buffoonery. His wrath is tremendous. He hits straight from the shoulder, and indulges in none of Juvenal's sly backhanders. He writes in a scurry of rhymes which leaves us breathless with righteous indignation. In 'Why Come Ye Nat To Courte' the satire is entirely personal, and is aimed at Wolsey. The causes which turned 'Skelton Laureate obsequious and loyall' into the bitter assailant of his former powerful patron are unknown. We only know that he attacked the full-blown pride of Wolsey1 with a boldness that made it necessary for him to flee to Westminster for sanctuary, and with a fierceness of invective almost unparalleled. In Colyn Cloute he had indulged in a few hits at the Cardinal, but in Speke, Parrot,' and in Why Come Ye Nat To Courte' he gives free rein to the bitterness of his satiric genius. He wields the weapon of his satire with tremendous force and skill, though perhaps a little more generosity would have made the onslaught more effective. Hardly ever since Catullus attacked Cæsar had a powerful living statesman been so abused. Skelton, indeed, lacks none of the impetuous virulence of Catullus, but he falls short in neatness and finish. There is, however, nothing in this sincere and decent poem to bring the blush to the cheek of the young person,' nothing to justify Pope's epithets.2 These, indeed, are true of the torrents of Billingsgate poured on the head of 1 Cf. Dyce, Skelton's Works, 1843. 2 Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learned by rote, And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote.' Pope, Imitations of Horace,' Bk. ÎI., Ep. i. 38. His note is even more unfair: 'Skelton, poet laureat to Henry VIII., a volume of whose verses has been lately reprinted, consisting almost wholly of ribaldry, obscenity, and Billingsgate language.' 'Gaudy, Gresy, Garnyshe,' who apparently challenged the poet 'Thus to contaminate And to violate The dygnyte laureate,' but they are most untrue of the bulk of his work. We have not to consider the justice of this attack on Wolsey;1 only the quality of the satire. The merit of this is in some ways first-rate. The picture Skelton draws will bear comparison for simplicity and bitterness with the passages in Juvenal which suggested it. It was, he tells us, 'at Juuynal's request' that he was forcibly constrayned to wryght of this glorious gest.' But, we feel, he needed no urging. He wrote 'quia difficile est Satiram non scribere,' and his work is stamped with the spirit of a spontaneous outburst. His qualities, in fine, are vivacious fancy and humorous originality tinged by moral earnestness. In this, as in his jubilant freedom, he is truly Rabelaisian before Rabelais. Alexander Barclay lived and wrote in Skelton's time, but he shared but little in Skelton's views and still less in his originality. Though he also claims to be a follower of Juvenal, he is really the last of the purely medieval English allegorists.2 Like Gower, he moralizes incessantly. His Ship of Fools' is a translation, though not a slavish one, of Brandt's Stultifera Navis,' but he is more original in being the first to adapt Virgil's Eclogues to the English tongue, with the view of satirizing the manners of the Court. In this line he was followed at intervals by Barnabe Googe and Spenser. 1 E.g., ll. 396 et seq. Cf. Professor Courthope's chapter on the Progress of Allegory, History of English Poetry,' vol. i. 1528. 1503-1542. 'Rede me and be nott wrothe' is a curious work written by William Roy and Jerome Barlow. It is really a reformation pamphlet, attacking, chiefly in the form of a dialogue between two prestes servauntes,' the hierarchy and priesthood of England, especially as represented by Wolsey. It is none too timid, even when tried by the standard of Skelton. The spirit is excellent; the satire is more salt than bitter, and what bitterness there may be is due rather to the facts than to the expression. Sir Thomas Wyatt may claim the distinction of being our first classical satirist. He gives us the mellowed moralizing of one who has found himself out of place at Courts, and being unable to frame his tongue to feign, to cloak the truth,' retires from the world without regret, without bitterness. This feeling at any rate was perfectly genuine; his disdain for the meanness which frequents high places was entirely unaffected. But to express these views, being conscious of the incompleteness of his own language and of the forms of poetry then in use as vehicles of thought, he deliberately imitated foreign and classical models. It is not by this imitation that the vigour and individuality of his thought is impaired, but by the inability of the pioneer to master the technique of these new forms. Still Wyatt's three pieces are terse and smooth in comparison with his contemporary satirists. The first and third of his satires are imitated from Horace and written in the terza rima of Alamanni; the second is imitated from that Italian author. It is hardly within the scope of this essay to point out how Wyatt and Surrey brought about a revolution in English versification by introducing a metrical in place of a rhythmical structure, nor how these two poets, by setting the example of admitting the influence of the Italian school of the Renais- Meantime, Robert Crowley, whose dreary epigrams exhibit him as a censor morum,' handed on the flickering torch of native satire to George Gascoigner This versatile author 'invented," to quote his own words, 'a morall and godly Satyre called the Steele Glasse, written without rime, but I trust not without reason.' The Steele Glasse, or Mirror, typifies the plain manners of England as opposed to the Crystal Glass-the foreign luxury and corruption of Venice. Though his metres show that he has felt the Italian influence, Gascoigne does not follow Wyatt in imitating classical models, but rather inclines to that allegorical treatment which Spenser frankly adopts. Spenser and Gascoigne, in fact, are, as satirists, nearer to the spirit of Dante and Langland than to that of the era which was now beginning. Spenser, not to mention the incidental satire in the Faery Queen,' uses this allegorical method of 1 Epistle Dedicatory, and Dedication of 'Delicate Diet for Daintie Mouthde Drunkards.' 1550. 1576. satire in the fifth Eclogue of the 'Shepheard's Calendar' to gird at the colourable and fained goodwill of Protestant and Catholic,' and openly attacks the loose living of popish prelates in Eclogue IX. 'Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberd's Tale,' again, is in the shape of a fable, published in 1591, but composed, as Spenser tells us, in the raw conceit of his youth. It is a satire of some heat and choler, but the point of it is blunted by the allegory. None the less it contains some fine and famous passages. Whilst Spenser wrote this fable in over- fluent heroics, Gascoigne used still less polished blank verse. The latter, a man of the world and a soldier of experience, devoted, as he himself put it, 'tam Marti quam Mercurio,' as much to the God of War as to the God of Learning, is a shrewd critic of man's vices and follies, and he preserves for us a curious picture of the manners and morality of the age. In spite of his imperfect mastery of blank verse rhythm, and his tendency towards the prosaic, he can boast an ease and harmony rare at that date. His style, which is clear and, except in his prose works, unaffected, shows him to be a master of the English language. Without any great fertility of fancy, he has masculine energy and an undoubted gift of satirical description. The work of Edward Hake1 has some little recommendation beyond its rarity, and 'Intent good living to erect, And sin rescinde which rifely raignes abroade.' He boldly attacked not only bawds, lawyers, and physicians, but also vice in high places, at a time when the Star Chamber was not idle. His hatred of Papists is quite rabid. If his easy black-letter rhymes are not poetry, they deserve, at any rate, 1 M.P. for Windsor, circa 1579. |