The sentence sounds like a truism, but it contains in fact one of the grossest of fallacies. In short, our author has little sense of proportion and no dramatic powers. As regards the invention of his allegory he seems to be to some extent original. There is nothing, so far as I know, to which we can point as its source, and such as it is, he is apparently entitled to the credit of having conceived it. The materials, no doubt, were ready to his hand. Allegory was entirely in the taste of the fourteenth century, dominated as it was by the influence of the Roman de la Rose, from which several of Gower’s personifications are taken. The Mariage des Sept Arts was a work of this period, and the marriage of the Deadly Sins was not by any means a new idea. For example in MS. Fairfax 24 (Bodleian Libr.) there is a part of a French poem ‘de Maritagio nouem filiarum diaboli,’ which begins, . . . . . . And no doubt other pieces of a similar kind exist. The same is true as regards the other parts of the book, as has been already pointed out; the combination alone is original. The style is uniformly respectable, but as a rule very monotonous. Occasionally the tedium is relieved by a story, but[Pg liv] it is not generally told in much detail, and for the most part the reader has to toil through the desert with little assistance. It must not be supposed, however, that the work is quite without poetical merit. Every now and then by some touch of description the author betrays himself as the graceful poet of the Balades, his better part being crushed under mountains of morality and piles of deadly learning, but surviving nevertheless. For example, the priest who neglects his early morning service is reminded of the example of the lark, who rising very early mounts circling upward and pours forth a service of praise to God from her little throat: [Pg liv] Again, Praise is like the bee which flies over the meadows in the sunshine, gathering that which is sweet and fragrant, but avoiding all
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