Skelton appears to have been a more considerable personage, at one time at least, than his contemporaries would have us to believe. It is certain that he was esteemed a scholar, and that his classical learning recommended him to the office of tutor to prince Henry, afterwards king Henry VIII. who, at his accession, made him royal orator, an office so called by himself, the nature of which is doubtful, unless it was blended with that of laureat. As to his general reputation, Erasmus in a letter to Henry VIII. styles him Britannicarum literarum decus et lumen, a character which must have either been inferred from common opinion, or derived from personal knowledge. Whatever provocation he gave to the clergy, he was not without patrons who overlooked his errours and extravagancies for the sake of his genius; and during the reign of Henry VII. he had the enviable distinction of being almost the only professed poet of the age. Henry Algernon Percy, fifth earl of Northumberland, one of the very few patrons of learned men and artists at that time, appears to have entertained a high regard for our author. In a collection of poems magnificently engrossed on vellum for the use of this nobleman, is an elegy on the death of the earl's father written by Skelton. This volume is now in the British Museum; but the elegy may be seen in Skelton's works, and in Dr. Percy's Relics,

When a favourite author betrays grossness and indecency, it is usual to inquire how much of this is his own, and how much may be referred to the licentiousness of his age? Warton observes that it is in vain to apologize for the coarseness, obscenity, and scurrility of Skelton, by saying that his poetry is tinctured with the manners of his age, and adds that Skelton would have been a writer without decorum at any period. This decision, however, is not more justly passed on Skelton than it ought to be on others in this collection whom it has been the fashion to vindicate by an appeal to the manners of their age. The manners of no age can apologize for the licentiousness of the writer who descends to copy them. There are always enough in an age that has a court, a clergy, and a people, to support the dignity of virtue and to assert the respect due to public decency. If we knew more minutely of the manners of our country in those remote periods, it would probably be found that licentiousness has upon the whole been more discouraged than patronised by the public voice.

Although it is impossible to lessen the censure which Skelton incurred among his contemporaries, and immediate successors, it is but fair to say that his indelicacies are of no very seductive kind; that they are obscured by cant words and phrases no longer intelligible, or intelligible but to few; and that the removal of them is a matter of less trouble and less injury to the collection than his biographers, who have copied one another, would insinuate. As to his poetry, Mr. Warton's character may in general be followed with safety, and ought to be preserved with the respect due to so excellent a

critic.

"Skelton's characteristic vein of humour is capricious and grotesque. If his whimsical extravagancies ever move our laughter, at the same time they shock our sensibility. His festive levities are not only vulgar and indelicate, but frequently want truth and propriety. His subjects are often as ridiculous as his metre: but he sometimes debases his matter by his versification. On the whole, his genius seems better suited to low burlesque, than to liberal and manly satire. It is supposed by Caxton, that he improved our language; but he sometimes affects obscurity, and sometimes adopts the most familiar phraseology of the common people." After quoting some lines from

♦ Warton's Hist. of Poetry, vol. ii. p. 342, C.

the Boke of Colin Cloute, Mr. Warton remarks that these are in the best manner of his petty measure, which is made still more disgusting by the repetition of the rhymes; but allows that in the poem called The Bouge of Court, or the Rewards of a Court, the author, by adopting the more grave and stately movement of the seven-lined stanza, has shown himself not always incapable of exhibiting allegorical imagery with spirit and dignity,"

Skelton, however, is very unequal, although his natural bias, and what he seems most anxious to revert to, is comic buffoonery. That the author of the Prayers to the Trinity, and the lines on the death of lord Percie, could have written the Tunning of Elinour Rumming, is almost incredible. His multiplied repetition of rhymes, arbitrary abbreviations of the verse, cant expressions, hard and sounding words newly coined, and patches of Latin and French, Warton supposes to be peculiar, though not exclusively to our author; but his new-coined words and Latin and French phrases occur so often, that other critics appear to have been too hasty in asserting that he wrote only for the mob. There is occasionally much sound sense, and, it is to be feared, much just satire on the conduct of the clergy, which we know was such as to justify the plunder of the church by Henry VIII. in the eyes of the people at large. As a poet, however, Skelton contributed very little to the improvement of the poetical style, and seems often more disposed to render versification ridiculous. His vein of humour is copious and original, and had it been directed to subjects of legitimate satire, and regulated by some degree of taste, he might have been thought more worthy of a place in a collection of English poets, and more credit would have been given to what he insinuates, that he was disliked and reviled for having honestly, though bluntly, exposed the reigning follies of his day. Mrs. Cooper calls him, with some degree of truth, "the restorer of invention in English poetry;" and by Bradshaw, a very indifferent poet of the fifteenth century, he is complimented as the inventive Skelton.

His works have hitherto been ushered into the world without much care. It yet remains to explains his obscurities, translate his vulgarisms, and point his verses. The task would require much time and labour, with perhaps no very inviting prospect of recompense. Besides the works now before the reader, Mr. Ritson has given a list of pieces, the most of which are easily accessible, and might have been added to the present collection had they appeared to throw any important light on the character of the author, or of his age. But Mr. Ritson thinks it utterly incredible that "the Nigramansir," described by Warton, as printed by Wynken de Worde, in 1504, ever existed.

5 In his Bibliographia Poetica, p. 102. C.