Part 8 (1/2)

GILES FLETCHER The Nativity Song of Sorceress seeking to tempt Christ Close of 'Christ's Victory and Triumph'

JOHN DONNE Holy Sonnets The Progress of the Soul

MICHAEL DRAYTON Description of Morning

EDWARD FAIRFAX Rinaldo at Mount Olivet

SIR HENRY WOTTON Farewell to the Vanities of the World A Meditation

RICHARD CORBET Dr Corbet's Journey into France

BEN JONSON Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke The Picture of the Body To Penshurst To the Memory of my beloved Master, William Shakspeare, and what he hath left us On the Portrait of Shakspeare

VERE, s...o...b..R, &c

THOMAS RANDOLPH The Praise of Woman To my Picture To a Lady admiring herself in a Looking-gla.s.s

ROBERT BURTON On Melancholy

THOMAS CAREW Persuasions to Love Song To my Mistress sitting by a River's Side Song A Pastoral Dialogue Song

SIR JOHN SUCKLING Song A Ballad upon a Wedding Song

WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT Love's Darts On the Death of Sir Bevil Grenville A Valediction

WILLIAM BROWNE Song Song Power of Genius over Envy Evening From 'Britannia's Pastorals'

A Descriptive Sketch

WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL OF STIRLING Sonnet

WILLIAM DRUMMOND The River of Forth Feasting Sonnets Spiritual Poems

PHINEAS FLETCHER Description of Parthenia Instability of Human Greatness Happiness of the Shepherd's Life Marriage of Christ and the Church

SPECIMENS, WITH MEMOIRS, OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS.

JOHN GOWER

Very little is told us (as usual in the beginnings of a literature) of the life and private history of Gower, and that little is not specially authentic or clearly consistent with itself. His life consists mainly of a series of suppositions, with one or two firm facts between--like a few stepping-stones insulated in wide s.p.a.ces of water. He is said to have been born about the year 1325, and if so must have been a few years older than Chaucer; whom he, however, outlived. He was a friend as well as contemporary of that great poet, who, in the fifth book of his 'Troilus and Cresseide,' thus addresses him:--

'O moral Gower, this booke I direct, To thee and the philosophical Strood, To vouchsafe where need is to correct, Of your benignities and zeales good.'

Gower, on the other hand, in his 'Confessio Amantis,' through the mouth of Venus, speaks as follows of Chaucer:--

'And greet well Chaucer when ye meet, As my disciple and my poet; For 'in the flower of his youth, In sundry wise, as he well couth, Of ditties and of songes glad, The whiche for my sake he made, The laud fulfill'd is over all,' &c.

The place of Gower's birth has been the subject of much controversy.

Caxton a.s.serts that he was a native of Wales. Leland, Bales, Pits, Hollingshed, and Edmondson contend, on the other hand, that he belonged to the Statenham family, in Yorks.h.i.+re. In proof of this, a deed is appealed to, which is preserved among the ancient records of the Marquis of Stafford. To this deed, of which the local date is Statenham, and the chronological 1346, one of the subscribing witnesses is _John Gower_ who on the back of the deed is stated, in the handwriting of at least a century later, to be '_Sr John Gower the Poet_'. Whatever may be thought of this piece of evidence, 'the proud tradition,' adds Todd, who had produced it, 'in the Marquis of Stafford's family has been, and still is, that the poet was of Statenham; and who would not consider the dignity of his genealogy augmented by enrolling among its worthies the moral Gower?'