Between two golden tufts of summer grass,
I see the world through hot air as through glass,
And by my face sweet lights and colors pass.
Before me dark against the fading sky,
I watch three mowers mowing, as I lie:
With brawny arms they sweep in harmony.
Brown English faces by the sun burnt red,
Rich glowing color on bare throat and head,—
My heart would leap to watch them, were I dead!
And in my strong young living as I lie,
I seem to move with them in harmony,—
A fourth is mowing, and the fourth am I.
The music of the scythes that glide and leap,
The young men whistling as their great arms sweep,
And all the perfume and sweet sense of sleep,
The weary butterflies that droop their wings,
The dreamy nightingale that hardly sings,
And all the lassitude of happy things,
Is mingling with the warm and pulsing blood,
That gushes through my veins a languid flood,
And feeds my spirit as the sap a bud.
Behind the mowers, on the amber air,
A dark-green beech wood rises, still and fair,
A white path winding up it like a stair.
And see that girl, with pitcher on her head,
And clean white apron on her gown of red,—
Her evensong of love is but half said:
She waits the youngest mower. Now he goes;
Her cheeks are redder than a wild blush-rose;
They climb up where the deepest shadows close.
But though they pass, and vanish, I am there.
I watch his rough hands meet beneath her hair;
Their broken speech sounds sweet to me like prayer.
Ah! now the rosy children come to play,
And romp and struggle with the new-mown hay;
Their clear, high voices sound from far away.
They know so little why the world is sad;
They dig themselves warm graves, and yet are glad;
Their muffled screams and laughter make me mad!
I long to go and play among them there;
Unseen, like wind, to take them by the hair,
And gently make their rosy cheeks more fair.
The happy children! full of frank surprise,
And sudden whims and innocent ecstasies;
What Godhead sparkles from their liquid eyes!
No wonder round those urns of mingled clays
That Tuscan potters fashioned in old days,
And colored like the torrid earth ablaze,
We find the little gods and Loves portrayed,
Through ancient forests wandering undismayed,
And fluting hymns of pleasure unafraid.
They knew, as I do now, what keen delight
A strong man feels to watch the tender flight
Of little children playing in his sight.
I do not hunger for a well-stored mind;
I only wish to live my life, and find
My heart in unison with all mankind.
My life is like the single dewy star
That trembles on the horizon's primrose bar,—
A microcosm where all things living are.
And if, among the noiseless grasses, Death
Should come behind and take away my breath,
I should not rise as one who sorroweth:
For I should pass, but all the world would be
Full of desire and young delight and glee,—
And why should men be sad through loss of me?
The light is flying: in the silver blue
The young moon shines from her bright window through:
The mowers are all gone, and I go too.

RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL

(1823-)

R

udolf Von Gottschall was born in Breslau, September 30th, 1823. He was the son of a Prussian artillery officer, and as a lad gave early evidence of extraordinary talent. His father was transferred to the Rhine, and young Gottschall was sent successively to the gymnasiums of Mainz and Coblenz. Even in his school days, and before he entered the university, he had through his cleverness attained a certain degree of eminence. His career at the University of Königsberg, whither he went to pursue the study of jurisprudence, was interrupted by the results attendant upon a youthful ebullition of the spirit of freedom. His sympathy with the revolutionary element was too boldly expressed, and when in 1842 he published 'Lieder der Gegenwart' (Songs of the Present), he found it necessary to leave the university in order to avert impending consequences. In the following year he published 'Censurflüchtlinge' (Fugitives from the Censor), a poem of a kind not in the least likely to conciliate the authorities. He remained for a time with Count Reichenbach in Silesia, and then went to Berlin, where he was allowed to complete his studies. He was however refused the privilege of becoming a university docent, although he had regularly taken his degree of Dr. Juris.

R. von Gottschall R. von Gottschall

He now devoted himself wholly to poetry and general literature. For a while he held the position of stage manager in the theatre of Königsberg, and during this period produced the dramas 'Der Blinde von Alcalá' (The Blind Man of Alcalá: 1846), and 'Lord Byron in Italien' (Lord Byron in Italy: 1848). After leaving Königsberg he frequently changed his residence, living in Hamburg and Breslau, and later in Posen, where in 1852 he was editor of a newspaper. In 1853 he went to Italy, and after his return he settled in Leipzig. Here he definitely established himself, and undertook the editing of Blätter für Litterarische Unterhaltung (Leaves for Literary Amusement), and also of the monthly periodical Unsere Zeit (Our Time). He wrote profusely, and exerted an appreciable influence upon contemporary literature. He was ennobled by the Emperor in 1877.

As a poet and man of letters, Gottschall possesses unusual gifts, and is a writer of most extraordinary activity. His fecundity is astonishing, and the amount of his published work fills many volumes. His versatility is no less remarkable than his productiveness. Dramatist and critic, novelist and poet,—in all his various fields he is never mediocre. Chief among his dramatic works are the tragedies 'Katharina Howard'; 'King Carl XII.'; 'Bernhard of Weimar'; 'Amy Robsart'; 'Arabella Stuart'; and the excellent comedy 'Pitt and Fox.' Of narrative poems the best known are 'Die Göttin, ein Hohes Lied vom Weibe' (The Goddess, a Song of Praise of Woman), 1852; 'Carlo Zeno,' 1854; and 'Sebastopol,' 1856.

