Gower

Gower, John (circa 1325-1408), an English poet, was born in Kent. He was a friend of Chaucer, and is alluded to by Shakespeare, who sometimes introduces him as a kind of chorus. Becoming blind, he retired to the Priory of St. Mary - now St. Saviour's, Southwark - and he partly rebuilt the church, in which he was buried. He wrote Ballads and other Poems in French, Speculum Meditantis (a treatise on married life), Vox Claniantis. in Latin elegiacs, and giving an account of the rising of the Commons in Richard II.'s reign, and Confessio Amantis (his best-known work), which is a curious but tedious collection of classic and mediaeval tales with a slight binding thread running throughout.