Note 125 — SOME ACCOUNT OF SKELTON AND HIS WRITINGS.

“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.