He has published numerous volumes of verses which take a worthy rank in the poetry of the time. His first 'Gedichte' (Poems) appeared in 1849; 'Neue Gedichte' (New Poems) in 1858; 'Kriegslieder'(War Songs) in 1870; and 'Janus' and 'Kriegs und Friedens Gedichte' (Poems of War and Peace) in 1873. In his novels he is no less successful, and of these may be mentioned—'Im Banne des Schwarzen Adlers' (In the Ban of the Black Eagle: 1876); 'Welke Blätter' (Withered Leaves: 1878); and 'Das Goldene Kalb' (The Golden Calf: 1880).

It is however chiefly as critic that his power has been most widely exerted, and prominent among the noteworthy productions of later years stand his admirable 'Porträts und Studien' (Portraits and Studies: 1870-71); and 'Die Deutsche Nationallitteratur in der Ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts' (The German National Literature in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: 1855), continued to the present time in 1892, when the whole appeared as 'The German National Literature of the Nineteenth Century.'


HEINRICH HEINE

From 'Portraits and Studies'

About no recent poet has so much been said and sung as about Heinrich Heine. The youngest writer, who for the first time tries his pen, does not neglect to sketch with uncertain outlines the portrait of this poet; and the oldest sour-tempered professor of literature, who turns his back upon the efforts of the present with the most distinguished disapproval, lets fall on the picture a few rays of light, in order to prove the degeneration of modern literature in the Mephistophelean features of this its chief. Heine's songs are everywhere at home. They are to be found upon the music rack of the piano, in the school-books, in the slender libraries of minor officers and young clerks. However difficult it may be to compile an editio castigata of his poems, every age, every generation has selected from among them that which has delighted it. Citations from Heine, winged words in verse and prose, buzz through the air of the century like a swarm of insects: splendid butterflies with gayly glistening wings, beautiful day moths and ghostly night moths, tormenting gnats, and bees armed with evil stings. Heine's works are canonical books for the intellectual, who season their judgments with citations from this poet, model their conversation on his style, interpret him, expand the germ cell of his wit to a whole fabric of clever developments. Even if he is not a companion on the way through life, like great German poets, and smaller Brahmins who for every day of our house-and-life calendar give us an aphorism on the road, there are nevertheless, in the lives of most modern men, moods with which Heine's verse harmonize with wondrous sympathy; moments in which the intimacy with this poet is greater than the friendship, even if this be of longer duration, with our classic poets.

It is apparently idle to attempt to say anything new of so much discussed a singer of modern times, since testimony favorable and unfavorable has been drained to exhaustion by friend and foe. Who does not know Heine,—or rather, who does not believe that he knows him? for, as is immediately to be added, acquaintance with this poet extends really only to a few of his songs, and to the complete picture which is delivered over ready-made from one history of literature into another. Nothing, however, is more perilous and more fatal than literary tradition! Not merely decrees and laws pass along by inheritance, like a constitutional infirmity, but literary judgments too. They form at last a subject of instruction like any other; a dead piece of furniture in the spiritual housekeeping, which, like everything that has been learned, is set as completed to one side. We know enough of this sort of fixed pictures, which at last pass along onward as the fixed ideas of a whole epoch, until a later unprejudiced investigation dissolves this rigid-grown wisdom, sets it to flowing, and forms out of a new mixture of its elements a new and more truthful portrait.

It is not to be affirmed however that Heine's picture, as it stands fixed and finished in the literature and the opinion of the present, is mistaken and withdrawn. It is dead, like every picture; there is lacking the living, changing play of features. We have of Heine only one picture before us; of our great poets several. Goethe in his "storm and stress," in Frankfurt, Strassburg, and Wetzlar,—the ardent lover of a Friedrike of Sesenheim, the handsome, joyous youth, is different in our minds from the stiff and formal Weimar minister; the youthful Apollo different from the Olympic Jupiter. There lies a young development between, that we feel and are curious to know. It is similar with Schiller. The poet of the 'Robbers' with its motto In tyrannos, the fugitive from the military school; and the Jena professor, the Weimar court councilor who wrote 'The Homage of the Arts,'—are two different portraits.

But Heine is to our view always the same, always the representative of humor with "a laughing tear" in his escutcheon, always the poetic anomaly, coquetting with his pain and scoffing it away. Young or old, well or ill, we do not know him different.

And yet this poet too had a development, upon which at different times different influences worked....

