And stronge men overcome
By feble men and weke:
So thus I say my name is;
Ye geit no more of me,
Because I wilbe blameles,
And live in charite.
Thuse endith this boke called the Image of Ypocresye.
[468] The Image of Ipocrysy] Is now printed from MS. Lansdown 794. The original has very considerable alterations and additions by a different hand: the first page is here and there illegible, partly from the paleness of the ink, and partly from the notes which Peter Le Neve (the possessor of the MS. in 1724) has unmercifully scribbled over it. I give the title here as it stands at the end of the First Part.
Hearne and others have attributed this remarkable production to Skelton. The poem, however, contains decisive evidence that he was not its author: to say nothing of other passages,—the mention of certain writings of Sir Thomas More and of “the mayde of Kent” (Elizabeth Barton), which occurs in the Third Part, would alone be sufficient to prove that it was the composition of some writer posterior to his time.
[469] Vp to the clowdy skye] Originally “Vp into the skye.”