Watte vocat, cui Thome venit, neque Symme retardat, Betteque, Gibbe simul Hyke venire jubent. Colle furit, quem Gibbe juvat nocumenta parantes, Cum quibus ad dampnum Wille coire vovet. Grigge rapit, dam Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe, Lorkin et in medio non minor esse putat. Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Tebbe juvatur, Jacke domos que viros vellit, et ense necat.
Tom comes, thereat, when called by Wat, and Simon as forward we find; Bet calls as quick to Gibb, and to Hyck that neither would tarry behinde. Gibbe, a good whelp of that litter, doth help mad Coll more mischief to do, And Will he doth vow, the time is come now, he'll join with their company too. Davie complains whiles Grigg gets the gains, and Hobb with them doth partake; Lorkin aloud, in the midst of the crowd, conceiveth as deep is his stake. Hudde doth spoil, whom Judde doth foile, and Tebbe lends his helping hand, But Jack, the mad-patch, men and horses doth snatch, and kills all at his command.
The third and greater work, and the only printed one of Gower, is the "Confessio Amantis," an English poem of about thirty thousand lines; a singular miscellany of allegory, of morality, and of tales. It is studded with sententious maxims and proverbs, and richly diversified with narrations, pleasant and tragic; but the affectation of learning, for learning in its crude state always obtrudes itself, even in works of recreation, has compressed the Aristotelian philosophy, to edify and surprise the readers of the poet's fairy or romantic tales. Robert de Brunne, to illustrate monachal morals, interspersed domestic stories; and amidst the prevalent penury of imagination, that rhyming monk affords the most ancient specimens of English tales in verse: and as Gower's single printed work is of the same species of composition, a system of ethics illustrated by tales, it has been thought that the monk who rhymed in 1300 was the true predecessor of the poet who flourished at the close of that century, however Gower may have purified the "rime doggrel," and elevated the puerile tale. The straw-roof must be raised before the cupola. Genius in its genealogy must not blush at its remote ancestor; the noblest knight may often go back to the mill or the forge. If this rude moralising rhymer really be the poetical father of Gower, then is this antiquated monk the inventor of that narrative poetry which Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, and even some of our contemporaries, have so delightfully diversified. But story-telling has been of all periods.