o encourage the notion:--

"_Mere Fool._ Skogan? What was he?

"_Jophiel._ Oh, a fine gentleman, and master of arts
Of Henry the Fourth's time, that made disguises
For the King's sons, and writ in ballad-royal
Daintily well.

"_Mere Fool_. But he wrote like a gentleman?

"_Jophiel_. In rhyme, fine, tinkling rhyme, and flowand verse,
With now and then some sense; and he was paid for't,
Regarded and rewarded; which few poets
Are nowadays."[7]

But Warton places Scogan in the reign of Edward IV., and reduces him
to the level of Court Jester, his authority being Dr. Andrew Borde,
who, early in the sixteenth century, published a volume of his
platitudes.[8] There is nothing to prove that he was either poet or
Laureate; while, on the other hand, it must be owned, one person might
at the same time fill the offices of Court Poet and Court Fool. It is
but fair to say that Tyrwhitt, who had all the learning and more than
the accuracy of Warton, inclines to Jonson's estimate of Scogan's
character and employment.

One John Kay, of whom we are singularly deficient in information, held
the post of Court Poet under the amorous Edward IV. What were his
functions and appointments we cannot discover.

Andrew Bernard held the office under Henry VII. and Henry VIII. He was
a churchman, royal historiographer, and tutor to Prince Arthur. His
official poems were in Latin. He was living as late as 1522.

John Skelton obtained the distinction of Poet-Laureate at Oxford, a
title afterward confirmed to him by the University of Cambridge: mere
university degrees, however, without royal indorsement. Henry
VIII. made him his "Royal Orator," whatever that may have been, and
otherwise treated him with favor; but we hear nothing of sack or
salary, find nothing among his poems to intimate that his performances
as Orator ever ran into verse, or that his "laurer" was of the regal
sort.

A long stride carries us to the latter years of Queen Elizabeth,
where, and in the ensuing reign of James, we find the names of Edmund
Spenser, Samuel Daniel, and Michael Drayton interwoven with the
bays. Spenser's possession of the laurel rests upon no better evidence
than that, when he presented the earlier books of the "Faery Queen" to
Elizabeth, a pension of fifty pounds a year was conferred upon him,
and that the praises of _Gloriana_ ring through his realm of
Faery in unceasing panegyric. But guineas are not laurels, though