Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/357

Rh a high repute as a journalist, orator, and lecturer. He was the first Southerner to achieve any name in literature.

(1460?-1529). —Poet, b. in Norfolk, and ed. at Oxf. and Camb., of both of which he was cr. Poet Laureate, and perhaps held the same office under the King. He was appointed tutor to Henry VIII., and notwithstanding his sharp tongue, enjoyed some favour at Court. In 1498 he entered the Church, and became Rector of Diss in his native county. Hitherto he seems to have produced some translations only, but about this time he appears to have struck upon the vein which he was to work with such vigour and popularity. He turned his attention to abuses in Church and State, which he lashed with caustic satire, conveyed in short doggerel rhyming lines peculiar to himself, in which jokes, slang, invectives, and Latin quotations rush out pell-mell. His best works in this line are Why come ye not to Court? and Colin Clout, both directed against the clergy, and the former against Wolsey in particular. Piqued at his inconstancy (for S. had previously courted him) the Cardinal would have imprisoned him, had he not taken sanctuary in Westminster, where he remained until his death. Other works of his are The Tunning (brewing) of Elynor Rummynge, a coarsely humorous picture of low life, and the tender and fanciful Death of Philip Sparrow, the lament of a young lady over her pet bird killed by a cat.

(1831-1897). —Miscellaneous writer. B. in Edinburgh, ed. at the Univ. there, and called to the Scottish Bar 1854, he was Sec. and ultimately Chairman of the Local Government Board for Scotland. He wrote Maitland of Lethington and the Scotland of Mary Stuart (1887), The Crookit Meg(1880), and The Table Talk of Shirley. He contributed to Fraser's and Blackwood's Magazines. He received the degree of LL.D. from Edin. 1878, and was made K.C.B. 1897.

(1807-1892). —Historian, 2nd s. of James S. of Rubislaw, friend of Sir Walter Scott, was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, and Clerk of the Bills in the Court of Session. He wrote and ed. historical works of considerable authority, The Highlanders of Scotland (1837), and his most important work, Celtic Scotland (1876-80), and ed. of The Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868), and other Celtic writings.

SKINNER, JOHN (1721-1807). —Historian and song-writer, s. of a schoolmaster at Birse, Aberdeenshire, was ed. at Marischal Coll. Brought up as a Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian and ministered to a congregation at Longside, near Peterhead, for 65 years. He wrote The Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the Episcopalian point of view, and several songs of which The Reel of Tullochgorum and The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn are the best known, and he also rendered some of the Psalms into Latin. He kept up a rhyming correspondence with Burns.

(1832-1903). —Poet, b. near North Shields, and from childhood worked in the mines. He pub. a few pieces of poetry in 1859, and soon after left working underground