Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/35

Rh book of Diodorus Siculus, and divers other works out of Latin into English, not in rude and old language, but in polished and ornate terms craftily, as he that hath read Virgil, Ovid, Tully, and all the other noble poets and orators to me unknown. And also he hath read the Nine Muses, and understands their musical sciences, and to whom of them each science is appropred. I suppose he hath drunk of Helicon's well. Then I pray him, and such other, to correct, add, or minish where as he or they shall find fault," &c.

His talents procured him the appointment of tutor to Prince Henry, and he received substantial encouragement from Algernon Percy, fifth Earl of Northumberland, a nobleman who, in an illiterate period, was an enthusiastic student of letters, and a liberal patron of all contemporary merit.

In 1498 Skelton took orders, and was soon afterwards presented to the rectory of Dysse, in Norfolk; but his conduct was not such as to obtain the approbation of his diocesan. His conversation partook largely of the nature of his ballads; and in the pulpit his propensity to buffoonery and raillery was not held in due subjection. "Having been guilty of certain crimes, as most poets are," quietly observes Wood, Bishop Nykke suspended him from his benefice, and in 1501, it would seem, he suffered temporary incarceration. But though his mouth was closed, his pen was free; and his angry soul threw forth fierce invectives, written in coarse rude doggrel, too pungent to be soon forgotten. These were flung abroad at random, like floating seeds upon a gusty day, and settled and struck root, as chance listed. Many of them were never committed to print, but learned by heart by hundreds, repeated in the roadside alehouse or at the market-cross on fair days, when dealer and customer left booth and stall vacant, to push into the crowd hedging round the itinerant ballad-singer.