adherents. In the later books he discusses the
military and the lawyers; and thus he is the voice of one crying, like the
Baptist in the wilderness, against existing abuses and for the advent of a
better order. The _Confessio Amantis_, now principally known because it
contains a eulogium of Chaucer, which in his later editions he left out,
is in English verse, and was composed at the instance of Richard II. The
general argument of this Lover's Confession is a dialogue between the
lover and a priest of Venus, who, in the guise of a confessor, applies the
breviary of the Church to the confessions of love.[21] The poem is
interspersed with introductory or recapitulatory Latin verses.

CHAUCER AND GOWER.--That there was for a time a mutual admiration between
Chaucer and Gower, is shown by their allusion to each other. In the
penultimate stanza of the Troilus and Creseide, Chaucer calls him "O
Morall Gower," an epithet repeated by Dunbar, Hawes, and other writers;
while in the _Confessio Amantis_, Gower speaks of Chaucer as his disciple
and poet, and alludes to his poems with great praise. That they were at
any time alienated from each other has been asserted, but the best
commentators agree in thinking without sufficient grounds.

The historical teachings of Gower are easy to find. He states truths
without parable. His moral satires are aimed at the Church corruptions of
the day, and yet are conservative; and are taken, says Berthelet, in his
dedication of the Confessio to Henry VIII., not only out of "poets,
orators, historic writers, and philosophers, but out of the Holy
Scripture"--the same Scripture so eloquently expounded by Chaucer, and
translated by Wiclif. Again, Gower, with an eye to the present rather than
to future fame, wrote in three languages--a tribute to the Church in his
Latin, to the court in his French, and to the progressive spirit of the
age in his English. The latter alone is now read, and is the basis of his
fame. Besides three poems, he left, among his manuscripts, fifty French
sonnets, (cinquantes balades,) which were afterward printed by his
descendant, Lord Gower, Duke of Sutherland.

GOWER'S LANGUAGE.--Like Chaucer, Gower was a reformer in language, and was
accused by the "severer etymologists of having corrupted the purity of the
English by affecting to introduce so many foreign words and phrases;" but
he has the tribute of Sir Philip Sidney (no mean praise) that Chaucer and
himself were th