having the additional interest of being the first approach to regular dramatic composition in Scotland. But Lyndesay wrote so much during a life busied with the stormy politics of the time that his work is in execution far below the level of his predecessors. His aim is practical, but he has no mastery over his machinery. Moreover, the very sincerity which inspired him to write at all leads him too readily, for a satirist, into political moralizing and somewhat prosy preaching.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century we can return once more to England, and there, in the comic and satirical part of the 'pithy, pleasaunt and profitable works of John Skelton,' we recognise a writer truly original in his own special line. In him, however, we need look for no refinement of style, and little trace of Chaucer's influence. Gifted with a rude but caustic humour and considerable force of imagination, he added to these qualities a profound knowledge of life both high and low. Even apart from the fascinating originality of his matter and manner, his almost exhaustless vocabulary of popular English renders him well worth reading.

Laureate of both Universities and perhaps Court Poet1 to Henry VIII., Skelton became Rector of Diss about 1500, and continued to pour forth invectives in the metre which is called after his name.2 The verses rattle on one rhyme till they can no more. The chimes ring in the ear and the thoughts are flung about like coruscations.'4 There is in these

1 Certainly he was tutor to Prince Henry.

'Yt cometh the wele me to remorde

That creaunser [tutor] was to thy sofreyne lord,'

he says in a poem against lusty Garnyshe.

2 Skeltonics.

3 Cf. the metre of Ingoldsby Legends. 4 I. D'Israeli.

quick-returning rhymes a stirring spirit which is heightened by the playfulness of the diction. His new words are not 'new words with little or no wit," but pungent, ludicrous and expressive. He used slang knowingly, in the manner of a scholar. His chief satirical productions are 'The Bowge of Courte,' 'The Boke of Colyn Cloute,' and Why Come Ye Nat To Courte.' In the first of these he gives us a gallery of characters painted with a boldness and discrimination unknown since the days of Chaucer, and displayed by none of his contemporaries, save, perhaps, the brilliant Dunbar.2

Here, however, there is little of the sincere native ring, none of the virulence and bitterness of the personal note which we find in 'Why Come Ye Nat To Courte.'

Colyn Cloute is a savage satirical philippic against the corruptions of the Church. Skelton attacks the bishops for their laziness, luxury, and ignorance, and does not spare the lower orders of the clergy. Like Langland, he based his attack on popular feeling. When he pronounces of this piece :

'For though my rhyme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,

Rudely rayne beaten,

Rusty and moughte eaten,

If ye

take well therwith

It hath in it some pith' (ll. 53-58),

he is not over-rating its vigour and fearlessness. Yet good criticism of his own work was hardly to be expected from an author who wrote a poem of 1,600 lines in honour of himself.3 None the less is he right with regard to the merits of Colyn Cloute. In all these satires, indeed, there is a moral earnestness underlying intemperate and scurrilous Dyce, Skelton's Works, 1843

1 Hudibras.

2

3 The Garlande of Laurell.'

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. II., 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.

2 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