The first epoch in this course of development may be called the "youthful"; the 'Travel Pictures' and the lyrics contained in it form its brilliant conclusion. This is no storm-and-stress period in the way that, as Schiller and Goethe passed through it, completed works first issued under its clarifying influence. On the contrary, it is characteristic of Heine that we have to thank this youthful epoch for his best and most peculiarly national poems. The wantonness and the sorrows of this youth, in their piquant mixture, created these songs permeated by the breath of original talent, whose physiognomy, more than all that follow later, bears the mark of the kind and manner peculiar to Heine, and which for a long time exercised in our literature through a countless host of imitators an almost epidemic effect. But these lyric pearls, which in their purity and their crystalline polish are a lasting adornment of his poet's crown, and belong to the lyric treasures of our national literature, were also gathered in his first youthful epoch, when he still dived down into the depths of life in the diving-bell of romanticism.

Although Heinrich Heine asserted of himself that he belonged to the "first men of the century," since he was born in the middle of New Year's night, 1800, more exact investigation has nevertheless shown that truth is here sacrificed to a witticism. Heine is still a child of the eighteenth century, by whose most predominant thoughts his work too is influenced, and with whose European coryphæus, Voltaire, he has an undeniable relationship. He was born, as Strodtmann proves, on the 13th of December, 1799, in Düsseldorf, His father was a plain cloth-merchant; his mother, of the family Von Geldern, the daughter of a physician of repute. The opinion, however, that Heine was the fruit of a Jewish-Christian marriage, is erroneous. The family Von Geldern belonged to the orthodox Jewish confession. One of its early members, according to family tradition, although he was a Jew, had received the patent of nobility from one of the prince electors of Jülich-Kleve-Berg, on account of a service accorded him. As, moreover, Schiller's and Goethe's mothers worked upon their sons an appreciable educational influence, so was this also the case with Heine's mother, who is described as a pupil of Rousseau and an adorer of Goethe's elegies, and thus reached far out beyond the measure of the bourgeois conditions in which she lived....

That which however worked upon his youthful spirit, upon his whole poetical manner, was the French sovereignty in the Rhine-lands at the time of his childhood and youth. The Grand Duchy of Berg, to which Düsseldorf belonged, was ruled in the French manner; a manner which, apart from the violent conscriptions, when compared with the Roman imperial periwig style had great advantages, and in particular granted to Jews complete equal rights with Christians, since the revolutionary principle of equality had outlived the destruction of freedom. Thus the Jews in Düsseldorf in their greater part were French sympathizers, and Heine's father too was an ardent adherent of the new régime. This as a matter of course could not remain without influence upon the son, so much the less as he had French instruction at the lyceum. A vein of the lively French blood is unmistakable in his works. It drew him later on to Paris, where he made the martyr stations of his last years. And of all recent German poets, Heinrich Heine is the best known in France, better known even than our classic poets; for the French feel this vein of related blood....

From his youth springs, too, Heine's enthusiasm for the great Napoleon, which however he has never transmitted to the successors of the idées Napoléoniennes. The thirteen-year-old pupil of the gymnasium saw the Emperor in the year 1811, and then again in May 1812; and later on in the 'Book Legrand' of the 'Travel Pictures' he strikes up the following dithyrambic, which, as is always the case with Heine where the great Cæsar is concerned, tones forth pure and full, with genuine poetic swing, without those dissonances in which his inmost feelings often flow. "What feelings came over me," he exclaims, "when I saw him himself, with my own highly favored eyes, him himself, Hosanna, the Emperor! It was in the avenue of the Court garden in Düsseldorf. As I pushed myself through the gaping people, I thought of his deeds and his battles, and my heart beat the general march—and nevertheless, I thought at the same time of the police regulation that no one under a penalty of five thalers should ride through the middle of the avenue. And the Emperor rode quietly through the middle of the avenue; no policeman opposed him. Behind him, his suite rode proudly on snorting horses and loaded with gold and jewels, the trumpets sounded, and the people shouted with a thousand voices, 'Long live the Emperor!'" To this enthusiasm for Napoleon, Heine not long afterward gave a poetic setting in the ballad 'The Two Grenadiers.'...

The Napoleonic remembrances of his youth, which retained that unfading freshness and enthusiasm that are wont to belong to all youthful remembrances, were of vital influence upon Heine's later position in literature; they formed a balance over against the romantic tendency, and hindered him from being drawn into it. Precisely in that epoch when the beautiful patriotism of the Wars of Liberation went over into the weaker feeling of the time of the restoration, and romanticism, grown over-devout, in part abandoned itself to externals, in part became a centre of reactionary efforts, Heine let this Napoleonic lightning play on the sultry heavens of literature, in the most daring opposition to the ruling disposition of the time and a school of poetry from which he himself had proceeded; while he declared war upon its followers. However greatly he imperiled his reputation as a German patriot through these hosannas offered to the hereditary enemy, just as little was it to be construed amiss that the remembrance of historical achievements, and of those principles of the Revolution which even the Napoleonic despotism must represent, were a salutary ventilation in the miasmic atmosphere of the continually decreasing circle which at that time described German literature. In the prose of Heine, which like Béranger glorified Cæsar, slumbered the first germs of the political lyric, which led again out of the moonlit magic realm of romanticism into the sunny day of history.

A hopeless youthful love for a charming Hamburg maiden was the Muse of the Heine lyric, whose escutcheon has for a symbol "the laughing tear." With the simplicity of Herodotus the poet himself relates the fact, the experience, in the well-known poem with the final strophe:—

"It is an ancient story,
But still 'tis ever new:
To whomsoe'er it happens
His heart is broken too."

