From the vengeance of the Cardinal,[118] who had sent out officers to apprehend him, Skelton took sanctuary at Westminster, where he was kindly received and protected by the abbot Islip,[119] with whom he had been long acquainted. In this asylum he appears to have remained till his death, which happened June 21st, 1529. What he is reported to have declared on his death-bed concerning the woman whom he had secretly married, and by whom he left several children, has been already mentioned:[120] he is said also to have uttered at the same time a prophecy concerning the downfal of Wolsey.[121] He was buried in the chancel of the neighbouring church of St. Margaret’s; and, soon after, this inscription was placed over his grave,
Joannes Skeltonus, vates Pierius, hic situs est.[122]
Concerning the personal appearance of Skelton we are left in ignorance;[123] for the portraits which are prefixed to the old editions of several of his poems must certainly not be received as authentic representations of the author.[124]
The chief satirical productions of Skelton (and the bent of his genius was decidedly towards satire) are The Bowge of Courte, Colyn Cloute, and Why come ye nat to Courte.—In the first of these, an allegorical poem of considerable invention, he introduces a series of characters delineated with a boldness and discrimination which no preceding poet had displayed since the days of Chaucer, and which none of his contemporaries (with the sole exception of the brilliant Dunbar) were able to attain: the merit of those personifications has been allowed even by Warton, whose ample critique on Skelton deals but little in praise;[125] and I am somewhat surprised that Mr. D’Israeli, who has lately come forward as the warm eulogist of our author,[126] should have passed over The Bowge of Courte without the slightest notice.—Colyn Cloute is a general satire on the corruptions of the Church, the friars and the bishops being attacked alike unsparingly; nor, when Skelton himself pronounced of this piece that “though his ryme be ragged, it hath in it some pyth,”[127] did he overrate its vigour and its weighty truth: Colyn Cloute not only shews that fearlessness which on all occasions distinguished him, but evinces a superiority to the prejudices of his age, in assailing abuses, which, if manifest to his more enlightened contemporaries, few at least had as yet presumed to censure.—In Why come ye nat to Courte the satire is entirely personal, and aimed at the all-powerful minister to whom the author had once humbly sued for preferment. While, throughout this remarkable poem, Skelton either overlooks or denies the better qualities, the commanding talents, and the great attainments of Wolsey, and even ungenerously taunts him with the meanness of his origin; he fails not to attack his character and conduct in those particulars against which a satirist might justly declaim, and with the certainty that invectives so directed would find an echo among the people. The regal pomp and luxury of the Cardinal, his insatiate ambition, his insolent bearing at the council-board, his inaccessibility to suitors, &c. &c. are dwelt on with an intensity of scornful bitterness, and occasionally give rise to vivid descriptions which history assures us are but little exaggerated. Some readers may perhaps object, that in this poem the satire of Skelton too much resembles the “oyster-knife that hacks and hews” (to which that of Pope was so unfairly likened[128]); but all must confess that he wields his weapon with prodigious force and skill; and we know that Wolsey writhed under the wounds which it inflicted.
When Catullus bewailed the death of Lesbia’s bird, he confined himself to eighteen lines (and truly golden lines); but Skelton, while lamenting for the sparrow that was “slayn at Carowe,” has engrafted on the subject so many far-sought and whimsical embellishments, that his epicede is really what the old editions term it—a “boke.” Phyllyp Sparowe exhibits such fertility and delicacy of fancy, such graceful sportiveness, and such ease of expression, that it might well be characterised by Coleridge as “an exquisite and original poem.”[129]
In The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng, which would seem to have been one of Skelton’s most popular performances, we have a specimen of his talent for the low burlesque;—a description of a real ale-wife, and of the various gossips who keep thronging to her for liquor, as if under the influence of a spell. If few compositions of the kind have more coarseness or extravagance, there are few which have greater animation or a richer humour.
The Garlands of Laurell, one of Skelton’s longest and most elaborate pieces, cannot also be reckoned among his best. It contains, however, several passages of no mean beauty, which shew that he possessed powers for the higher kind of poetry, if he had chosen to exercise them; and is interspersed with some lyrical addresses to the ladies who weave his chaplet, which are very happily versified. In one respect the Garlande of Laurell stands without a parallel: the history of literature affords no second example of a poet having deliberately written sixteen hundred lines in honour of himself.
Skelton is to be regarded as one of the fathers of the English drama. His Enterlude of Vertue[130] and his Comedy callyd Achademios[131] have perished; so perhaps has his Nigramansir;[132] but his Magnyfycence is still extant. To those who carry their acquaintance with our early play-wrights no farther back than the period of Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, this “goodly interlude” by Skelton will doubtless appear heavy and inartificial; its superiority, however, to the similar efforts of his contemporaries, is, I apprehend, unquestionable.[133]
If our author did not invent the metre which he uses in the greater portion of his writings, and which is now known by the name Skeltonical, he was certainly the first who adopted it in poems of any length; and he employed it with a skill, which, after he had rendered it popular, was beyond the reach of his numerous imitators.[134] “The Skeltonical short verse,” observes Mr. D’Israeli, speaking of Skelton’s own productions, “contracted into five or six, and even four syllables, is wild and airy. In the quick-returning rhymes, the playfulness of the diction, and the pungency of new words, usually ludicrous, often expressive, and sometimes felicitous, there is a stirring spirit which will be best felt in an audible reading. The velocity of his verse has a carol of its own. The chimes ring in the ear, and the thoughts are flung about like coruscations.”[135]
Skelton has been frequently termed a Macaronic poet, but it may be doubted if with strict propriety; for the passages in which he introduces snatches of Latin and French are thinly scattered through his works. “This anomalous and motley mode of versification,” says Warton, “is, I believe, supposed to be peculiar to our author. I am not, however, quite certain that it originated with Skelton.”[136] He ought to have been “quite certain” that it did not.[137]
[15] Sometimes written Schelton: and Blomefield says, “That his Name was Shelton