A poet for his art, Whose judgment sure was high, And had great practise of the pen, His works they will not lie; His termes to taunts did leane, His talk was as he wrate, Full quick of wit, right sharpe of wordes, And skilful of the state; * * * * * And to the hateful minde, That did disdaine his doings still, A scorner of his kinde. When Dr. Johnson observed that "Skelton cannot be said to have attained great elegance of language," he tried Skelton by a test of criticism at which Skelton would have laughed, and "jangled and wrangled." Warton has also censured him for adopting "the familiar phraseology of the common people." The learned editor of Johnson's "Dictionary" corrects both our critics. "If Skelton did not attain great elegance of language, he however possessed great knowledge of it." From his works may be drawn an abundance of terms which were then in use among the vulgar as well as the learned, and which no other writer of his time so obviously (and often so wittily) illustrated. Skelton seems to have been fully aware of the condition of our vernacular idiom when he wrote, for he has thus described it:-- Our natural tongue is rude, And hard to be enneude With polished termes lusty; Our language is so rusty, So cankered, and so full Of frowards, and so dull, That if I would apply To write ordinately, I wot not where to find Terms to serve my mind. It was obviously his design to be as great a creator of words as he was of ideas. Many of his mintage would have given strength to our idiom. Caxton, as a contemporary, is some authority that Skelton improved the language. Let not the reader imagine that Skelton was only "a rude rayling rhimer." Skelton was the tutor of Henry the Eighth; and one who knew him well describes him as-- Seldom out of prince's grace. Erasmus distinguished him "as the light and ornament of British letters;" and one, he addresses the royal pupil, "who can not only excite your studies, but complete them." Warton attests his classical attainments--"Had not his propensity to the ridiculous induced him to follow the whimsies of Walter Mapes, Skelton would have appeared among the first writers of Latin poetry in England." Skelton chose to be himself; and this is what the generality of his critics have not taken in their view.