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SIR DAVID LYNDSAY

Meldrum's Duel with the English Champion Talbart
Supplication in Contemption of Side Tails

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THOMAS SACKVILLE, LORD BUCKHURST AND EARL OF DORSET
Allegorical Characters from 'The Mirror of Magistrates'
Henry Duke of Buckingham in the Infernal Regions

JOHN HARRINGTON

Sonnet on Isabella Markham

Verses on a most stony-hearted Maiden

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

To Sleep
Sonnets

ROBERT SOUTHWELL

Look Home

The Image of Death

Love's Servile Lot.

Times go by Turns

THOMAS WATSON

The Nymphs to their May-Queen
Sonnet

THOMAS TURBERVILLE

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In praise of the renowned Lady Anne, Countess of Warwick

124

UNKNOWN

127

Harpalus' Complaint of Phillida's Love bestowed on Corin, who loved

her not, and denied him that loved her

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A Praise of his Lady

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That all things sometime find Ease of their Pain, save only the Lover

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SIR JOHN DAVIES

OTHER SCOTTISH POETS

SAMUEL DANIEL

Richard II., the morning before his Murder in Pomfret Castle
Early Love

Selections from Sonnets

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Description of Morning

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EDWARD FAIRFAX

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To the Memory of my beloved Master, William Shakspeare, and what

he hath left us

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On the Portrait of Shakspeare

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VERE, STORRER, &C.

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SPECIMENS, WITH MEMOIRS,

OF THE LESS-KNOWN BRITISH POETS.

JOHN GOWER.

VERY little is told us (as usual in the beginnings of a literature) of the life and private history of Gower, and that little is not specially authentic or clearly consistent with itself. His life consists mainly of a series of suppositions, with one or two firm facts between-like a few stepping-stones insulated in wide spaces of water. He is said to have been born about the year 1325, and if so must have been a few years older than Chaucer; whom he, however, outlived. He was a friend as well as contemporary of that great poet, who, in the fifth book of his 'Troilus and Cresseide,' thus addresses him :

'O moral Gower, this bookë I direct,
To thee and the philosophical Strood,
To vouchsafe where need is to correct,
Of your benignities and zealës good.'

Gower, on the other hand, in his 'Confessio Amantis,' through the mouth of Venus, speaks as follows of Chaucer:—

VOL. I.

'And greet well Chaucer when ye meet,

As my disciple and my poët;

For in the flower of his youth,
In sundry wise, as he well couth,
Of ditties and of songës glad,
The whiche for my sake he made,
The laud fulfill'd is over all,' &c.
A

1

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 dignity of his genealogy augmented by enrolling among its worthies the moral Gower?'

From his will we know that he possessed the manor of Southwell, in the county of Nottingham, and that of Multon, in the county of Suffolk. He was thus a rich man, as well as probably a knight. The latter fact is inferred from the circumstance of his effigies in the church of St Mary Overies wearing a chaplet of roses, such as, says Francis Thynne, ‘the knyghtes in old time used, either of gold or other embroiderye, made after the fashion of roses, one of the peculiar ornamentes of a knighte, as well as his collar of S.S.S., his guilte sword and spurres. Which chaplett or circle of roses was as well attributed to knyghtes, the lowest degree of honor, as to the higher degrees of duke, erle, &c., being knyghtes, for so I have seen John of Gaunte pictured in his chaplett of roses; and King Edwarde the Thirde gave his chaplett to Eustace Rybamonte; only the difference was, that as they were of lower degree, so had they fewer roses placed on their chaplett or cyrcle of golde, one ornament deduced from the dukes crowne, which had the roses upon the top of the cyrcle, when the knights had them only upon the cyrcle or garlande itself.'

It has been said that Gower as well as Chaucer studied in the Temple. This, however, Thynne doubts, on the ground that it is most certevn to be gathered by cyrcumstances of

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