We comprehend from biographical facts the inner genesis of the Heine lyric. Heine was in the position of Werther, but a Werther was for the nineteenth century an anomaly; a lyric of this sort in yellow nankeen breeches would have travestied itself. The content of the range of thought, the circle of world-shaping efforts, had so expanded itself since the French Revolution that a complete dissolution into sentimental extravagance had become an impossibility. The justification of the sentiment was not to be denied; but it must not be regarded as the highest, as the life-determining element. It needed a rectification which should again rescue the freedom of the spirit. Humor alone could accomplish Munchausen's feat, and draw itself by its own hair out of the morass. Heine expressed his feelings with genuine warmth; he formed them into drawn pictures and visions; but then he placed himself on the defensive against them. He is the modern Werther, who instead of loading his pistol with a ball, loads it with humor. Artistic harmony suffered under this triumph of spiritual freedom; but that which appeared in his imitators as voluntary quibbling came from Heine of inner necessity. The subject of his first songs is the necessary expression of a struggle between feeling and spirit, between the often visionary dream life of a sentiment and self-consciousness, soaring free out over the world, which adjudged absorption in a single feeling as one-sided and unjustified. Later on, to be sure, these subjects of youthful inspiration became in Heine himself a satiric-humoristic manner, which regarded as a model worked much evil in literature. In addition to personal necessity through one's own experience, there was for a genius such as Heine's also a literary necessity, which lay in the development of our literature in that epoch. It was the Indian Summer of romanticism, whose cobwebs at this time flew over the stubble of our poetry. The vigorous onset of the lyricists of the Wars of Liberation had again grown lame; people reveled in the album sentiments of Tiedge and Mahlmann; the spectres of Amadeus Hoffmann and the lovely high-born maidens of knight Fouqué were regarded then as the noblest creations of German fantasy. Less chosen spirits, that is to say, the entire great reading public of the German nation, which ever felt toward its immortals a certain aversion, refreshed itself with the lukewarm water of the poetry of Clauren, from out of which, instead of the Venus Anadyomene, appear a Mimili and other maiden forms, pretty, but drawn with a stuffed-out plasticism. On the stage reigned the "fate tragedies" upon whose lyre the strings were wont to break even in the first scene, and whose ghosts slipped silently over all the German boards. In a word, spirits controlled the poetry of the time more than spirit.

Heine however was a genuine knight of the spirit, and even if he conjured up his lyric spectres, he demanded no serious belief in them—they were dissolving pictures of mist; and if he followed his overflowing feelings, the mawkish sentiments of romanticism occurred to him and disgusted him with the extravagant expression of his love pain, and he mocked himself, the time, and the literature,—dissolved the sweet accords in glaring dissonances, so that they should not be in tune with the sentimental street songs of the poets of the day. In these outer and inner reasons lie the justification and the success of the lyric poetry of Heine. It designates an act of self-consciousness of the German spirit, which courageously lifts itself up out of idle love complainings and fantastic dream life, and at the same time mocks them both. An original talent like Heine's was needed to give to the derided sentiment such a transporting magic, to the derision itself such an Attic grace, that the sphinx of his poetry, with the beautiful face and the rending claws, always produced the impression of a work of art. The signification in literary history of these songs of Heine is not to be underestimated. They indicate the dissolution of romanticism, and with them begins the era of modern German poetry.

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by William H. Carpenter


JOHN GOWER

(1325?-1408)

S

ince Caxton, the first printer of 'Confessio Amantis' (The Confession of a Lover), described Gower as a "squyer borne in Walys in the tyme of Kyng Richard the second," there has been a diversity of opinion about his birthplace, and he has been classed variously with prosperous Gowers until of late, when the county assigned to him is Kent. His birth-year is placed approximately at 1325. We know nothing of his early life and education. It has been guessed that he went to Oxford, and afterwards traveled in the troubled kingdom of France. Such a course might have been followed by a man of his estate. He had means, for English property records (in this instance the rolls of Chancery, the parchment foundation of English society) still preserve deeds of his holdings in Kent and Essex and elsewhere.

John Gower John Gower

His life lay along with that of Chaucer's, in the time when Edward III. and his son the Black Prince were carrying war into France, and the English Parliament were taking pay in plain speaking for what they granted in supplies, and wresting at the same time promises of reform from the royal hand. But Gower and Chaucer were not only contemporaries: they were of like pursuit, tastes, and residence; they were friends; and when Chaucer under Richard II., the grandson and successor of Edward, went to France upon the mission of which Froissart speaks, he named John Gower as one of his two attorneys while he should be away. Notice of Gower's marriage to Agnes Groundolf late in life—in 1397—is still preserved. Three years after this he became blind,—it was the year 1400, in which Chaucer died,—and in 1408 he died.

