Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/767

 GOVERNMENT

685

GOWER

theology (2 vols., 184S) had no less success. The dig- nity of cardinal, for which he was fitted by his wide knowledge and the soundness of his doctrine and numerous works, was conferred on him in 1850. In virtue of the Constitution of 1852 he became senator of the empire, and in 1856 commander of the Legion of Honour. His last works were: "Exposition des prin- cipes de droit canonique" (1859); "Du droit de 1' Eglise touchant le possession des biens destinfe au cuhe et la souverainet^ temporelle du Pape" (1862). FiiVRE, Vie de son Em. le Cardinal Goiisset (Paris, 1884).

A. FODRNET.

Government, Forms of. See State.

Gower, John, poet; b. between 1327-1330, prob- ably in Kent; d. October, 1408. He was of gentle blood and well connected. He may have been a merchant in London, but this cannot be authorita- tively affirmed. It seems certain from his writings that, even if trained to the profession of the law, he did not practise it. Leland's statements that he frequented the law courts and studied the laws of his coimtry for gain, and that he was chief judge of the t'ommon Pleas, are no longer accepted as correct. The latter statement was, as a matter of fact, subsequently withdrawn by Leland, but the revival of it by Fuller gave it a wide vogue and a long-continued persistence. The poet was undoubtedly wealthy, being an owner of landed property in the Counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent, and possibly also in Essex. That he was a man of some standing at court, as well as a writer of acknowledged eminence, may be inferred from his statement m the first version of his " Confessio Aman- tis", (11. 43-53), that on one occasion King Richard II recognized him in a boat on the Thames, invited him into the royal barge, and charged him to write some new thing for the monarch's own inspection and de- lectation. John Gower, the poet, has been by some writers identified with one John Gower, clerk, who by grant from King Richard II held the rectory of Great Braxted in Essex from 1390 to 1397. That the poet and the clerk were one and the same person may, however, reasonably be doubted. According to Gower himself he w as not a clerk when he wrote the "Mirour de I'Omme" (1. 21772: Pour ce que je ne suy pas clers), and in the Prologus (1. 52) of the "Con- fessio Amantis" he calls himself a "burel clerk", that is, a man of simple learning or a layman. At all events we may safely conclude that he was not in full Holy orders, for in January, 1397-8, when he was about seventy years of age, he married Agnes Ground- olf, and it might be inferred from some passages in his works that she was not his first wife. At that time he was living in the priory of St. Mary Overy (now St. Saviour), Southwark, to which he was a generous benefactor, and he continued to reside there after his marriage. About 1400 he became blind. He died in October, 1408, and was buried in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in St. Mary Overy. His tomb is still to be seen. His effigy lies under a canopy, with the head resting on a pillow formed of three folio volumes inscribed with the titles of his three best- known works, namely, the "Speculum Meditantis", the "Vox Clamantis", and the "Confessio Amantis."

Gower wrote in three languages, French, Latin, and English. His French works are the "Mirour de I'Omme", or "Speculum Hominis", which modern research has almost to a certainty identified with the "Speculum Meditantis", long suppo.sed to be lost; the "Cinkante Bulades"; and the "Traiti6". The "Mirour de rOnune", as we now have it, consists of 28,603 lines, but, as some leaves at the beginning, throughout the work, and at the end are missing from the manuscript, it probably consisted in its complete state of about 31.000 lines. It is written in twelve- line stanzas of octosyllabic verse, with two sets of rhymes in each stanza arranged aab aab bba bba. It is

divided into t«n parts, treats of vices and virtues, and of the different grades of society, and endeavours to point out the path by which a sinner may return to God and obtain pardon through the aid of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of His sweet mother, the glorious Virgin. It concludes with a life of Our Lady, into which is also naturally introduced an account of the principal events in the life of Christ. It was probably written about 1376-1379.

The "Cinkante (i. e. Cinquante, Fifty) Balades" really contains fifty-two, or, if we count the two of the dedication, fifty-four. The first fiftv-one deal in various ways with "the passion of love ; the last of the series is in honour of the Blessed Virgin, with a general envoi. The dedication to Henry IV comprises, be- sides the French verse, some Latin verse and two Latin prose quo- tations. Each balade contains normally either twenty-eight or twenty-five lines of ten-syllable verse, divided into three stanzas of eight or seven lines respectively, with an envoi of four lines ; but there are occa- sional deviations from this model. There are differ- ent rhyming schemes in the work. It is likely that the"Balades " were written at various periods in John Gower

the poet's life and From a limning in his "Vox Cla-

that they were """"'^. Cotton.an Library

brought together, in the order and form in which we now have them, in 1399.

The "Traiti^" deals with the married state and seeks to show by precept and example the obligation of observing the marriage vow. It is written in ten- syllable verse, and consists of eighteen balades, each balade containing three seven-line stanzas. The rhymes are arranged thus: ab ab bcc. It concludes with one stanza in the nature of an envoi — " Al uni- versity de tout le monde" — appended to the eighteenth balade, and this envoi-stanza is in turn followed by thirty-six rhymed Latin hexameters and pentameters. There are also Latin marginal explanations of the different points discussed. The "Traiti6" was prob- ably written in 1397.

The "Cinkante Balades" and the "Traiti^" were printed by the Roxburghe Club in 1818 (ed. Earl Gower), and by Dr. Edmund Stengel in 1886. All the French works were printed by G. C. Macaulay in 1899, the "Mirour de I'Omme" for the first time.

The Latin works of Gower are the " Vox Clamantis", the "Cronica Tripertita", some eighteen .shorter poems, the verses, and marginal and other summaries already mentioned or to be mentioned below, and probably a preface, found in several manuscripts, describing his three principal poems. The "Vox Clamantis" contains 10,265 lines of elegiac verse. It is in seven books, of which the first three have pro- logues, also in elegiacs. Prefixed to the whole there is a prose summary of each book. It deals with the rising of the peasants in 1381; the need of pure re- ligious faith; the vices of the clergy of every degree, of the merchants, of the lawyers, and of the common people ; and the duties of a king. It calls on Richard II to select wise counsellors, to avoid heavy and oppressive taxation, to abandon sensuality, to restore