation.

The book contains (1) ff. 5—10 v^o, the English poem in seven-line stanzas addressed to Henry IV, beginning ‘O worthi noble kyng.’

(2) f. 10 v^o, 11, the Latin piece beginning ‘Rex celi deus.’

(3) f. 11 v^o—12 v^o, two French balades with a set of Latin verses between them, addressed to Henry IV (f. 12 is seriously damaged). This is what I refer to as the Dedication.

[Pg lxxx]

(4) ff. 12 v^o—33, Cinkante balades.

(5) f. 33 v^o, Latin lines beginning ‘Ecce patet tensus,’ incomplete owing to the loss of the next leaf. Written in a different hand.

(6) ff. 34—39, ‘Traitié pour ensampler les amantz marietz,’ imperfect at the beginning owing to the loss of the preceding leaf.

(7) f. 39 v^o, Latin lines beginning ‘Henrici quarti,’ written in the hand which appears on f. 33 v^o.

On the first blank leaf is the following in the handwriting of Sir Thomas Fairfax:

(Originally this was ‘att his Coronation,’ then ‘att or before his Coronation,’ and finally the words ‘att or’ were struck through with the pen.)

Then lower down in the same hand:

On the verso of the second leaf near the left-hand top corner is written a name which appears to be ‘Rychemond,’ and there is added in a different hand of the sixteenth century:

On the fifth leaf, where the text of the book begins, in the right-hand top corner, written in the hand of Fairfax:

Then below in another hand:

On the last leaf of the text, f. 39, there is a note in Latin made in 1651 at St. Andrews (Andreapoli) by C. Gedde at the age of seventy, with reference to the date of Henry IV’s reign. Then in English,

and inserted between the lines by Fairfax,

[Pg lxxxi]

Below follows a note in English on the date of the death of Chaucer and of Gower, and their places of burial.

The first of the blank leaves at the end is covered with Latin anagrams on the names ‘Carolus Geddeius,’ ‘Carolus Geddie,’ or ‘Carolus Geddee,’ with this heading,

and ends with the couplet:

which is not very intelligible, but is perhaps meant to indicate the name of the composer of the anagrams.

In the right-hand top corner of the next leaf there is written in what might be a fifteenth-century hand, ‘Will Sanders vn Just’ (the rest cut away).

As to the statement made by Fairfax that this book, meaning apparently this very copy, was presented by the author to Henry IV, it is hardly likely that he had any trustworthy authority for it. The book must evidently have been arranged for some such purpose; on the whole however it is more likely that this was not the actual presentation copy, but another written about the same time and left in the hands of the author. The copy intended for presentation to the king, if such a copy there were, would probably have been more elaborately ornamented; and moreover the Latin lines on the last leaf, ‘Henrici quarti’ &c., bear the appearance of having been added later. The poet there speaks of himself as having become blind ‘in the first year of king Henry IV,’ and of having entirely ceased to write in consequence; and in another version of the same lines, which is found in the Glasgow MS. of the Vox Clamantis, he dates his blindness from the second year of King Henry’s reign. In any case it seems clear that his blindness did not come on immediately after Henry’s accession; for the Cronica Tripertita, a work of considerable length, must have been written after the death of Richard II, which took place some five months after the accession of Henry IV. It would be quite in accordance with Gower’s usual practice to keep a copy of the book by him and add to it or alter it from time to time; the Fairfax MS. of the Confessio Amantis and the All Souls copy of the Vox Clamantis are examples of this mode of proceeding: and I should[Pg lxxxii] be rather disposed to think that this volume remained in the author’s hands than that it was presented to the king. As to its subsequent history, if we are to regard the signature ‘Rychemond’ on the second leaf as a genuine autograph of Henry VII while Earl of Richmond, it would seem that the book passed at some time into royal hands, but it can hardly have come to the Earl of Richmond by any succession from Henry IV. After this we know nothing definite until we find it in the hands of the ‘aged Charles Gedde’ of St. Andrews, by whom it was given, as we have seen, to Fairfax in 1656, and by Fairfax in the same year to his friend and kinsman Sir Thomas Gower, no doubt on the supposition that he belonged to the family of the poet. He must have been one of the Gowers of Stittenham, and from him it has passed by descent to its present possessor.

