SKELTON, Jolts, an early English satirical poet, is supposed to have been born about the year 1460, but whether in Norfolk or Cumberland is uncertain. He studied at both Cambridge and Oxford, and received from each the academical honor of laureate. His sovereign, Henry VII, appointed him tutor to the young prince Henry, afterward king Henry VIII.; and EraSmus, in allusion to hit learning, styled him the light and grace of British scholars. At this time Skelton had produced some translations, written elegies on Edward IV. (1483) and the duke of Northumberland (1489). and was author of some stiff masques and allegorical poems of little or no merit. He entered the church in 149S, and became rector of Diss in Norfolk, shortly after which lie seems to have struck into that vein of original vernacular poetry, addressed to the multitude, for which he is unique among our elder bards, and which helped to fix our language. It consists in a flow of rattling voluble verse, unrestrained satire and jocularity, and a profusion of grotesque imagery mixed tip with Latin and slang phrases. At times Skelton has gleams of bright fancy and snatches of pleasant description. Of thiihigher class is his Philip Sparrow, being a poetical lamentation made by a young maiden (whose charms the poet describes with great gusto and miuuteness) over the loss of a pet bird slain in a convent of black nuns at Carowe near Norwich. The most humorous of
his pictures of low life—often coarse enough—are found in the piece entitled The Thn ing [or brewing] Elynor Rummyng, an ale-wife at Leatherhead in Surrey. This poem was highly popular, and was often reprinted in black-letter, garnished with a rude wood-cut representation of the fat hostess. His best satires are Colin Clout, and Why Come Ye not to Court? The former is a general satire on the clergy; and the latter, a virulent attack on cardinal Wolsey, whom the unscrupulous poet had previously flat tered, but who had disappointed him of a prebend whiCh he coveted. In this scurrilous lampoon, Wolsey is not only charged with arrogance, avariciousness, and inconti nence, but is reminded of his " base original" and "greasy genealogy," having been "cast out of a butcher's stall." The enraged cardinal ordered his libeler to be 'arrested. but Skelton took refuge in the samstury at Westminster, and received the protection of abbot Islip. From this retreat he did Hot dare to emerge, but continued silent under its sacred shelter till his death in 1529. The •' pithy, pleasaunt, and profitable worker of insister Skelton, Poete Laureate " were collected and published in 1568, and re printed in MO. An edition, carefully edited by the rev. A. Dyce, was issued-in 1843, in 2 vols. tivo.