Note 3 — Chapter X
Reading edition
It was lost, but, in 1895, when Mr. G. C. Macaulay was editing Gower's enormous English poem, "Confessio Amantis" ("The Lover's Confession") he remarked to Mr. Jenkinson, Librarian of the Cambridge University Library, that if ever Gower's French "Speculum Meditantis" ("The Contemplative Man's Mirror") were found, it would probably be under the Latin name, "Speculum Hominis" ("Man's Mirror"). Now Mr. Jenkinson had just bought and presented to the Library, a French manuscript, "Mirour de l'Omme," "Man's Mirror". This was proved to be Gower's lost French poem. It had lain in some farm-house, in 1745, and had been scribbled on by a rustic hand, while a manuscript of the Ballades had been given, in 1656, by a very old man, Charles Gedde, of St. Andrews, to Lord Fairfax; at the time of the English conquest of Scotland by Cromwell.