points of shrift, in order that he may know his duty. The confessor begins by asking the lover various questions concerning the use of his five senses, and then the didactic stories which compose the chief part of the poem are related, sometimes in close succession, sometimes separated by little dialogues between the lover and the genius. In the course of the poem, the confessor dilates at length upon the deadly vices: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust; and it is to illustrate the causes and consequences of these vices that the stories are related. Some of the later writers have drawn materials and suggestions from these stories; as, for instance, Shakspeare in the play of Pericles.

In his original prologue, Gower says that the poem was written at the earnest suggestion of Richard II., who met him while rowing on the Thames:

And bad me come into his barge,
And whan I was with him at large,
Amongës other things said,
He hath this charge upon me laid
And bad me do my besinesse,
That to his highë worthynesse
Some newe thing I shulde boke,
That he himself it mightë loke
After the forme of my writing.

The book was, at first, as a matter of course, dedicated to Richard

To whom belongeth my legeaunce

With all min hertes obeisaunce,
In al that ever a legë man

Unto his king may don or can.

But after the downfall of that monarch the dedication was transferred to Henry of Lancaster, and the words above quoted were changed to, "What shall befal here afterward, God wot!"

This work was the last of a series of three didactic poems by Gower. The first was in French verse, and was called Speculum Meditantis. It was an exceedingly dull poem, relating to the virtues and the prevalent vices of the period. No copy of this production is now known to be in existence. The second work was written in Latin, and was called Vox Clamantis. It consisted of seven books, and, although suggested by the rebellion of Wat Tyler, was intended as a vehicle of censure upon almost every class of society. The first Book is an allegorical description of Wat Tyler's rebellion; the second Book explains the object of the poem, and contains much general moralizing; the third Book still further relates the author's intentions and his reasons for writing. "I do not affect to touch the stars, or write the wonders of the poles; but rather with the common human voice that is lamenting in this land, I write the ills I see." Then he divides society into three classes, represented by the clerk, the soldier, and the plowman. The fourth Book is a review of the vices of the clergy; the fifth, those of the soldier and the serf; the sixth, of the lawyer; and the seventh is a general summing up, in which he applies Nebuchadnezzar's dream to the state of society at that time existing in England. And, in conclusion, he says: "Here is the voice of the people; but often where the people cries, is God."

Chaucer, who was a contemporary of Gower, wrote:

O moral Gower, this book I direct

To thee and to the philosophical Strode:
To vouchsauf there need is to correct

Of your benignities and zealës good,

And to the soothfast Christ that starfe on rood,
With all mine herte of mercy ever I pray.

Hallam says: "Gower had some effect in rendering the language less rude, and exciting a taste for verse; if he never rises, he never sinks low; he is always sensible, pol

ished, perspicuous, and not prosaic, in the worst sense of the word."

One of the earliest purely didactic poems in the language is a work written by Sir John Davies in 1599. It is entitled Nosce Teipsum: "this Oracle expounded in two Elegies: 1, Of Human Knowledge; 2, Of the Soul of Man and the Immortalitie thereof." Hallam says of this poem, that, notwithstanding its metaphysical and didactic character, there are passages in it "which far outweigh much of the descriptive and imaginative poetry of the last two centuries, whether we estimate them by the pleasure they impart to us, or by the intellectual vigor they display. Experience has shown that although the faculties peculiarly deemed poetical are frequently exhibited in a considerable degree, but very few have been able to preserve a perspicuous brevity, without stiffness or pedantry (allowance made for the subject and the times), in metaphysical reasoning, so successfully as Sir John Davies."

The poem is written in the four-lined stanza afterwards made popular by Davenant in his Gondibert, and by Dryden in Annus Mirabilis. The following stanzas will sufficiently illustrate:

Then as a bee which among weeds doth fall,

Which seem sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay,

She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all,

But pleased with none, doth rise, and soar away;

So when the soul finds here no truc content,

And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take;
She doth return from whence she first was sent,

And flies to Him that first her wings did make.

The first didactic poem of special note in our literature is the Religio Laici of John Dryden, published in 1682. The name was suggested by a Latin work, De Religione Laici, written by Lord Herbert of Cherbury in 1645. The object of Dryden's poem was the defense of the English

Church and the expression of his own religious convictions. The verses are addressed to "an ingenious young gentleman, my friend," upon his translation of a Roman Catholic work on the New Testament, "and the style of them is what it ought to be-epistolary."

In his preface to this work Dryden attacks both Catholics and Calvinists: the former because of their adherence to the doctrine that the pope may release the subjects of a heretic king from allegiance to their sovereign; the latter, because of their perversion of the Scriptures-for "if we consider only them, better had it been for the English nation that the Bible had still remained in the original Greek and Hebrew, or, at least, in the honest Latin of St. Jerome." The poem opens with a comparison between Reason and Religion:

Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is Reason to the soul.

And as those nightly tapers disappear,

When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere,
So, pale grows Reason at Religion's sight;
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.

To discover the nature and attributes of the Deity has ever been the highest aspiration of man. But Reason alone has never led him to a knowledge of God.

Revealed Religion first informed his sight,

And Reason saw not, till Faith sprung the light.

Passing, then, to the discussion of the scheme of redemption as understood from the Bible, Dryden takes the occasion to express his belief that "heathens who never did, nor without miracle could, hear of the name of Christ, were yet in a possibility of salvation":

If from his nature foes may pity claim,

Much more may strangers who ne'er heard his name.

And those who followed Reason's dictates right,
Lived up, and lifted high their natural light;
With Socrates may see their Maker's face,
While thousand rubric-martyrs want a place.

He argues that the Scriptures have been corrupted, "all copies disagreeing;" that no church can rightly claim omniscience; and that it is not necessary that all men should read and believe alike:

If others in the same glass better see,

'Tis for themselves they look, but not for me:
For my salvation must its doom receive,

Not from what others but what I believe.

In the time of the Catholic supremacy the Bible was monopolized by the clergy, and "mother Church did mightily prevail":

Poor laymen took salvation on content;
As needy men take money good or bad:

God's word they had not, but the priest's they had.

Now, when the book is found "in every vulgar hand," the rabble of Non-conformists and Deists, having great zeal and little judgment, pass by the plain truths which present themselves, and pervert the doctrines of Scripture by misinterpretation.

So all we make of Heaven's discovered will,

Is, not to have it, or to use it ill.

The danger's much the same; on several shelves
If others wreck us, or we wreck ourselves.

The only safe plan is to steer midway between these tides of ignorance and pride.

Nor proudly seek beyond our power to know;
Faith is not built on disquisitions vain.
In doubtful questions 'tis the safest way
To learn what unsuspected ancients say: