'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 asserts 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 Yorkshire. 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