Читать книгу Poetry - John Skelton - Страница 8

“Item Apollo that whirllid up his chare,

That made sum to snurre and snuf in the wynde;

It made them to skip, to stampe, and to stare,

Whiche, if they be happy, haue cause to beware

In ryming and raylyng with hym for to mell,

For drede that he lerne them there A, B, C, to spell.

With that I stode vp, halfe sodenly afrayd;

Suppleyng to Fame, I besought her grace,

And that it wolde please her, full tenderly I prayd,

Owt of her bokis Apollo to rase.

Nay, sir, she sayd, what so in this place

Of our noble courte is ones spoken owte,

It must nedes after rin all the worlde aboute.

God wote, theis wordes made me full sad;

And when that I sawe it wolde no better be,

But that my peticyon wolde not be had,

What shulde I do but take it in gre?

For, by Juppiter and his high mageste,

I did what I cowde to scrape out the scrollis,

Apollo to rase out of her ragman rollis.”[104]

The piece which commenced with the words “Apollo that whirllid vp his chare,” and which gave such high displeasure to some of Skelton’s contemporaries, has long ago perished—in spite of Fame’s refusal to erase it from her books!

The title-page of the Garlande of Laurell,[105] ed. 1523, sets forth that it was “studyously dyuysed at Sheryfhotton Castell,” in Yorkshire; and there seems no reason to doubt that it was written by Skelton during a residence at that mansion. The date of its composition is unknown; but it was certainly produced at an advanced period of his life;[106] and the Countess of Surrey, who figures in it so conspicuously as his patroness, must have been Elizabeth Stafford, daughter of Edward Duke of Buckingham, second wife of Thomas Howard Earl of Surrey, and mother of that illustrious Surrey “whose fame for aye endures.” Sheriff-Hutton Castle was then in the possession of her father-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk,[107] the victor of Flodden Field; and she was probably there as his guest, having brought Skelton in her train. Of this poem, unparalleled for its egotism, the greater part is allegorical; but the incident from which it derives its name—the weaving of a garland for the author by a party of ladies, at the desire of the Countess, seems to have had some foundation in fact.

From a passage in the poem just mentioned, we may presume that Skelton used sometimes to reside at the ancient college of the Bonhommes at Ashridge;

“Of the Bonehoms of Ashrige besyde Barkamstede,

That goodly place to Skelton moost kynde,

Where the sank royall is, Crystes blode so rede,

Whervpon he metrefyde after his mynde;

A pleasaunter place than Ashrige is, harde were to fynde,” &c.[108]

That Skelton once enjoyed the patronage of Wolsey, at whose desire he occasionally exercised his pen, and from whose powerful influence he expected preferment in the church, we learn from the following passages in his works:

“Honorificatissimo, amplissimo, longeque reverendissimo in Christo patri, ac domino, domino Thomæ, &c. tituli sanctæ Ceciliæ, sacrosanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ presbytero, Cardinali meritissimo, et apostolicæ sedis legato, a latereque legato superillustri, &c. Skeltonis laureatus, ora. reg., humillimum dicit obsequium cum omni debita reverentia, tanto tamque magnifico digna principe sacerdotum, totiusque justitiæ æquabilissimo moderatore, necnon præsentis opusculi fautore excellentissimo, &c., ad cujus auspicatissimam contemplationem, sub memorabili prelo gloriosæ immortalitatis, præsens pagella felicitatur, &c.”[109]

“Ad serenissimam Majestatem Regiam, pariter cum Domino Cardinali, Legato a latere honorificatissimo, &c.

Lautre Enuoy.

Perge, liber, celebrem pronus regem venerare

Henricum octavum, resonans sua præmia laudis.

Cardineum dominum pariter venerando salutes,

Legatum a latere, et fiat memor ipse precare

Prebendæ, quam promisit mihi credere quondam,

Meque suum referas pignus sperare salutis

Inter spemque metum.

Twene hope and drede

My lyfe I lede,

But of my spede

Small sekernes;

Howe be it I rede

Both worde and dede

Should be agrede

In noblenes:

Or els, &c.”[110]

“To my Lorde Cardynals right noble grace, &c.

Lenuoy.

Go, lytell quayre, apace,

In moost humble wyse,

Before his noble grace,

That caused you to deuise

This lytel enterprise;

And hym moost lowly pray,

In his mynde to comprise

Those wordes his grace dyd saye

Of an ammas gray.