"The infirm poet," says Morley, "spent the evening of his life at St. Mary Overies [St. Mary-over-the-River], in retirement from all worldly affairs except pious and liberal support of the advancing building works in the priory, and in the church now known as St. Saviour's [Southwark], to which he bequeathed his body. His will, made not long before death, bequeathed his soul to God, his body to be buried in St. Mary Overies. The poet bequeathed also 13s. 4d. to each of the four parish churches of Southwark for ornaments and lights, besides 6s. 8d. for prayers to each of their curates. It is not less characteristic that he left also 40s. for prayers to the master of St. Thomas's Hospital, and, still for prayers, 6s. 8d. to each of its priests, 3s. 4d. to each Sister in the hospital, twenty pence to each nurse of the infirm there, and to each of the infirm twelve pence. There were similar bequests to St. Thomas Elsing Spital, a priory and hospital that stood where now stands Sion College. St. Thomas Elsing Spital, founded in 1329 by William Elsing, was especially commended to the sympathies of the blind old poet, as it consisted of a college for a warden, four priests, and two clerks, who had care of one hundred old, blind, and poor persons of both sexes, preference being given to blind, paralytic, and disabled priests. Like legacies were bequeathed also to Bedlam-without-Bishopsgate, and to St. Mary's Hospital, Westminster. Also there were bequests of ten shillings to each of the leper-nurses. Two robes (one of white silk, the other of blue baudekin,—a costly stuff with web of gold and woof of silk), also a new dish and chalice, and a new missal, were bequeathed to the perpetual service of the altar of the chapel of St. John the Baptist, in which his body was to be buried. To the prior and convent he left a great book, a 'Martyrology,' which had been composed and written for them at his expense. To his wife Agnes he left a hundred pounds, three cups, one coverlet, two salt-cellars, and a dozen silver spoons; also all his beds and chests, with the furnishings of hall, pantry, and kitchen; also a chalice and robe for the altar of the chapel of their house; and she was to have for life all rents due to him from his manors of Southwell (in Nottingham) and Moulton (in Suffolk)."

His wife was one of his executors. The will is still preserved at Lambeth Palace.

Gower's tomb and monument may also still be seen at St. Saviour's, where the description Berthelet gave of them in 1532 is, aside from the deadening of the paintings, true:—"Somewhat after the olde ffashion he lyeth ryght sumptuously buryed, with a garland on his head, in token that he in his lyfe dayes flouryshed freshely in literature and science." The head of his stone effigy lies upon three volumes representing Gower's three great works; the hair falls in long curls; the robe is closely buttoned to the feet, which rest upon a lion, and the neck is encircled with a collar, from which a chain held a small swan, the badge of Henry IV. "Besyde on the wall where as he lyeth," continues Berthelet, "there be peynted three virgins, with crownes on theyr heades; one of the which is written Charitie, and she holdeth this devise in her hande:—

'En toy qui fitz de Dieu le Pere
Sauve soit que gist souz cest piere.'
(In thee, who art Son of God the Father,
Be he saved who lieth under this stone.)

"The second is wrytten Mercye, which holdeth in her hande this devise:—

'O bone Jesu fait ta mercy
Al alme dont le corps gist icy.'
(O good Jesus, grant thy mercy
To the soul whose body lies here.)

"The thyrde of them is wrytten Pity, which holdeth in her hand this devise:—

'Pur ta pite, Jesu regarde,
Et met cest alme en sauve garde.'"
(For thy pity, Jesus, see;
And take this soul in thy safe guard.)

The monument was repaired in 1615, 1764, and 1830.

The three works which pillow the head of the effigy indicate Gower's 'Speculum Meditantis' (The Looking-Glass of One Meditating), which the poet wrote in French; the 'Vox Clamantis' (The Voice of One Crying), in Latin; and the 'Confessio Amantis,' in English. It should be remembered in noting this mixture of tongues, that in Gower's early life the English had no national speech. The court, Parliament, nobles, and the courts of law used French; the Church held its service in Latin; while the inhabitants of Anglo-Saxon blood clung to the language of their fathers, which they had modified by additions from the Norman tongue. It was not until 1362 that Parliament was opened by a speech in English. "There is," says Dr. Pauli, "no better illustration of the singular transition to the English language than a short enumeration and description of Gower's writings." Of the 'Speculum Meditantis,' a treatise in ten books on the duties of married life, no copy is known to exist. The 'Vox Clamantis' was the voice of the poet, singing in Latin elegiac of the terrible evils which led to the rise of the commons and their march to London under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw in 1381. It is doubtless a true picture of the excesses and miseries of the day. The remedy, the poet says, is in reform—right living and love of England. Simony in the prelates, avarice and drunkenness in the libidinous priests, wealth and luxury in the mendicant orders, miscarrying of justice in the courts, enrichment of individuals by excessive taxes,—these are the subjects of the voice crying in the wilderness.

