efly glanced at the history, we return to the literary
products, all of which reflect more or less of the historic age, and by
their paucity and poverty indicate the existence of the causes so
unfavorable to literary effort. This statement will be partially
understood when we mention, as the principal names of this period,
Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, and Sir Thomas More, men whose works are scarcely
known to the ordinary reader, and which are yet the best of the time.

SKELTON.--John Skelton, poet, priest, and buffoon, was born about the year
1460, and educated at what he calls "Alma parens, O Cantabrigensis." Tutor
to Prince Henry, afterward Henry VIII., he could boast, "The honour of
England I lernyd to spelle." That he was highly esteemed in his day we
gather from the eulogium of Erasmus, then for a short time professor of
Greek at Oxford: "Unum Brittanicarum literarum lumen et decus." By another
contemporary he is called the "inventive Skelton." As a priest he was not
very holy; for, in a day when the marriage of the clergy was worse than
their incontinence, he contracted a secret marriage. He enjoyed for a time
the patronage of Wolsey, but afterward joined his enemies and attacked him
violently. He was _laureated_: this does not mean, as at present, that he
was poet laureate of England, but that he received a degree of which that
was the title.

His works are direct delineations of the age. Among these are "monodies"
upon _Kynge Edwarde the forthe_, and the _Earle of Northumberlande_. He
corrects for Caxton "The boke of the Eneydos composed by Vyrgyle." He
enters heartily into numerous literary quarrels; is a reformer to the
extent of exposing ecclesiastical abuses in his _Colin Clout_; and
scourges the friars and bishops alike; and in this work, and his "Why come
ye not to Courte?" he makes a special target of Wolsey, and the pomp and
luxury of his household. He calls him "Mad Amelek, like to Mamelek"
(Mameluke), and speaks

Of his wretched original
And his greasy genealogy.
He came from the sank (blood) royal
That was cast out of a butcher's stall.

This was the sorest point upon which he could touch the great cardinal and
prime minister of Henry VIII.

Historically considered, one work of Skelton is especially valuable, for
it places him among the first of English dramatists. The first effort of
the modern drama was the _miracle play_; then came the _morality_; after
that the _interlude_, whi