a prose treatise on education, generous and wise in its tone, and strongly opposing the custom of ill-treating schoolboys. Elyot was a graduate of Cambridge; was knighted by Henry VIII., in whose service he was much employed in foreign embassies; and died in 1546. Although his book on education is the one for which he is chiefly remembered, he wrote several other books, particularly "The Castle of Health," published in 1533; a "Latin and English Dictionary," in 1538, the first ever published in England; and a "Defence or Apology of Good Women," in 1545.

CHAPTER VI.

FIRST HALF OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: POETRY AND THE DRAMA.

1. John Skelton.-2. William Dunbar.-3. Gavin Douglas.-4. Sir David Lindsay of the Mount.-5. Sir Thomas Wyatt. -6. Earl of Surrey.-7. Alexander Barclay.-8. Stephen Hawes.-9. William Roy.-10. Scottish Hymns. — 11. The Drama; the Morality-Play.-12. Skelton's "Magnificence."-13. Lindsay's Satire on the Three Estates.-14. Rise of the Modern Drama.-15. The First Comedy; Nicholas Udall.-16. Masques. — 17. Interludes; John Heywood.

1. DURING this period, six poets came into especial prominence, three of them being Scotsmen: John Skelton, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, Sir David Lindsay, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and the Earl of Surrey. These poets we shall first study in the order named; then we shall deal with a few poets of less note; and finally we shall examine the progress made up to 1550 in the development of the English drama.

John Skelton was born either in Cumberland or in Norfolk, and not before the year 1460. He took his Master's degree at Cambridge in 1484; and in 1490 he was spoken of by Caxton as "late created poet laureate at Oxford. Several years

later, he was admitted to the same title at Louvain and at Cambridge. The degree of poet laureate was then a recognized degree in grammar and rhetoric with versification. A wreath of laurel was presented to each new "poeta laureatus;" and if this graduated grammarian obtained also a license to teach boys, he was publicly presented in the Convocation House with a rod and ferule. If he served a king, he might call himself the king's humble poet laurcate; as John Kay, of whom no verse remains, was, as far as we know, first to do, in calling himself poet laureate to Edward IV. Before obtaining this degree the candidate would be required to write a hundred Latin verses on the glory of the University, or some other accepted subject.

In 1498, Skelton took orders, and became afterwards rector of Diss, Norfolk; at which time, he was likewise tutor to Prince Henry, afterward King Henry VIII. During the earlier days of Cardinal Wolsey, Skelton was his friend; but from about the year 1519, when Wolsey's oppressions of the clergy and the people became more severe, Skelton turned against him, and in his fearless and savage satires braved the great prelate's wrath. Against that wrath, the poet had finally to protect himself by taking the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, where he was safely sheltered until his death, in 1529. He never ceased to be nominal rector of Diss; though he is said to have been suspended from his functions by Dr. Richard Nix, his diocesan, for inclination towards the opinions of the reformers. The particular offence said to have been charged against John Skelton by the Dominicans was that he had violated the rule of celibacy, by secret marriage to the mother of his children.

The student who glances at the most popular of Skelton's poems, written in the coarse and artless verse which has been named "Skeltonical," and which at first seems to be mere doggerel, will be in danger of concluding that Skelton himself was not a man of much learning or literary cultivation. In reality, however, he was both. That he had many university honors, that he was a tutor in the royal family, and that he wrote Latin verses, and a prose treatise in Latin called "Speculum Principis," is proof of his learning; while his literary cultivation was something for which he was distinguished in his own day. Caxton publicly appealed to him as an arbiter in matters of scholarship, saying that Skelton had translated from the Latin," not in rude and olde langage, but in polysshed and ornate termes craftely, as he that hath redde Vyrgyle, Ovyde, Tullye, and all the other noble poets and oratours, to me unknowen. And also he hath redde the nine muses, and understande theyr musicalle scyences, and to whom of theym eche scyence is appropred. I suppose he hath dronken of Elycon's well." At the end of the fifteenth century, when Prince Henry was nine years old, Erasmus, in dedicating to the boy a Latin ode in "Praise of Britain, King Henry VII., and the royal children," congratulated him on being housed with Skelton, a

special light and ornament of British literature ("unum Britannicarum literarum lumen et decus "), who could not only kindle his desire for study, but secure its consummation. In the ode itself Erasmus again spoke of Skelton as Prince Henry's guide to the sacred sources of learning.

