Note 137 — SOME ACCOUNT OF SKELTON AND HIS WRITINGS.
Reading edition
“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;
“Chaucer’s worst ribaldry is learn’d by rote, And beastly Skelton Heads of Houses quote”—
Note—“Skelton, Poet Laureat to Hen. 8. a Volume of whose Verses has been lately reprinted, consisting almost wholly of Ribaldry, Obscenity, and Billingsgate Language.” The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace imitated, 1737. But Pope was unjust to Skelton; for, though expressions of decided grossness occur in his writings, they are comparatively few; and during his own time, so far were such expressions from being regarded as offensive to decency, that in all probability his royal pupil would not have scrupled to employ them in the presence of Anne Bulleyn and her maids of honour.