Concerning the personal appearance of Skelton we are left in ignorance;[123] for the portraits which are prefixed to the old editions of several of his poems must certainly not be received as authentic representations of the author.[124] The chief satirical productions of Skelton (and the bent of his genius was decidedly towards satire) are _The Bowge of Courte_, _Colyn Cloute_, and _Why come ye nat to Courte_.—In the first of these, an allegorical poem of considerable invention, he introduces a series of characters delineated with a boldness and discrimination which no preceding poet had displayed since the days of Chaucer, and which none of his contemporaries (with the sole exception of the brilliant Dunbar) were able to attain: the merit of those personifications has been allowed even by Warton, whose ample critique on Skelton deals but little in praise;[125] and I am somewhat surprised that Mr. D’Israeli, who has lately come forward as the warm eulogist of our author,[126] should have passed over _The Bowge of Courte_ without the slightest notice.—_Colyn Cloute_ is a general satire on the corruptions of the Church, the friars and the bishops being attacked alike unsparingly; nor, when Skelton himself pronounced of this piece that “though his ryme be ragged, it hath in it some pyth,”[127] did he overrate its vigour and its weighty truth: _Colyn Cloute_ not only shews that fearlessness which on all occasions distinguished him, but evinces a superiority to the prejudices of his age, in assailing abuses, which, if manifest to his more enlightened contemporaries, few at least had as yet presumed to censure.—In _Why come ye nat to Courte_ the satire is entirely personal, and aimed at the all-powerful minister to whom the author had once humbly sued for preferment. While, throughout this remarkable poem, Skelton either overlooks or denies the better qualities, the commanding talents, and the great attainments of Wolsey, and even ungenerously taunts him with the meanness of his origin; he fails not to attack his character and conduct in those particulars against which a satirist might justly declaim, and with the certainty that invectives so directed would find an echo among the people. The regal pomp and luxury of the Cardinal, his insatiate ambition, his insolent bearing at the council-board, his inaccessibility to suitors, &c. &c. are dwelt on with an intensity of scornful bitterness, and occasionally give rise to vivid descriptions which history assures us are but little exaggerated. Some readers may perhaps object, that in this poem the satire of Skelton too much resembles the “oyster-knife that hacks and hews” (to which that of Pope was so unfairly likened[128]); but all must confess that he wields his weapon with prodigious force and skill; and we know that Wolsey writhed under the wounds which it inflicted.