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The latter alone is now read, and is the basis of his
fame. Besides three poems, he left, among his manuscripts, fifty French
sonnets, (cinquantes balades,) which were afterward printed by his
descendant, Lord Gower, Duke of Sutherland.

GOWER'S LANGUAGE.--Like Chaucer, Gower was a reformer in language, and was
accused by the "severer etymologists of having corrupted the purity of the
English by affecting to introduce so many foreign words and phrases;" but
he has the tribute of Sir Philip Sidney (no mean praise) that Chaucer and
himself were the leaders of a movement, which others have followed, "to
beautifie our mother tongue," and thus the _Confessio Amantis_ ranks as
one of the formers of our language, in a day when it required much moral
courage to break away from the trammels of Latin and French, and at the
same time to compel them to surrender their choicest treasures to the
English.
Gower was born in 1325 or 1326, and outlived Chaucer. It has been
generally believed that Chaucer was his poetical pupil.


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