The text given by the MS. seems to be on the whole a very correct one. For the Cinkante Balades it is the only manuscript authority, but as regards the Traitié it may be compared with several other copies contemporary with the author, and it seems to give as good a text as any. There seems no reason to doubt that it was written in the lifetime of the author, who may however have been unable owing to his failing eyesight to correct it himself. It was nevertheless carefully revised after being written, as is shown by various erasures and corrections both in the French and the English portions. This corrector’s hand is apparently different from both the other hands which appear in the manuscript. The best proof however of the trustworthiness of the text is the fact that hardly any emendations are required either by the metre or the sense. The difficulties presented by the text of the Roxburghe edition vanish for the most part on collation of the MS., and the number of corrections actually made in this edition is very trifling.

In a few points of spelling this MS. differs from that of the Mirour: for example, jeo (ieo) is almost always used in the Balades for je (but ie in Ded. i. 4), and the -ai termination is preferred to -ay, though both occur; similarly sui, joie, li, poi, where the Mirour has more usually suy, joye, ly, poy, &c.

What has been said with reference to the Mirour about the use of u and v, i and j, applies also here (except that the scribe of this MS. prefers i initially to I and sometimes writes u initially), and also in general what is said about division of words,[Pg lxxxiii] accents and contractions. The latter however in the present text of the Balades and Traitié are not indicated by italics. It should be noted that que in the text stands for a contracted form. The word is qe in the Balades, when it is fully written out, but quil, tanquil, &c., are used in the MS., q̅om must evidently be meant for quom, and we find que frequently in the Mirour. Such forms as auerai, deuera, liuere, &c., usually have er abbreviated, but we also find saueroit (viii. 2), auera (xvi. 3), aueray (xvii. 1), written out fully. Where the termination -ance has a line drawn over it, as in suffica̅n̅ce, fia̅n̅ce (iv. 2), it has been printed -aunce, and so cha̅n̅con (xl. 3); but aun is written out fully. In general it must be assumed that -oun ending a word represents o̅n̅, but in xxi. 4 we have noun written out fully in both cases.

In the matter of capitals the usage of the MS. is followed for the most part. The punctuation is of course that of the editor, and it may be observed that the previous editions have none.

TRAITIÉ.

This work, which is called by its author ‘un traitié selonc les auctours pour essampler les amantz marietz,’ is a series of eighteen balades, each composed of three seven-line stanzas without envoy, except in the case of the last, which has an additional stanza addressed ‘Al université de tout le monde,’ apologizing for the poet’s French and serving as a general envoy for the whole collection, though formally belonging to the last balade. The stanzas rhyme ab ab bcc, a form which is used frequently in the Cinkante Balades, as also in Gower’s English poem addressed to Henry IV and in the stanzas which are introduced into the eighth book of the Confessio Amantis. There are Latin marginal notes summarizing the contents of each balade, and the whole is concluded by some lines of Latin. As to the date, if we are to regard the Latin lines ‘Lex docet auctorum’ as a part of the work (and they are connected with it in all the copies), we have a tolerably clear indication in the concluding couplet:

This was written evidently just before the author’s marriage, which took place, as we know, near the beginning of the year 1398 (by the modern reckoning), and therefore it would seem[Pg lxxxiv] that the Traitié belongs to the year 1397. It is true that one MS. (Bodley 294) omits this concluding couplet, but in view of the fact that it is contained not only in all the other copies, but also in the Trin. Coll. Camb. MS., which seems to be derived from the same origin as Bodl. 294, we cannot attach much importance to the omission.

In several MSS. the Traitié is found attached to the Confessio Amantis, and with a heading to the effect that the author, having shown above in English the folly of those who love ‘par amour,’ will now write in French for the world generally a book to instruct married lovers by example to keep the faith of their espousals. But though appearing thus as a pendant to the English work in the Fairfax, Harleian, Bodley, Trin. Coll. Camb., Wadham, Keswick Hall and Wollaton MSS., it does not necessarily belong to it. It is absent in the great majority of copies of the Confessio Amantis, and in the Fairfax MS. it appears in a different hand from that of the English poem and was certainly added later. Moreover the Traitié is found by itself in the Trentham book, and following the Vox Clamantis in the All Souls and Glasgow MSS., in both these cases having been added later than the text of that work and in a different hand. We cannot tell what heading it had in the Trentham or the All Souls MSS., but probably the same as that of the Glasgow copy, which makes no reference to any other work. ‘This is a treatise which John Gower has made in accordance with the authors, touching the estate of matrimony, whereby married lovers may instruct themselves by example to hold the faith of their holy espousals.’ This variation of the heading is certainly due to the author, and we are entitled to regard the Traitié as in some sense an independent work, occasionally attached by the author to the Confessio Amantis, but also published separately.

