least "had no mind to encourage him in the cul"tivation or exercise of them." He adds, "It "should seem that Edward, though adorned with

many royal and heroic virtues, had not the gift "of discerning and patronizing a great poet; a gift "which, like that of genuine poetry, is only be"stowed on the chosen few by the peculiar favour "of heaven." It is very certain that the gift of discerning the merits of a great English poet might have been bestowed on Edward by the peculiar favour of heaven, but it may be doubted whether he could reasonably be expected to possess it without such a special interposition.

It is to be remembered, that French had hitherto been the only language that was studied, though English was certainly not quite unknown at court; that Isabella, the mother of Edward, was a French woman; that he was sent to Paris at the very early age of thirteen, to assist her in her negociations with her brother the king of France; that he was married, by her means, to Philippa, a princess of Hainault; that he was only fifteen years old when he mounted the throne; and that after this period, the active scenes in which he was incessantly engaged, were not likely to allow him much leisure, for the purpose of completing his education. He began his reign, two years before the birth of

Chaucer, and could then have seen no specimens of English poetry superior to the dry chronicles of Robert of Gloucester. It may be presumed, therefore, that if he read any poetry it would be that of the French minstrels; and, that his preference of their compositions to those of his countrymen, was no great disparagement to his taste, may be inferred from the testimony of Chaucer himself, who says, in his envoi to the Complaint of Venus,

And eke to me it is a great penànce, Sith rhyme in English hath such scarcity To follow, word by word, the curiosity,

Of Graunson, flower of them that make in France.

What was worth the penance of translating, certainly deserved to be consulted in the original.

But political motives induced Edward to discourage the cultivation of French, the language of his enemies our native poetry received considerable improvements in the course of his long reign; and his grandson, who found it in this cultivated state, and who was perhaps acquainted with Gower's poetical talents, by means of his French sonnets already mentioned, may have naturally been solicitous that he should employ them in some English composition.

To return to the Confessio Amantis. This poem

is a long dialogue between a lover and his confessor, who is a priest of Venus, and is called GENIUS. As every vice is in its nature unamiable, it ought to follow, that immorality is unavoidably punished by the indignation of the fair sex; and that every fortunate lover must, of necessity, be a good man, and a good Christian; and upon this presumption, which, perhaps, is not strictly warranted by experience, the confessor passes in review, all the defects of the human character, and carefully scrutinizes the heart of his penitent with respect to each, before he will consent to give him absolution.

Because example is more impressive than precept, he illustrates his injunctions by a series of apposite tales, with the morality of which our lover professes to be highly edified; and, being of a more inquisitive turn than lovers usually are, or perhaps hoping to subdue his mistress, by directing against her the whole artillery of science, he gives his confessor an opportunity of incidentally instructing him in chemistry, and in the Aristotelian philosophy. At length, all the interest that he has endeavoured to excite, by the long and minute details of his sufferings, and by manifold proofs of his patience, is rather abruptly and unexpectedly extinguished: for he tells us, not that his mistress is inflexible or faithless, but that he is arrived at such a good old

age that the submission of his fair enemy, would not have been sufficient for insuring his triumph.

Through this elaborate work, Gower appears to have distributed all the contents of his commonplace book, and Mr. Warton has traced back many of these fragments, to the obscure sources from whence they were derived. These are, besides Colonna's romantic history of Troy, and the Gesta Romanorum already mentioned, the PANTHEON, or Memoriæ Seculorum, a Latin chronicle, written partly in prose and partly in verse, by Godfrey of Viterbo, who died in 1190; the chronicle of Cassiodorus, called Chronicon Breve, written at the command of Theodoric king of the Goths; and the chronicle of Isidorus, called Hispalensis. "It is "extremely probable," says Mr. Warton," that "the plan on which all these works are constructed, "that of deducing a perpetual history from the "creation to the writer's age, was partly taken "from Ovid's Metamorphosis, and partly from the "Bible."

For the scientific part of his work, Gower was most probably indebted to a spurious work attributed to Aristotle, called SECRETUM SECRETORUM, and to the Latin original of a treatise called "Les Dictes moraux des Philosophes, les Dictes "des Sages, et les Secrets d'Aristote," which was

afterwards translated into English by the unfortunate Anthony Widville first Earl of Rivers.

Chaucer, who knew and loved our poet, has comprised his character in a single epithet, and every reader must concur in the judgment of this great contemporary critic. While he is satisfied with being "the moral Gower," he always appears to advantage: he is wise, impressive, and sometimes almost sublime. The good sense and benevolence of his precepts, the solemnity with which they are enforced, and the variety of learning by which they are illustrated, make us forget that he is preaching in masquerade, and that our excellent instructor is a priest of Venus. But his narrative is often quite petrifying; and when we read in his work the tales with which we had been familiarized in the poems of Ovid, we feel a mixture of surprise and despair, at the perverse industry employed in removing every detail, on which the imagination had been accustomed to fasten. The author of the Metamorphosis was a poet, and at least sufficiently fond of ornament; Gower considers him as a mere annalist; scrupulously preserves his facts; relates them with great perspicuity; and is fully satisfied when he has extracted from them as much morality, as they can be reasonably expected to furnish.

The popularity of this writer is, perhaps, not