_£._ _s._ _d._ “1529. Item, of Mr. Skelton for viii tapers 0 2 8” The institution of the person who succeeded Skelton as rector of Diss is dated 17th July: see first note on the present Memoir. [123] See note, p. xxxvi. [124] e. g. the portrait on the title-page of _Dyuers Balettys and Dyties solacyous_ (evidently from the press of Pynson; see Appendix II. to this Memoir) is given as a portrait of “Doctor Boorde” in the _Boke of Knowledge_ (see reprint, sig. I); and (as Mr. F. R. Atkinson of Manchester obligingly informed me by letter some years ago) the strange fantastic figure on the reverse of the title-page of Faukes’s ed. of the _Garlande of Laurell_, 1523 (poorly imitated in _The Brit. Bibliogr._ iv. 389) is a copy of an early French print. [125] “Warton has undervalued him [Skelton]; which is the more remarkable, because Warton was a generous as well as a competent critic. He seems to have been disgusted with buffooneries, which, like those of Rabelais, were thrown out as a tub for the whale; for unless Skelton had written thus for the coarsest palates, he could not have poured forth his bitter and undaunted satire in such perilous times.” Southey,—_Select Works of Brit. Poets_ (1831), p. 61. [126] _Amen. of Lit._ ii. 69. [127] Vol. i. 313. [128] “Satire should, like a polish’d razor, keen, Wound with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen: _Thine is an oyster-knife that hacks and hews_,” &c. _Verses addressed to the imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace_ (the joint-composition of Lord Hervey and Lady M. W. Montagu). [129] _Remains_, ii. 163. [130] “_Of Vertu_ also _the_ souerayne _enterlude_.” _Garlande of Laurell_, vol. i. 408. [131] “_His commedy, Achademios_ callyd by name.” _Id._ p. 409. [132] See Appendix II. to this Memoir.—Mr. Collier is mistaken in supposing Skelton’s “paiauntis that were played in Ioyows Garde” to have been dramatic compositions: see Notes, vol. ii. 330. [133] A writer, of whose stupendous ignorance a specimen has been already cited (p. xxx, note 3), informs us that _Magnyfycence_ “is one of the dullest plays in our language.” _Eminent Lit. and Scient. Men of Great Britain_, &c. (Lardner’s _Cyclop._), i. 281. [134] See Appendix III. to this Memoir, and _Poems attributed to Skelton_, vol. ii. 385. [135] _Amen. of Lit._ ii. 69. [136] _Hist. of E. P._ ii. 356. [137] “In hevyn blyse ye xalle wyn to be Amonge the blyssyd company _omnium supernorum_ Ther as is alle merth joye and glee _Inter agmina angelorum_ In blyse to abyde.” _Coventry Mysteries,—MS. Cott. Vesp. D._ viii. fol. 112. A reprint of Marshe’s ed. of Skelton’s _Workes_ having appeared in 1736, Pope took occasion, during the next year, to mention them in the following terms,—casting a blight on our poet’s reputation, from which it has hardly yet recovered;