SKELTON, John, an eccentric English scholar and poet of the 15th century. Mr Dyce, the editor of his works, fixes his birth about 1460. His first essay in verse was a poem after the manner of Lydgate on the death of Edward IV. (1483). He lived to pay compliments to Catherine, wife of Henry VIII., to jeer at the Scotch over the battle of Flodden, and to make fierce attacks on Wolsey, and is supposed to have died in 1529. In general intellectual force, fierceness of invective, wildness of buffoonery, and coarseness of language Skelton bears some likeness to Swift. But he stands by himself as one of the most eccentric and paradoxical characters in English literature. He began life apparently as the protegé of a pious, learned, and literary lady, the mother of Henry VII., who founded St John’s College and Christ’s College, Cambridge, and translated devotional works from the French. He was himself one of the most notable scholars of his time, was appointed tutor to Henry VIII., was hailed by Erasmus (whether ex officio or propter merita is left to conjecture) as “unum literarum Britanniarum lumen et decus,” was proclaimed poeta laureatus by both universities, and frequently applied this title as well as that of orator regius to himself without challenge. At about the age of forty he took orders, and was appointed rector of Diss in Norfolk, where he seems to have spent the last twenty-five years of his life. Yet this eminent scholar and churchman is the author of the oldest and the best drinking song in the English language—the drinking song in Gammer Gurton's Needle, and of one of the coarsest poems in any language— The Tunning of Elinor Rumming. He is the author of a satire against the clergy of his time— Colin Clout,— unsurpassed in pre-Reformation ...