Gower's greatest work, however, is the 'Confessio Amantis.' In form it is a dialogue between a lover and his confessor, who is a priest of Venus. In substance it is a setting-forth, with moralizings which are at times touching and elevated, of one hundred and twelve different stories, from sources so different as the Bible, Ovid, Josephus, the 'Gesta Romanorum,' Valerius Maximus, Statius, Boccaccio, etc. Thirty thousand eight-syllabled rhymed lines make up the work. There are different versions. The first was dedicated to Richard II., and the second to his successor, Henry of Lancaster. Besides these large works, a number of French ballades, and also English and Latin short poems, are preserved. "They have real and intrinsic merit," says Todd: "they are tender, pathetic, and poetical, and place our old poet Gower in a more advantageous point of view than that in which he has heretofore been usually seen."

Estimates of Gower's writings are various; but even his most hostile judges admit the pertinence of the epithet with which Chaucer hails him in his dedication of 'Troilus and Creseide':—

"O morall Gower, this bookè I direct
To thee and to the philosophicall Strode,
To vouchsafè there need is to correct
Of your benignities and zealès good."

Then Skelton the laureate, in his long song upon the death of Philip Sparrow (which recalls the exquisite gem of Catullus in a like threnody), takes occasion to say:—

"Gower's englysshè is olde,
And of no valúe is tolde;
His mattér is worth gold,
And worthy to be enrold."

And again:—

Gower that first garnishèd our English rude."

Old Puttenham also bears this testimony:—"But of them all [the English poets] particularly this is myne opinion, that Chaucer, with Gower, Lidgate, and Harding, for their antiquitie ought to have the first place."

Taine dismisses him with little more than a fillip, and Lowell, while discoursing appreciatively on Chaucer, says:—

"Gower has positively raised tediousness to the precision of science; he has made dullness an heirloom for the students of our literary history. As you slip to and fro on the frozen levels of his verse, which give no foothold to the mind; as your nervous ear awaits the inevitable recurrence of his rhyme, regularly pertinacious as the tick of an eight-day clock, and reminding you of Wordsworth's

'Once more the ass did lengthen out
The hard dry seesaw of his horrible bray,'

you learn to dread, almost to respect, the powers of this indefatigable man. He is the undertaker of the fair mediæval legend, and his style has the hateful gloss, the seemingly unnatural length, of a coffin."

Yet hear Morley:—

"To this day we hear among our living countrymen, as was to be heard in Gower's time and long before, the voice passing from man to man, that in spite of admixture with the thousand defects incident to human character, sustains the keynote of our literature, and speaks from the soul of our history the secret of our national success. It is the voice that expresses the persistent instinct of the English mind to find out what is unjust among us and undo it, to find out duty to be done and do it, as God's bidding.... In his own Old English or Anglo-Saxon way he tries to put his soul into his work. Thus in the 'Vox Clamantis' we have heard him asking that the soul of his book, not its form, be looked to; and speaking the truest English in such sentences as that 'the eye is blind and the ear deaf, that convey nothing down to the heart's depth; and the heart that does not utter what it knows is as a live coal under ashes. If I know little, there may be another whom that little will help.... But to the man who believes in God, no power is unattainable if he but rightly feels his work; he ever has enough, whom God increases.' This is the old spirit of Cædmon and of Bede; in which are laid, while the earth lasts, the strong foundations of our literature. It was the strength of such a temper in him that made Gower strong. 'God knows,' he says again, 'my wish is to be useful; that is the prayer that directs my labor.' And while he thus touches the root of his country's philosophy, the form of his prayer—that what he has written may be what he would wish it to be—is still a thoroughly sound definition of good English writing. His prayer is that there may be no word of untruth, and that 'each word may answer to the thing it speaks of, pleasantly and fitly; that he may flatter in it no one, and seek in it no praise above the praise of God.'"

The part of Gower's writing here brought before the reader is the quaintly told and charming story of Petronella, from 'Liber Primus' of the 'Confessio.' It may be evidence that all the malediction upon the poet above quoted is not deserved.

The 'Confessio Amantis' has been edited and collated with the best manuscripts by Dr. Reinhold Pauli (1857). The 'Vox Clamantis' was printed for the first time in 1850, under the editorship of H. O. Coxe and for the Roxburghe Club. The 'Balades and Other Poems' are also included in the publication of the Roxburghe Club. Other sources of information regarding Gower are 'Illustrations of the Lives and Writings of Gower and Chaucer' by Henry J. Todd (1810); Henry Morley's reviews in 'English Writers'; and various short articles.


PETRONELLA

From the 'Confessio Amantis'

