Poetry. John Skelton

hic situs est. Animam egit 21 die Junii, anno Dn̄i 1529, relictis liberis.” Bale, Script. Illust. Brit., p. 652. ed. 1559. See also Pits (De Illust. Angl. Script., p. 703. ed. 1619) and Fuller (Worthies, Norfolk, p. 257. ed. 1662), who give Joannes Sceltonus vates Pierius hic situs est as the whole of Skelton’s epitaph. Weever, however (Fun. Momum., p. 497. ed. 1631), makes “animam egit, 21 Junii 1529” a portion of it, and in a marginal note substitutes “ejicit” for “egit,” as if correcting the Latinity!! So too Wood (Ath. Oxon. i. 52. ed. Bliss.), who places “ejicit” between brackets after “egit,” and states (what the other writers do not mention) that the inscription was put on the tomb “soon after” Skelton’s death.

      In the Church-Wardens Accompts of St. Margaret’s, Westminster (Nichols’s Illust. of Manners and Expences, &c. 4to. p. 9), we find this entry;

	£.	s.	d.
“1529. Item, of Mr. Skelton for viii tapers	0	2	8”

      The institution of the person who succeeded Skelton as rector of Diss is dated 17th July: see first note on the present Memoir.

[123] See note, p. xxxvi.

[124] e.g. the portrait on the title-page of Dyuers Balettys and Dyties solacyous (evidently from the press of Pynson; see Appendix II. to this Memoir) is given as a portrait of “Doctor Boorde” in the Boke of Knowledge (see reprint, sig. I); and (as Mr. F. R. Atkinson of Manchester obligingly informed me by letter some years ago) the strange fantastic figure on the reverse of the title-page of Faukes’s ed. of the Garlande of Laurell, 1523 (poorly imitated in The Brit. Bibliogr. iv. 389) is a copy of an early French print.

[125] “Warton has undervalued him [Skelton]; which is the more remarkable, because Warton was a generous as well as a competent critic. He seems to have been disgusted with buffooneries, which, like those of Rabelais, were thrown out as a tub for the whale; for unless Skelton had written thus for the coarsest palates, he could not have poured forth his bitter and undaunted satire in such perilous times.” Southey—Select Works of Brit. Poets (1831), p. 61.

[126] Amen. of Lit. ii. 69.

[127] Vol. i. 313.

[128]

      “Satire should, like a polish’d razor, keen,

      Wound with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen:

      Thine is an oyster-knife that hacks and hews,” &c.

      Verses addressed to the imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace (the joint-composition of Lord Hervey and Lady M. W. Montagu).

[129] Remains, ii. 163.

[130]

      “Of Vertu also the souerayne enterlude.”

      Garlande of Laurell, vol. i. 408.

[131]

      “His commedy, Achademios callyd by name.”

      Id. p. 409.

[132] See Appendix II. to this Memoir.—Mr. Collier is mistaken in supposing Skelton’s “paiauntis that were played in Ioyows Garde” to have been dramatic compositions: see Notes, vol. ii. 330.

[133] A writer, of whose stupendous ignorance a specimen has been already cited (p. xxx, note 3), informs us that Magnyfycence “is one of the dullest plays in our language.” Eminent Lit. and Scient. Men of Great Britain, &c. (Lardner’s Cyclop.), i. 281.

[134] See Appendix III. to this Memoir, and Poems attributed to Skelton, vol. ii. 385.

[135] Amen. of Lit. ii. 69.

[136] Hist. of E. P. ii. 356.

[137]

      “In hevyn blyse ye xalle wyn to be

      Amonge the blyssyd company omnium supernorum

      Ther as is alle merth joye and glee

       Inter agmina angelorum

      In blyse to abyde.”

      Coventry Mysteries—MS. Cott. Vesp. D. viii. fol. 112.

      A reprint of Marshe’s ed. of Skelton’s Workes having appeared in 1736, Pope took occasion, during the next year, to mention them in the following terms—casting a blight on our poet’s reputation, from which it has hardly yet recovered;

      “Chaucer’s worst ribaldry is learn’d by rote,

      And beastly Skelton Heads of Houses quote”—

      Note—“Skelton, Poet Laureat to Hen. 8. a Volume of whose Verses has been lately reprinted, consisting almost wholly of Ribaldry, Obscenity, and Billingsgate Language.” The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace imitated, 1737. But Pope was unjust to Skelton; for, though expressions of decided grossness occur in his writings, they are comparatively few; and during his own time, so far were such expressions from being regarded as offensive to decency, that in all probability his royal pupil would not have scrupled to employ them in the presence of Anne Bulleyn and her maids of honour.

      Since the Memoir of Skelton was sent to press, Mr. W. H. Black (with his usual kindness) has pointed out to me the following entry;

      23d Feb. 12 Edw. iv. [1473]. “Tribus subclericis, videlicet Roberto Lane, Nicholao Neubold, et Johanni Skelton, videlicet prædicto Roberto l.s. et prædictis Nicholao et Johanni cuilibet eorum xl.s.” (A like payment was made to John Skelton on the 9th of Dec. preceding, when he is mentioned with others under the general denomination of clerks.) Books of the Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer—A 4. 38. fols. 26, 27. (Public Record Office).

      There is, Mr. Black thinks, a possibility that Skelton had been employed, while a youth, as an under-clerk in the Receipt of the Exchequer; and observes, that it would seem to have been a temporary occupation, as there is no trace of any person of that name among the admissions to offices in the Black Book.

      APPENDIX I.

       MERIE TALES OF SKELTON

       (see Memoir, p. xxx.);

       AND NOTICES OF SKELTON FROM VARIOUS SOURCES.