When Catullus bewailed the death of Lesbia’s bird, he confined himself to eighteen lines (and truly golden lines); but Skelton, while lamenting for the sparrow that was “slayn at Carowe,” has engrafted on the subject so many far-sought and whimsical embellishments, that his epicede is really what the old editions term it,—a “boke.” _Phyllyp Sparowe_ exhibits such fertility and delicacy of fancy, such graceful sportiveness, and such ease of expression, that it might well be characterised by Coleridge as “an exquisite and original poem.”[129] In _The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng_, which would seem to have been one of Skelton’s most popular performances, we have a specimen of his talent for the low burlesque;—a description of a real ale-wife, and of the various gossips who keep thronging to her for liquor, as if under the influence of a spell. If few compositions of the kind have more coarseness or extravagance, there are few which have greater animation or a richer humour. The _Garlands of Laurell_, one of Skelton’s longest and most elaborate pieces, cannot also be reckoned among his best. It contains, however, several passages of no mean beauty, which shew that he possessed powers for the higher kind of poetry, if he had chosen to exercise them; and is interspersed with some lyrical addresses to the ladies who weave his chaplet, which are very happily versified. In one respect the _Garlande of Laurell_ stands without a parallel: the history of literature affords no second example of a poet having deliberately written sixteen hundred lines in honour of himself. Skelton is to be regarded as one of the fathers of the English drama. His _Enterlude of Vertue_[130] and his _Comedy callyd Achademios_[131] have perished; so perhaps has his _Nigramansir_;[132] but his _Magnyfycence_ is still extant. To those who carry their acquaintance with our early play-wrights no farther back than the period of Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, this “goodly interlude” by Skelton will doubtless appear heavy and inartificial; its superiority, however, to the similar efforts of his contemporaries, is, I apprehend, unquestionable.[133]