Whether Skelton really adopted the measures of the old tavern-minstrelsy used by harpers, who gave "a fit of mirth for a groat," or "carols for Christmas," or "lascivious poems for bride-ales," as Puttenham, the arch-critic of Elizabeth's reign, supposes; or whether in Skelton's introduction of alternate Latin lines among his verses he caught the Macaronic caprice of the Italians, as Warton suggests; the Skeltonical style remains his own undisputed possession. He is a poet who has left his name to his own verse--a verse, airy but pungent, so admirably adapted for the popular ear that it has been frequently copied,[1] and has led some eminent critics into singular misconceptions. The minstrel tune of the Skeltonical rhyme is easily caught, but the invention of style and "the pith" mock these imitators. The facility of doggrel merely of itself could not have yielded the exuberance of his humour and the mordacity of his satire. This singular writer has suffered the mischance of being too original for some of his critics; they looked on the surface, and did not always suspect the depths they glided over: the legitimate taste of others has revolted against the mixture of the ludicrous and the invective. A taste for humour is a rarer faculty than most persons imagine; where it is not indigenous, no art of man can plant it. There is no substitute for such a volatile existence, and where even it exists in a limited degree, we cannot enlarge its capacity for reception. A great master of humour, who observed from his experience, has solemnly told us that "it is not in the power of every one to taste humour, however he may wish it--it is the gift of God; and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him."[2] Puttenham was the first critic who prized Skelton cheaply; the artificial and courtly critic of Elizabeth's reign could not rightly estimate such a wild and irregular genius. The critic's fastidious ear listens to nothing but the jar of rude rhymes, while the courtier's delicacy shrinks from the nerve of appalling satire. "Such," says this critic, "are the rhymes of Skelton, usurping the name of a Poet Laureat, being indeed but a rude rayling rhimer, and all his doings ridiculous--pleasing only the popular ear." This affected critic never suspected "the pith" of "the ridiculous;" the grotesque humour covering the dread invective which shook a Wolsey under his canopy. Another Elizabethan critic, the obsequious Meres, re-echoes the dictum. These opinions perhaps prejudiced the historian of our poetry, who seems to have appreciated them as the echoes of the poet's contemporaries. Yet we know how highly his contemporaries prized him, notwithstanding the host whom he provoked. One poetical brother[3] distinguishes him as "the Inventive Skelton," and we find the following full-length portrait of him by another:--[4]