The 'Confessio Amantis' is the only work of Gower's which is printed and in English. The rest are still slumbering in MS.; and even although the 'Vox Clamantis' should put in a sleepy plea for the resurrection of print, on the whole we are disposed to say, better for all parties that it and the rest should slumber on. But the 'Confessio Amantis' is altogether a remarkable production. It is said to have been written at the command of Richard II., who, meeting our poet rowing on the Thames, near London, took him on board the royal barge, and requested him to _book some new thing_. It is an English poem, in eight books, and was first printed by Caxton in the year 1483. The 'Speculum Meditantis,' 'Vox Clamantis,' and 'Confessio Amantis,' are, properly speaking, parts of one great work, and are represented by three volumes upon Gower's curious tomb in the old conventual church of St Mary Overies already alluded to--a church, by the way, which the poet himself assisted in rebuilding in the elegant shape which it retains to this day.
The 'Confessio' is a large unwieldy collection of poetry and prose, superstition and science, love and religion, allegory and historical facts. It is crammed with all varieties of learning, and a perverse but infinite ingenuity is shewn in the arrangement of its heterogeneous materials. In one book the whole mysteries of the Hermetic philosophy are expounded, and the wonders of alchymy dazzle us in every page. In another, the poet scales the heights and sounds the depths of Aristotelianism. From this we have extracted in the 'Specimens' a glowing account of 'The Chariot of the Sun.' Throughout the work, tales and stories of every description and degree of merit are interspersed. These are principally derived from an old book called 'Pantheon; or, Memoriae Seculorum,'--a kind of universal history, more studious of effect than accuracy, in which the author ranges over the whole history of the world, from the creation down to the year 1186. This was a specimen of a kind of writing in which the Middle Ages abounded--namely, chronicles, which gradually superseded the monkish legends, and for a time eclipsed the classics themselves; a kind of writing hovering between history and fiction, embracing the widest sweep, written in a barbarous style, and swarming with falsehoods; but exciting, interesting, and often instructive, and tending to kindle curiosity, and create in the minds of their readers a love for literature.