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

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 revolution under Henry IV happened in England. He was under the highest obligations to Richard II; he had been preferred, patronized and honoured by him, yet no sooner did that unhappy prince (who owed his misfortunes in a great measure to his generosity and easiness of nature) fall a sacrifice to the policy of Henry and the rage of rebellion, but he worshiped the Rising Sun, he joined his interest with the new king, and tho' he was then stone-blind, and, as might naturally be imagined, too old to