COLYN CLOUTE.
This powerful and original poem must have been circulated in MS., probably for a considerable time, before it was given to the press; for from a passage towards the conclusion, v. 1239, we learn that those against whom its satire was directed would not “suffer it to be printed.” In Colyn Cloute Skelton appears to have commenced his attacks on Wolsey.
“I could never conceive, Mr. Warton, to what Drayton alludes, in the preface to his Eclogues, where he says, that ‘the Colin Clout of Scogan, under Henry the seventh, is pretty.’ He is speaking of pastoral poetry; and adds, that ‘Barklays ship of fools hath twenty wiser in it.’ You somewhere say [Hist. of E. P. iii. 76, note, ed. 4to], ‘he must mean Skelton;’ but what PASTORAL did HE write?” Ritson’s Obs. on Warton’s Hist. of E. P., p. 20 (note); see too his Bibl. Poet., p. 99. I believe that Drayton did mean Skelton. Colyn Cloute is surely as much a pastoral as Barclay’s Ship of Fooles,—as much perhaps as even Barclay’s Egloges.
—— Quis consurget mecum, &c.] Vulg. Psal. xciii. 16, where “Quis consurget mihi,” &c.
—— Nemo, Domine] Id. Joan. viii. 11.
Page 311. v. 1.
What can it auayle
To dryue forth a snayle]
So in Gentylnes and Nobylyte, n. d. (attributed without grounds to Heywood);