PAGE SIR DAVID LYNDSAY Meldrum's Duel with the English Champion Talbart THOMAS SACKVILLE, LORD BUCKHURST AND EARL OF DORSET JOHN HARRINGTON Sonnet on Isabella Markham Verses on a most stony-hearted Maiden SIR PHILIP SIDNEY To Sleep ROBERT SOUTHWELL Look Home The Image of Death Love's Servile Lot. Times go by Turns THOMAS WATSON The Nymphs to their May-Queen THOMAS TURBERVILLE 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 128 A Praise of his Lady 132 That all things sometime find Ease of their Pain, save only the Lover 134 SIR JOHN DAVIES OTHER SCOTTISH POETS SAMUEL DANIEL Richard II., the morning before his Murder in Pomfret Castle Selections from Sonnets Description of Morning EDWARD FAIRFAX To the Memory of my beloved Master, William Shakspeare, and what he hath left us 258 On the Portrait of Shakspeare 261 VERE, STORRER, &C. 261 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, 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, 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 |