A king whilom was yonge and wise,
The which set of his wit great prise.
Of depe ymaginations
And straunge interpretations,
Problemes and demaundès eke
His wisedom was to finde and seke;
Wherof he wolde in sondry wise
Opposen hem that weren wise.
But none of hem it mightè bere
Upon his word to yive answére;
[1]
Out taken one, which was a knight:
To him was every thing so light,
That also sone as he hem herde
The kingès wordès he answerde,
What thing the king him axè wolde,
Whereof anone the trouth he tolde.
The king somdele had an envie,
And thought he wolde his wittès plie
To setè some conclusion,
Which shuldè be confusion
Unto this knight, so that the name
And of wisdom the highè fame
Towárd him selfe he woldè winne.
And thus of all his wit withinne
This king began to studie and muse
What straungè matér he might use
The knightès wittès to confounde;
And atè last he hath it founde,
And for the knight anon he sente,
That he shall tellè what he mente.
Upon three points stood the matére,
Of questions as thou shaltè here.
The firstè pointè of all thre
Was this: what thing in his degre
Of all this world hath nedè lest,
And yet men helpe it allthermest.
The second is: what moste is worth
And of costáge is lest put forth.
The thrid is: which is of most cost,
And lest is worth, and goth to lost.
The king these thre demaundès axeth.
To the knight this law he taxeth:
That he shall gone, and comen ayein
The thriddè weke, and tell him pleine
To every point, what it amounteth.
And if so be that he miscounteth
To make in his answére a faile,
There shall none other thinge availe,
The king saith, but he shall be dede
And lese his goodès and his hede.
This knight was sory of this thinge,
And wolde excuse him to the kinge;
But he ne wolde him nought forbere,
And thus the knight of his answére
Goth home to take avisement.
But after his entendement
The more he cast his wit about,
The more he stant thereof in doubte.
Tho[2] wist he well the kingès herte,
That he the deth ne shulde asterte,[3]
And suche a sorroe to him hath take
That gladship he hath all forsake.
He thought first upon his life,
And after that upon his wife,
Upon his children eke also,
Of whichè he had doughteres two.
The yongest of hem had of age
Fourtene yere, and of visage
She was right faire, and of stature
Lich to an hevenlich figure,
And of manér and goodly speche,
Though men wolde all landès seche,
They shulden nought have founde her like.
She sigh[4] her fader sorroe and sike,[5]
And wist nought the causè why.
So cam she to him prively,
And that was wher he made his mone
Within a gardin all him one.[6]
Upon her knees she gan down falle
With humble herte, and to him calle
And saidè:—"O good fader dere,
Why makè ye thus hevy chere,[7]
And I wot nothinge how it is?
And well ye knowè, fader, this,
What ádventurè that you felle
Ye might it saufly to me telle;
For I have oftè herd you saide,
That ye such truste have on me laide,
That to my suster ne to my brother
In all this worlde ne to none other
Ye durstè telle a privete
So well, my fader, as to me.
Forthy,[8] my fader, I you praie
Ne casteth nought that hert[9] awaie,
For I am she that woldè kepe
Your honour." And with that to wepe
Her eye may nought be forbore;[10]
She wisheth for to ben unbore,[11]
Er[12] that her fader so mistriste
To tellen her of that he wiste.
And ever among mercy[13] she cride,
That he ne shulde his counseil hide
From her, that so wolde him good
And was so nigh flesshe and blood.
So that with weping, atè laste
His chere upon his childe he caste,
And sorroefully to that she praide[14]
He tolde his tale, and thus he saide:—
"The sorroe, doughter, which I make
Is nought all only for my sake,
But for the bothe and for you alle.
For suche a chaunce is me befalle,
That I shall er this thriddè day
Lese all that ever I lesè may,
My life and all my good therto.
Therefore it is I sorroe so."
"What is the cause, alas," quod she,
"My fader, that ye shulden be
Dede and destruied in suche a wise?"
And he began the points devise,
Which as the king tolde him by mouthe,
And said her pleinly, that he couthe
Answeren to no point of this.
And she, that hereth howe it is,
Her counseil yaf[15] and saide tho[16]:—
"My fader, sithen it is so,
That ye can se none other weie,
But that ye must nedès deie,
I wolde pray you of o[17] thinge,—
Let me go with you to the kinge,
And ye shall make him understonde,
How ye, my wittès for to fonde,
Have laid your answere upon me,
And telleth him in such degre
Upon my worde ye wol abide
To life or deth, what so betide.
For yet perchaunce I may purchace
With some good word the kingès grace,
Your life and eke your good to save.
For oftè shall a woman have
Thing, whiche a man may nought areche."
The fader herd his doughters speche,
And thought there was no reson in,
And sigh his ownè life to winne
He couthè done himself no cure.[18]
So better him thought in àventure
To put his life and all his good,
Than in the manner as it stood,
His life incertein for to lese.
And thus thenkend he gan to chese
To do the counseil of this maid,
And toke the purpose which she said.
The day was comen, and forth they gone;
Unto the court they come anone,
Where as the kinge in his jugement
Was set and hath this knight assent.
Arraièd in her bestè wise,
This maiden with her wordès wise
Her fader leddè by the honde
Into the place,[19] where he fonde
The king with other which he wolde;
And to the king knelend he tolde
As he enformèd was to-fore,
And praith the king, that he therfore
His doughters wordès woldè take;
And saith, that he woll undertake
Upon her wordès for to stonde.