While Skelton was still a student at Cambridge, he appears to have written a poem "On the Death of King Edward IV.” Like one of the old metrical tragedies of men fallen from high estate, it tells the dead king speaking-how the days of power, of wealth wrung from the commonalty, of costly works under a rule pleasing to some, to others displeasing, are at an end:

"Mercy I ask of my misdoing;

What availeth it, friends, to be my foe,

Sith I cannot resist nor amend your complaining?
Quid, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormio."

The last line, suggesting royal pomp asleep in dust, is the refrain to every stanza. In 1489 Skelton wrote, in Chaucer's stanza, an "Elegy upon the Death of the Earl of Northumberland," who was killed by an insurgent populace in Yorkshire. During the latter part of the reign of Henry VII., probably, Skelton wrote his "Bowge of Court." It was an allegorical court poem against court follies and vices.

Bowge is the French bouche (the mouth); and bowge of court was the old technical name for the right to feed at a king's table. Skelton here told, in Chaucer's stanza, how in autumn he thought of the craft of old poets who

"Under as coverte termës as could be

Can touche a trouth, and cloke it subtylly
With fresshe utteraunce full sentencyously."

Weary with much thinking, he slept at the port of Harwich in mine host's house called "Power's Keye;" and it seemed to him that he saw sail into harbor a goodly ship, which cast anchor, and was boarded by traders who found royal merchandise in her. The poet also went on board, where he found no acquaintance, and there was much noise, until one commanded all to hold their peace, and said that the ship was the "Bowge of Court," owned by the Dame Saunce-pere (Peerless); that her merchandise was called Favor, and who would have it must pay dear. The poet found that there were seven subtle persons in the ship:

"The first was Favell, full of flatery,

With fables false that well coude fayne a tale;
The seconde was Suspecte, which that dayly

Mysdempte eche man, with face deedly and pale;
And Harry Hafter, that well coude picke a male;
With other foure of theyr affynite,

Dysdayne, Ryotte, Dyssymuler, Subtylte."

These seven sins of the court had for their friend Fortune, who often danced with them; but they had no love for the new-comer, Dread, the name of the poet. Favell cloaked his ill-will with sugared speech. Dread thanked him, and was then addressed in turn by the other vices, each in his own fashion; and at last Dread, the poet, was about to jump out of the ship to avoid being slain, when he awoke, “caught penne and ynke, and wrote this lytyll boke."

But Skelton's fame does not rest upon good thought put into this conventional disguise. He felt with the people; and in the reign of Henry VIII. we shall find him speaking with them, and for them, by putting bold words of his own upon the life of his own day into a form of verse borrowed from nobody. This form of verse, which has been called Skeltonical, appeared in the delicately playful "Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe," the lament of a maid over the death of a pet sparrow. The lament ended with a Latin epitaph to the bird, and it was followed by dainty commendations of its mistress. This poem, suggested no doubt by the Sparrow of Catullus, was written by Skelton before the end of 1508.

During the earlier years of the reign of Henry VIII., Skelton was in high favor with his old pupil; and later in the poet's life, it must have been in part the consciousness of the king's friendship for him that emboldened him to make his tremendous assaults on Cardinal Wolsey. His favorite manner became satiric, and even vituperative, animated by passionate indignation at the evils of the time, and by genuine sympathy with the discontent of the people. The least creditable of his writings in this satiric vein are four minor poems, personally abusive of Sir Christopher Garnesche, gentleman usher to Henry VIII., with whom Skelton had a 66 flyting," a contest of metrical scolding in billingsgate, for the diversion of the king and his court. This metrical scolding-match belongs to a form of literature descended from the "tenson" or "jeu parti" of early