The so-called Merry Tales of Skelton amount, in reality, to a slight biographical sketch strung together in sectional form. There even appears a sort of attempt at chronological propriety, as they begin prior to his instalment at Diss and close at a point in his life when he was under the displeasure of Wolsey—not for his profligacy of behaviour, but for his vituperative writings against that powerful minister.
As a picture of the manners of the time, without a study and knowledge of which it is obviously futile to try or presume to judge Skelton or anybody else belonging to it, the narrative of the mistress whom the poet kept at his living, his reprehension by the bishop, and the scene in Diss church when (according to the jest-book) he rated his congregation for complaining of him and openly exhibited the child, baffles competition, when one takes into account the relations of the pastor to his flock, the severity of ecclesiastical discipline, and the rebuke which Skelton had suffered immediately before at the hands of his spiritual chief. It is when we contemplate such social phenomena that we become more and more forcibly convinced that the Reformation was not a crusade against immorality, but a political fight between the Church and State. In the case of Skelton himself, his licentiousness would probably have never involved him in serious trouble had he not chosen to attack Wolsey.
But the entire texture of this small miscellany of humour, scandal and libertinism is cross-woven; and its serious value is, to my apprehension, greater than its comic. For it not only sheds light on certain points in the career of the singular man with whose name the tales are directly associated, but on the whole surrounding atmosphere.
CHAPTER XVI.
Analecta.
IT was not till the Greeks and Romans had arrived at an advanced stage of civilisation that scope was afforded to the class of writers of whom we are accustomed to regard Athenæus and Aulus Gellius as typical examples; and somewhat on a similar principle the development of the jest in the more modern acceptation is traceable back only to a certain stage of social order, when a perception of the ridiculous or eccentric was quickened into life by the establishment of an artificial standard among us of politeness and opinion.
Another and distinct section of jest-books consists of what may be treated as the pioneers of the English Ana—collections made by editors from other books and from hearsay among their friends or in company; and of these I shall content myself with adducing as specimens—