Tho was ther great merveile on honde,
That he, which was so wise a knight,
His life upon so yonge a wight
Besettè wolde in jeopartie,
And many it helden for folie.
But at the lastè, netheles,
The king commaundeth ben in pees,
And to this maide he cast his chere,[20]
And saide he wolde her talè here,
And bad her speke; and she began:—
"My legè lord, so as I can,"
Quod she, "the pointès which I herde,
They shull of reson ben answerde.
The first I understonde is this:
What thinge of all the worlde it is,
Which men most helpe and hath lest nede.
My legè lord, this wolde I rede:
The erthe it is, which evermo
With mannès labour is bego
As well in winter as in maie.
The mannès honde doth what he may
To helpe it forth and make it riche,
And forthy men it delve and diche,
And even it with strength of plough,
Wher it hath of him self inough
So that his nede is atè leste.
For every man, birdè, and beste
Of flour and gras and roote and rinde
And every thing by way of kinde
Shall sterve, and erthe it shall become
As it was out of erthè nome,[21]
It shall be therthe torne ayein.[22]
And thus I may by reson sein
That erthè is the most nedeles
And most men helpe it netheles;
So that, my lord, touchend of this
I have answerde how that it is.
That other point I understood,
Which most is worth, and most is good,
And costeth lest a man to kepe:
My lorde, if ye woll takè kepe,[23]
I say it is humilitè,
Through whichè the high Trinitè
As for desertè of pure love
Unto Mariè from above,
Of that he knewe her humble entente,
His ownè Sone adown he sente
Above all other, and her he chese
For that vertu, which bodeth pees.
So that I may by reson calle
Humilitè most worthe of alle,
And lest it costeth to mainteine
In all the worlde, as it is seine.
For who that hath humblesse on honde,
He bringeth no werres into londe,
For he desireth for the best
To setten every man in reste.
Thus with your highè reverence
Me thenketh that this evidence
As to this point is suffisaunt.
And touchend of the remenaunt,
Which is the thridde of your axinges,
What lest is worth of allè thinges,
And costeth most, I telle it pride,
Which may nought in the heven abide.
For Lucifer with hem that felle
Bar pridè with him into helle.
There was pride of to grete cost
Whan he for pride hath heven lost;
And after that in Paradise
Adam for pridè lost his prise
In middel-erth. And eke also
Pride is the cause of allè wo,
That all the world ne may suffice
To staunche of pridè the reprise.
Pride is the heved[24] of all sinne,
Which wasteth all and may nought winne;
Pride is of every mis[25] the pricke[26];
Pride is the worstè of all wicke,
And costeth most and lest is worth
In placè where he hath his forth.
Thus have I said that I woll say
Of min answére, and to you pray,
My legè lorde, of your office,
That ye such grace and suche justice
Ordeignè for my fader here,
That after this, whan men it here,
The world therof may spekè good."
The king, which reson understood,
And hath all herde how she hath said,
Was inly glad, and so well paid,
That all his wrath is over go.
And he began to lokè tho
Upon this maiden in the face,
In which he found so mochel grace,
That all his prise on her he laide
In audience, and thus he saide:—
"My fairè maidè, well the[27] be
Of thin answére, and eke of the
Me liketh well, and as thou wilte,
Foryivè be thy faders gilte.
And if thou were of such lignage,
That thou to me were of parage,
And that thy fader were a pere,
As he is now a bachelere,
So siker as I have a life,
Thou sholdest thannè be my wife.
But this I saiè netheles,
That I woll shapè thin encrese;
What worldès good that thou wolt crave
Are of my yift, and thou shalt have."
And she the king with wordès wise,
Knelende, thanketh in this wise:—
"My legè lord, god mot you quite.[28]
My fader here hath but a lite
Of warison,[29] and that he wende
Had all be[30] lost, but now amende
He may well through you noble grace."
With that the king right in his place
Anon forth in that freshè hete
An erldome, which than of eschete
Was latè falle into his honde,
Unto this knight with rent and londe
Hath yove, and with his chartre sesed,
And thus was all the noise appesed.
This maiden, which sate on her knees
To-fore the kingès charitees,
Commendeth and saith evermore:—
"My legè lord, right now to-fore
Ye saide, and it is of recorde,
That if my fader were a lorde
And pere unto these other grete,
Ye wolden for nought ellès lette,
That I ne sholdè be your wife.
And thus wote every worthy life
A kingès worde mot nede be holde.
Forthy my lord, if that ye wolde
So great a charitè fulfille,
God wotè it were well my wille.
For he which was a bachelere,
My fader, is now made a pere;
So whan as ever that I cam,
An erlès doughter nowe I am."
This yongè king, which peisèd[31] all
Her beautè and her wit withall,
As he, which was with lovè hente,[32]
Anone therto gaf his assente.
He might nought the place asterte,
That she nis lady of his herte.
So that he toke her to his wife
To holdè, while that he hath life.
And thus the king towárd his knight
Accordeth him, as it is right.
And over this good is to wite[33]
In the cronique as it is write,
This noble kinge, of whom I tolde,
Of Spainè by tho daiès olde
The kingdom had in governaunce,
And as the boke maketh remembraunce,
Alphonsè was his propre name.
The knight also, if I shall name,
Danz Petro hight, and as men telle,
His doughter wisè Petronelle
Was clepèd, which was full of grace.
And that was sene in thilkè place,
Where she her fader out of tene[34]
Hath brought and made her selfe a quene,
Of that she hath so well desclosed
The points whereof she was opposed.