knowledge of the political and social condition of its times. It gives
expression to a conservative tone and temper of mind; and like many
conservative minds, Gower's had adopted, or affected to adopt, the
conviction that the world was coming to an end. The cause of the
anticipated catastrophe he found in the division, or absence of concord
and love, manifest in the condition of things around. The intensity of
strife visible among the conflicting elements of which the world, like the
individual human being, is composed, too clearly announced the imminent
end of all things. Would that a new Arion might arise to make peace where
now is hate; but, alas! the prevailing confusion is such that God alone
may set it right. But the poem which follows cannot be said to sustain
the interest excited by this introduction. Its machinery was obviously
suggested by that of the "Roman de la Rose," though, as Warton has happily
phrased it, Gower, after a fashion of his own, blends Ovid's "Art of Love"
with the Breviary. The poet, wandering about in a forest, while suffering
under the smart of Cupid's dart, meets Venus, the Goddess of Love, who
urges him, as one upon the point of death, to make his full confession to
her clerk or priest, the holy father Genius. This confession hereupon
takes place by means of question and answer; both penitent and confessor
entering at great length into an examination of the various sins and
weaknesses of human nature, and of their remedies, and illustrating their
observations by narratives, brief or elaborate, from Holy Writ, sacred
legend, ancient history, and romantic story. Thus Gower's book, as he
says at its close, stands "between earnest and game," and might be fairly
described as a "Romaunt of the Rose," without either the descriptive grace
of Guillaume de Lorris, or the wicked wit of Jean de Meung, but full of
learning and matter, and written by an author certainly not devoid of the
art of telling stories. The mind of this author was thoroughly didactic
in its bent; for the beauty of nature he has no real feeling, and though
his poem, like so many of Chaucer's, begins in the month of May, he is