The opening of 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,
To thee and the philosophical Strood,
To vouchsafe where need is to correct,
Of your benignities and zealës good.'