Whether Skelton really adopted the measures of the old tavern-minstrelsy used by harpers, who gave “a fit of mirth for a groat,” or “carols for Christmas,” or “lascivious poems for bride-ales,” as Puttenham, the arch-critic of Elizabeth’s reign, supposes; or whether in Skelton’s introduction of alternate Latin lines among his verses he caught the Macaronic caprice of the Italians, as Warton suggests; the Skeltonical style remains his own undisputed possession. He is a poet who has left his name to his own verse—a verse, airy but pungent, so admirably adapted for the popular ear that it has been frequently copied,[1] and has led some eminent critics into singular misconceptions. The minstrel tune of the Skeltonical rhyme is easily caught, but the invention of style and “the pith” mock these imitators. The facility of doggrel merely of itself could not have yielded the exuberance of his humour and the mordacity of his satire.
This singular writer has suffered the mischance of being too original for some of his critics; they looked on the surface, and did not always suspect the depths they glided over: the legitimate taste of others has revolted against the mixture of the ludicrous and the invective. A taste for humour is a rarer faculty than most persons imagine; where it is not indigenous, no art of man can plant it. There is no substitute for such a volatile existence, and where even it exists in a limited degree, we cannot enlarge its capacity for reception. A great master of humour, who observed from his experience, has solemnly told us that “it is not in the power of every one to taste humour, however he may wish it—it is the gift of God; and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him.”[2]
Puttenham was the first critic who prized Skelton cheaply; the artificial and courtly critic of Elizabeth’s reign could not rightly estimate such a wild and irregular genius. The critic’s fastidious ear listens to nothing but the jar of rude rhymes, while the courtier’s delicacy shrinks from the nerve of appalling satire. “Such,” says this critic, “are the rhymes of Skelton, usurping the name of a Poet Laureat, being indeed but a rude rayling rhimer, and all his doings ridiculous—pleasing only the popular ear.” This affected critic never suspected “the pith” of “the ridiculous;” the grotesque humour covering the dread invective which shook a Wolsey under his canopy. Another Elizabethan critic, the obsequious Meres, re-echoes the dictum. These opinions perhaps prejudiced the historian of our poetry, who seems to have appreciated them as the echoes of the poet’s contemporaries. Yet we know how highly his contemporaries prized him, notwithstanding the host whom he provoked. One poetical brother[3] distinguishes him as “the Inventive Skelton,” and we find the following full-length portrait of him by another:—[4]
| A poet for his art, Whose judgment sure was high, And had great practise of the pen, His works they will not lie; His termes to taunts did leane, His talk was as he wrate, Full quick of wit, right sharpe of wordes, And skilful of the state; ***** And to the hateful minde, That did disdaine his doings still, A scorner of his kinde. |
When Dr. Johnson observed that “Skelton cannot be said to have attained great elegance of language,” he tried Skelton by a test of criticism at which Skelton would have laughed, and “jangled and wrangled.” Warton has also censured him for adopting “the familiar phraseology of the common people.” The learned editor of Johnson’s “Dictionary” corrects both our critics. “If Skelton did not attain great elegance of language, he however possessed great knowledge of it.” From his works may be drawn an abundance of terms which were then in use among the vulgar as well as the learned, and which no other writer of his time so obviously (and often so wittily) illustrated. Skelton seems to have been fully aware of the condition of our vernacular idiom when he wrote, for he has thus described it:—
| Our natural tongue is rude, And hard to be enneude With polished termes lusty; Our language is so rusty, So cankered, and so full Of frowards, and so dull, That if I would apply To write ordinately, I wot not where to find Terms to serve my mind. |
It was obviously his design to be as great a creator of words as he was of ideas. Many of his mintage would have given strength to our idiom. Caxton, as a contemporary, is some authority that Skelton improved the language.
Let not the reader imagine that Skelton was only “a rude rayling rhimer.” Skelton was the tutor of Henry the Eighth; and one who knew him well describes him as—
| Seldom out of prince’s grace. |
Erasmus distinguished him “as the light and ornament of British letters;” and one, he addresses the royal pupil, “who can not only excite your studies, but complete them.” Warton attests his classical attainments—“Had not his propensity to the ridiculous induced him to follow the whimsies of Walter Mapes, Skelton would have appeared among the first writers of Latin poetry in England.” Skelton chose to be himself; and this is what the generality of his critics have not taken in their view.