The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland | Page 8

presence.]
[Footnote 3: Mr. Camden gives a particular description of this castle.]

LANGLAND.
It has been disputed amongst the critics whether this poet preceded or
followed Chaucer. Mrs. Cooper, author of the Muses Library, is of
opinion that he preceded Chaucer, and observes that in more places
than one that great poet seems to copy Langland; but I am rather
inclined to believe that he was cotemporary with him, which accounts
for her observation, and my conjecture is strengthened by the
consideration of his stile, which is equally unmusical and obsolete with
Chaucer's; and tho' Dryden has told us that Chaucer exceeded those
who followed him at 50 or 60 years distance, in point of smoothness,
yet with great submission to his judgment, I think there is some
alteration even in Skelton and Harding, which will appear to the reader
to the best advantage by a quotation. Of Langland's family we have no
account. Selden in his notes on Draiton's Poly Olbion, quotes him with
honour; but he is entirely neglected by Philips and Winstanly, tho' he
seems to have been a man of great genius: Besides Chaucer, few poets
in that or the subsequent age had more real inspiration or poetical
enthusiasm in their compositions. One cannot read the works of this
author, or Chaucer, without lamenting the unhappiness of a fluctuating
language, that buries in its ruins even genius itself; for like edifices of
sand, every breath of time defaces it, and if the form remain, the beauty
is lost. The piece from which I shall quote a few lines, is a work of
great length and labour, of the allegoric kind; it is animated with a
lively and luxurious imagination; pointed with a variety of pungent
satire; and dignified with many excellent lessons of morality; but as to
the conduct of the whole, it does not appear to be of a piece; every
vision seems a distinct rhapsody, and does not carry on either one

single action or a series of many; but we ought rather to wonder at its
beauties than cavil at its defects; and if the poetical design is broken,
the moral is entire, which, is uniformly the advancement of piety, and
reformation of the Roman clergy. The piece before us is entitled the
Vision of Piers the Plowman, and I shall quote that particular part
which seems to have furnished a hint to Milton in his Paradise Lost, b.
2. 1. 475.
Kinde Conscience tho' heard, and came out of
the planets,
And sent
forth his sorrioues, fevers, and fluxes,
Coughes, and cardicales,
crampes and toothaches,
Reums, and ragondes, and raynous scalles,

Byles, and blothes, and burning agues,
Freneses, and foul euyl,
foragers of kinde!

There was harrow! and help! here cometh Kinde
With death that's dreadful, to undone us all
Age the hoore, he was in vaw-ward
And bare the baner before death, by right he it
claymed!
Kinde came after, with many kene foxes,
As pockes, and pestilences, and much purple
shent;
So Kinde, through corruptions killed full many:
Death came driving after, and all to dust pashed
Kyngs and bagaars, knights and popes.

MILTON.
----------Immediately a place
Before his eyes appear'd, sad, noisom,
dark,
A lazar-house it seem'd; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased: all maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking
torture, qualms
Of heartsick agony, all fev'rous kinds,
Convulsions,
epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic-pangs

Demoniac phrenzy, moping melancholy
And moon-struck madness,
pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies

and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums;
Dire was the tossing! deep
the groans! despair
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch:

And over them, triumphant death his dart
Shook. P. L. b. xi. 1. 477.

Sir JOHN GOWER
Flourished in the reign of Edward III, and Richard II. He was
cotemporary with Chaucer and much esteemed and honoured by him,
as appears by his submitting his Troilus and Cressida to his censure.
Stow in his Survey of London seems to be of opinion that he was no
knight, but only an esquire; however, it is certain he was descended of a
knightly family, at Sittenham in Yorkshire. He received his education
in London, and studied the law, but being possessed of a great fortune,
he dedicated himself more to pleasure and poetry than the bar; tho' he
seems not to have made any proficiency in poetry, for his works are
rather cool translations, than originals, and are quite destitute of
poetical fire. Bale makes him Equitem Auratum & Poetam Laureatum,
but Winstanly says that he was neither laureated nor bederated, but
only rosated, having a chaplet of four roses about his head in his
monumental stone erected in St. Mary Overy's, Southwark: He was
held in great esteem by King Richard II, to whom he dedicates a book
called Confessio Amantis. That he was a man of no honour appears by
his behaviour when the