pieces, he used, like Hawes, Chaucer's seven-lined stanza. But his later {53} poems were mostly written in a verse of his own invention, called after him Skeltonical. This was a sort of glorified doggerel, in short, swift, ragged lines, with occasional intermixture of French and Latin.

  "Her beautye to augment.
  Dame Nature hath her lent
  A warte upon her cheke,
  Who so lyst to seke
  In her vyságe a skar,
  That semyth from afar
  Lyke to the radyant star,
  All with favour fret,
  So properly it is set.
  She is the vyolet,
  The daysy delectáble,
  The columbine commendáble,
  The jelofer amyáble;
  For this most goodly floure,
  This blossom of fressh coloúr,
  So Jupiter me succoúr,
  She florysheth new and new
  In beaute and vertew;
  Hac claritate gemina,
  O gloriosa femina, etc."

Skelton was a rude railing rhymer, a singular mixture of a true and original poet with a buffoon; coarse as Rabelais, whimsical, obscure, but always vivacious. He was the rector of Diss, in Norfolk, but his profane and scurrilous wit seems rather out of keeping with his clerical character. His Tunnyng of Elynoure Rummyng is a study of very low life, reminding one slightly of Burns's Jolly {54} Beggars. His Phyllyp Sparowe is a sportive, pretty, fantastic elegy on the death of a pet bird belonging to Mistress Joanna Scroupe, of Carowe, and has been compared to the Latin poet Catullus's elegy on Lesbia's sparrow. In Speke, Parrot, and Why Come ye not to Courte? he assailed the powerful Cardinal Wolsey with the most ferocious satire, and was, in consequence, obliged to take sanctuary at Westminster, where he died in 1529. Skelton was a classical scholar, and at one time tutor to Henry VIII. The great humanist, Erasmus, spoke of him as the "one light and ornament of British letters." Caxton asserts that he had read Virgil, Ovid, and Tully, and quaintly adds, "I suppose he hath dronken of Elycon's well."

In refreshing contrast with the artificial court poetry of the 15th and first three quarters of the 16th century, was the folk-poetry, the popular ballad literature which was handed down by oral tradition. The English and Scotch ballads were narrative songs, written in a variety of meters, but chiefly in what is known as the ballad stanza.