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