The three works which pillow the head of the effigy indicate Gower's 'Speculum Meditantis' (The Looking-Glass of One Meditating), which the poet wrote in French; the 'Vox Clamantis' (The Voice of One Crying), in Latin; and the 'Confessio Amantis,' in English. It should be remembered in noting this mixture of tongues, that in Gower's early life the English had no national speech. The court, Parliament, nobles, and the courts of law used French; the Church held its service in Latin; while the inhabitants of Anglo-Saxon blood clung to the language of their fathers, which they had modified by additions from the Norman tongue. It was not until 1362 that Parliament was opened by a speech in English. "There is," says Dr. Pauli, "no better illustration of the singular transition to the English language than a short enumeration and description of Gower's writings." Of the 'Speculum Meditantis,' a treatise in ten books on the duties of married life, no copy is known to exist. The 'Vox Clamantis' was the voice of the poet, singing in Latin elegiac of the terrible evils which led to the rise of the commons and their march to London under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw in 1381. It is doubtless a true picture of the excesses and miseries of the day. The remedy, the poet says, is in reform—right living and love of England. Simony in the prelates, avarice and drunkenness in the libidinous priests, wealth and luxury in the mendicant orders, miscarrying of justice in the courts, enrichment of individuals by excessive taxes,—these are the subjects of the voice crying in the wilderness. Gower's greatest work, however, is the 'Confessio Amantis.' In form it is a dialogue between a lover and his confessor, who is a priest of Venus. In substance it is a setting-forth, with moralizings which are at times touching and elevated, of one hundred and twelve different stories, from sources so different as the Bible, Ovid, [Pg 6582] Josephus, the 'Gesta Romanorum,' Valerius Maximus, Statius, Boccaccio, etc. Thirty thousand eight-syllabled rhymed lines make up the work. There are different versions. The first was dedicated to Richard II., and the second to his successor, Henry of Lancaster. Besides these large works, a number of French ballades, and also English and Latin short poems, are preserved. "They have real and intrinsic merit," says Todd: "they are tender, pathetic, and poetical, and place our old poet Gower in a more advantageous point of view than that in which he has heretofore been usually seen." Estimates of Gower's writings are various; but even his most hostile judges admit the pertinence of the epithet with which Chaucer hails him in his dedication of 'Troilus and Creseide':— "O morall Gower, this bookè I direct To thee and to the philosophicall Strode, To vouchsafè there need is to correct Of your benignities and zealès good."