accident or from old age (for he was then greatly advanced in years) is
not known. This misfortune happened but a short period before his death,
which took place in the year 1402, about nine years after he had
completed the "Confessio Amantis," a work from whence he derived the
honour of being ranked among the English poets.

The "Confessio" of Gower is said to have owed its origin to a request
made to the poet by King Richard II.; who, accidentally meeting Gower on
the Thames, called him into the royal barge, and enjoined him "to booke
some new thing." This, therefore, was not the first of his poetical
productions, though it is universally admitted to have been his chief,
and that on which his principal reputation depends; and into which "it
seems to have been his ambition to crowd all his erudition." It is,
however, the last of the volumes, the titles which are painted on his
monument in this church, and is supposed to be the last he ever wrote, at
least of any important extent.

The poetical histories of Gower and Chaucer are intimately connected; yet
there is a remarkable difference of opinion and pursuit in their
respective writings. It must be confessed that to Chaucer, and not to
Gower, should be applied the flattering appellation of "the father of our
poetry;" though, as Johnson says, he was the first of our authors who can
be said to have written English. To Chaucer, however, are we indebted for
the first effort to emancipate the British muse from the ridiculous
trammels of French diction, with which, till his time, it had been the
fashion to interlard and obscure the English language. Gower, on the
contrary, from a close intimacy with the French and Latin poets, found it
easier to follow the beaten track. His first work was, therefore, written
in French measure, and is entitled "Speculum Meditantis." There are two
copies of this book now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It contains