Ie foy enterment en sa bone grace.”[111]

We also find that Skelton “gaue to my lord Cardynall” The Boke of Three Fooles.[112]

What were the circumstances which afterwards alienated the poet from his powerful patron, cannot now be discovered: we only know that Skelton assailed the full-blown pride of Wolsey with a boldness which is astonishing, and with a fierceness of invective which has seldom been surpassed. Perhaps, it would have been better for the poet’s memory, if the passages just quoted had never reached us; but nothing unfavourable to his character ought to be hastily inferred from the alteration in his feelings towards Wolsey while the cause of their quarrel is buried in obscurity. The provocation must have been extraordinary, which transformed the humble client of the Cardinal into his “dearest foe.”

We are told by Francis Thynne, that Wolsey was his father’s “olde enymye, for manye causes, but mostly for that my father had furthered Skelton to publishe his Collin Cloute againste the Cardinall, the moste parte of whiche Booke was compiled in my fathers howse at Erithe in Kente.”[113] But though Colyn Cloute contains passages which manifestly point at Wolsey, it cannot be termed a piece “againste the Cardinall:” and I have no doubt that the poem which Thynne had in view, and which by mistake he has mentioned under a wrong title, was our author’s Why come ye nat to Courte. In Colyn Cloute Skelton ventured to aim only a few shafts at Wolsey: in Why come ye nat to Courte, and in Speke, Parrot, he let loose against him the full asperity of reproach.

The bull appointing Wolsey and Campeggio to be Legates a latere jointly, is dated July 27th, 1518, that appointing Wolsey to be sole Legate a latere, 10th June, 1519;[114] and from the first two passages which I have cited above (pp. xl, xli) we ascertain the fact, that Wolsey continued to be the patron of Skelton for at least some time after he had been invested with the dignity of papal legate. If the third passage cited above (p. xli), “Go, lytell quayre, apace,” &c. really belong to the poem How the douty Duke of Albany, &c., to which it is appended in Marshe’s ed. of Skelton’s Workes, 1568, our author must have been soliciting Wolsey for preferment as late as November 1523: but his most direct satire on the Cardinal, Why come ye nat to Courte, was evidently composed anterior to that period; and his Speke, Parrot (which would require the scholia of a Tzetzes to render it intelligible) contains seeming allusions to events of a still earlier date. The probability (or rather certainty) is, that the L’Envoy, “Go, lytell quayre,” &c. has no connexion with the poem on the Duke of Albany: in Marshe’s volume the various pieces are thrown together without any attempt at arrangement; and it ought to be particularly noticed that between the poem against Albany and the L’Envoy in question, another L’Envoy is interposed.[115] Wolsey might have forgiven the allusions made to him in Colyn Cloute; but it would be absurd to imagine that, in 1523, he continued to patronise the man who had written Why come ye nat to Courte.

The following anecdote is subjoined from Hall: “And in this season [15 Henry viii.], the Cardinall by his power legantine dissolued the Conuocacion at Paules, called by the Archebishop of Cantorbury [Warham], and called hym and all the clergie to his conuocacion to Westminster, which was neuer seen before in Englande, wherof master Skelron, a mery Poet, wrote,

Gentle Paule, laie doune thy sweard,[116]

For Peter of Westminster hath shauen thy beard.”[117]

From the vengeance of the Cardinal,[118] who had sent out officers to apprehend him, Skelton took sanctuary at Westminster, where he was kindly received and protected by the abbot Islip,[119] with whom he had been long acquainted. In this asylum he appears to have remained till his death, which happened June 21st, 1529. What he is reported to have declared on his death-bed concerning the woman whom he had secretly married, and by whom he left several children, has been already mentioned:[120] he is said also to have uttered at the same time a prophecy concerning the downfal of Wolsey.[121] He was buried in the chancel of the neighbouring church of St. Margaret’s; and, soon after, this inscription was placed over his grave,

Joannes Skeltonus, vates Pierius, hic situs est.[122]

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.

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]

If our author did not invent the metre which he uses in the greater portion of his writings, and which is now known by the name Skeltonical, he was certainly the first who adopted it in poems of any length; and he employed it with a skill, which, after he had rendered it popular, was beyond the reach of his numerous imitators.[134] “The Skeltonical short verse,” observes Mr. D’Israeli, speaking of Skelton’s own productions, “contracted into five or six, and even four syllables, is wild and airy. In the quick-returning rhymes, the playfulness of the diction, and the pungency of new words, usually ludicrous, often expressive, and sometimes felicitous, there is a stirring spirit which will be best felt in an audible reading. The velocity of his verse has a carol of its own. The chimes ring in the ear, and the thoughts are flung about like coruscations.”[135]

Skelton has been frequently termed a Macaronic poet, but it may be doubted if with strict propriety; for the passages in which he introduces snatches of Latin and French are thinly scattered through his works. “This anomalous and motley mode of versification,” says Warton, “is, I believe, supposed to be peculiar to our author. I am not, however, quite certain that it originated with Skelton.”[136] He ought to have been “quite certain” that it did not.[137]