As to the versification, the remarks already made upon that of the Balades apply also to these poems.

The subject of the work is defined by the title: it is intended to set forth by argument and example the nature and dignity of the state of marriage and the evils springing from adultery and incontinence. The tendency to moralize is naturally much stronger in these poems than in the Cinkante Balades, and they are consequently less poetical. The most pleasing is perhaps xv, ‘Comunes sont la cronique et l’istoire’: ‘Still is the folly of Lancelot and of Tristram remembered, that others by it may[Pg lxxxv] take warning. All the year round the fair of love is kept, where Cupid sells or gives away hearts: he makes men drink of one or the other of his two tuns, the one sweet and the other bitter. Thus the fortune of love is unstable: the lover is now in joy and now in torment, but the wise will be warned by others, as a bird avoids the trap in which he sees another caught, and they will not take delight in wanton love.’ Many of the examples are from stories already told in the Confessio Amantis, as those of Nectanabus, Hercules and Deianira, Jason, Clytemnestra, Lucretia, Paulina, Alboin and Rosamond, Tereus, Valentinian.

Text.—Of the Traitié there exist several contemporary copies besides that of the Trentham MS. It is found appended to the Confessio Amantis in MS. Fairfax 3, with a heading which closely connects it with that poem; it occurs among the various Latin pieces which follow the Vox Clamantis in All Souls MS. 98, and again in much the same kind of position in the MS. of the Vox Clamantis belonging to the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. The first two of these copies are, I have no doubt, in the same handwriting, that which I call the ‘second hand’ of MS. Fairfax 3, and I am of opinion that the third (that of the Glasgow MS.) is so also. This question of the handwritings found in contemporary copies of Gower will be discussed later, when the MSS. in question are more fully described: suffice it to say at present that these copies are all good, and they agree very closely both with one another and with that of the Trentham book, while at the same time they are independent of one another. They have all been collated throughout for this edition. Besides these original copies there is one in Harleian MS. 3869, which appears to be taken from Fairfax 3, and also in the following MSS., in all of which the Traitié follows the Confessio Amantis: Bodley 294, Trinity College, Cambridge, R. 3. 2, Wadham Coll. 13, and the Keswick Hall and Wollaton MSS. Of these Bodley 294 has been collated for this edition, and the rest occasionally referred to.

The MSS. may be tabulated as follows, further description being reserved for the occasions when they are more fully used:—

F.—Fairfax 3, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, containing the Confessio Amantis, the Traitié pour essampler, ff. 186 v^o-190, and several Latin poems.

S.—All Souls College, Oxford, 98, containing the Vox[Pg lxxxvi] Clamantis, Cronica Tripertita, a miscellaneous collection of Latin poems, and the Traitié, ff. 132-135.

T.—The Trentham MS., described above.

G.—Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, T. 2. 17, with nearly the same contents as S. The Traitié is ff. 124 v^o-128.

H.—Harleian 3869, in the British Museum, agreeing with F.

B.—Bodley 294, in the Bodleian Library, containing the Confessio Amantis, the Traitié, and a few Latin pieces.

Tr.—Trinity Coll. Camb. R. 3. 2, with nearly the same contents as B.

W.—Wadham Coll. Oxf. 13, Confessio Amantis and Traitié, the latter imperfect at the end.

K.—In the library of J. H. Gurney, Esq., Keswick Hall, Norwich, with the same contents as F.

A.—Lord Middleton’s MS., at Wollaton Hall.

The Traitié has been twice printed: first by the Roxburghe Club from the Trentham MS.[L], and then by Dr. Stengel, in both cases with the Cinkante Balades. The German editor unfortunately took as the basis of his text the copy in B, which is much inferior in correctness to those of several other MSS. which were within his reach[M]. He has also in many cases failed to give a correct representation of the MS. which he follows, and his collation of other copies is incomplete.

The text of the present edition is based upon that of F, which is at least as good as any of the three other copies which I have called contemporary, and has the advantage over two of them that it is perfect, whereas they have each lost a leaf. These four are so nearly on the same level of correctness that it matters little[Pg lxxxvii] on other grounds which of them we follow. A full collation is here given of T, S and G, and the readings of B are occasionally mentioned. H and K are probably dependent on F. Tr. is a moderately good copy, closely connected with B, but in view of the excellence of the other materials it is not worth collating; A is a manuscript of the same class, but rather less correct. Finally the text of W, which is late and full of blunders, may be set down as worthless.

[After the Table of Contents four leaves are lost, containing probably about forty-seven stanzas.]