[38] Du Resnel expressly says that he was made acquainted with the Cambridge entry by “M. Carte, autrement M. Phillips.” Recherches sur les Poètes Couronnez—Hist. de l’Acad. des Inscript. (Mém. de Littérature), x. 522.—Carte assumed the name of Phillips when he took refuge in France.
[39] A gentleman resident at Louvaine obligingly examined for me the registers of that university, but could find in them no mention of Skelton.
[40] The original has “Cum:” but the initial letters of the lines were intended to form a distich; see the conclusion of the poem.
[41] Here again the original has “Cum.”
[42] From the 4to volume entitled Opusculum Roberti Whittintoni in florentissima Oxoniensi achademia Laureati. At the end, Expliciūt Roberti Whitintoni Oxonie Protouatis Epygrammata: una cū quibusdā Panegyricis. Impressa Lōdini per me wynandū de worde. Anno post virgineū partū. M. ccccc xix. decimo vero kalēdas Maii.
[43] Henry Bradshaw’s Lyfe of Saynt Werburghe, l. ii. c. 24. printed by Pynson 1521, 4to.
[44] See the two subscriptions already cited, p. xiv.; and vol. i. 132, 206, vol. ii. 25.—“Clarus & facundus in utroque scribendi genere, prosa atque metro, habebatur.” Bale, Script. Illust. Brit. &c. p. 651. ed. 1559. “Inter Rhetores regius orator factus.” Pits, De Illust. Angl. Script. p. 701. ed. 1619. “With regard to the Orator Regius,” says Warton, “I find one John Mallard in that office to Henry the eighth, and his epistolary secretary,” &c. Hist. of E. P. ii. 132 (note), ed. 4to.
[45] Register Hill 1489–1505, belonging to the Diocese of London.
[46] 1st Octr.: see Sandford’s Geneal. Hist. p. 475. ed. 1707.
[47] See the Garlande of Laurell, vol. i. 408.
[48] Henry was created Duke of York 31st Octr. an. 10. Hen. vii. [1494]; see Sandford’s Geneal. Hist. p. 480. ed. 1707. See also The Creation of Henry Duke of Yorke, &c. (from a Cottonian MS.) in Lord Somers’s Tracts, i. 24. ed. Scott.
[49] Biblioth. p. 676. ed. 1748.
[50] i.e. well.
[51] i.e. tutor: see Notes, vol. ii. 193.—When ladies attempt to write history, they sometimes say odd things: e.g. “It is affirmed that Skelton had been tutor to Henry [viii.] in some department of his education. How probable it is that the corruption imparted by this ribald and ill-living wretch laid the foundation for his royal pupil’s grossest crimes!” Lives of the Queens of England by Agnes Strickland, vol. iv. 104.
[52] Fourth Poem Against Garnesche, vol. i. 129.
[53] Garlande of Laurell, vol. i. 410.—After noticing that while Arthur was yet alive, Henry was destined by his father to be archbishop of Canterbury, “it has been remarked,” says Mrs. Thomson, “that the instructions bestowed upon Prince Henry by his preceptor, Skelton, were calculated to render him a scholar and a churchman, rather than an enlightened legislator.” Mem. of the Court of Henry the Eighth, i. 2. But the description of the Speculum Principis, quoted above, is somewhat at variance with such a conclusion. The same lady observes in another part of her work, “To Skelton, who in conjunction with Giles Dewes, clerk of the library to Henry the Seventh, had the honour of being tutor to Henry the Eighth, this king evinced his approbation,” ii. 590, and cites in a note the Epistle to Henry the Eighth prefixed to Palsgrave’s Lesclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse, 1530, where mention is made of “the synguler clerke maister Gyles Dewes somtyme instructour to your noble grace in this selfe tong.” Though Dewes taught French to Henry, surely it by no means follows that he was “his tutor in conjunction with Skelton:” a teacher of French and a tutor are very different.
[54] Biblioth. p. 676. ed. 1748.
[55] Erasmi Opera, i. 1214, 1216, ed. 1703.—The Ode is appended to Erasmus’s Latin version of the Hecuba and Iphigenia in Aulide of Euripides, printed by Aldus in 1507; and in that edition the second line which I have quoted is found with the following variation,
“Monstrante fonteis vate Laurigero sacros.”
“It is probable,” says Granger, “that if that great and good man [Erasmus] had read and perfectly understood his [Skelton’s] ‘pithy, pleasaunt, and profitable works,’ as they were lately reprinted, he would have spoken of him in less honourable terms.” Biog. Hist. of Engl. i. 102. ed. 1775. The remark is sufficiently foolish: in Skelton’s works there are not a few passages which Erasmus, himself a writer of admirable wit, must have relished and admired; and it was not without reason that he and our poet have been classed together as satirists, in the following passage; “By what meanes could Skelton that laureat poet, or Erasmus that great and learned clarke, have vttered their mindes so well at large, as thorowe their clokes of mery conceytes in wryting of toyes and foolish theames: as Skelton did by Speake parrot, Ware the hauke, the Tunning of Elynour Rumming, Why come ye not to the Courte? Philip Sparrowe, and such like: yet what greater sense or better matter can be, than is in this ragged ryme contayned? Or who would haue hearde his fault so playnely tolde him, if not in such gibyng sorte? Also Erasmus, vnder his prayse of Folly, what matters hath he touched therein?” &c. The Golden Aphroditis, &c. by John Grange, 1577 (I quote from Censura Liter. vol. i. 382. ed. 1815).
[56] Then a student of Lincoln’s Inn.
[57] The country-seat of Lord Mountjoy.
[58] Probably Eltham.
[59] Catal. (Primus) Lucubrationum, p. 2. prefixed to the above-cited vol. of Erasmi Opera.—In Turner’s Hist. of the Reign of Henry the Eighth, it is erroneously stated that Erasmus “had the interview which he thus describes, at the residence of Lord Mounjoy,” i. 11. ed. 8vo.
[60] Vol. i. 410.
[61] Lines prefixed to Marsh’s ed. of