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COLIN CLOUT.

What can it avail

To drive forth a snail,

Or to make a sail
Of an herring's tail?
To rhyme or to rail,
To write or to indite,
Either for delight
Or else for despite ;

Or books to compile

Of divers manner style, Vice to revile

And sin to exile,

To teach and to preach

As reason will reach?

10

20

1 Skelton proceeds to illustrate some courtesies of critics towards a book intended earnestly to do true service in its day. With such comments before the writer, what avails it, he says, that he should ask speed of the snail, or hope to reach the desired port when the common censures of men hoist for him no better sail than a herring's tail to help his good ship on her way. Two contemporaries of Skelton were the German Sebastian Brandt-who died in 1520, and who led the way in sixteenth century satire with his "Navis Stultifera," or "Narrenschiff," in Latin and German-and Alexander Barclay, who made of it a Ship of Fools" in English verse. The first fool in Brandt's collection is the sort of reader from whom narrow criticism comes, whom Pope called "the bookful blockhead ignorantly read," and whom I reproduce above as figured in Brandt's book. Such illustrations of the text as are drawn from "The Ship of Fools" are copied direct from the original Nuremberg edition of 1494. The illustrations to. Barclay are weak copies of them. Another of Skelton's contemporaries was the great scholar Erasmus, who, indeed, knew Skelton personally, and spoke of him as a light and ornament of British literature. Erasmus, when in England in 1509, wrote, not without some suggestion from Brandt's "Ship of Fools," a "Moria Encomium"-a Praise of Folly-with like purpose of help to society through satire. Hans Holbein, delighted with this book, adorned the margin of one copy of it with pen-and-ink sketches in illustration of passages that caught his fancy. He enriched the volume with eighty-three such sketches in ten days. The volume is now in the library at Basle. Where any of these sketches are used to illustrate the text they are taken from the best reproductions of them, those in C. Patin's edition of the "Moria Encomium," published at Basle in 1676.

3 Hag. First English "hæ'g-steald," a bachelor, youth, soldier, and prince; "hæghed," bachelorhood. So in the other passages where Skelton uses the word, not meaning what we now understand by it. "Ye cast all your courage upon such courtly hags;" and

"Thou canst not but brag

Like a Scottish hag."

Mr. Dyce, in his admirable edition of Skelton's "Poetical Works," published in 1843, gives the word up.

Thus each of other blother1
The tone against the tother.
Alas, they make me shudder!
For in hoder moder,

The church is put in faute;2
The prelates ben so haut,
They say, and look so high
As they would fly
Above the starry sky.
Lay men say, indeed.
How they take no heed
Their sely sheep to feed.
But pluck away and pull
The fleeces of their wool,
Unethes they leave a lock

Of wool amongst their flock;
And as for their conning,

A glomming and a mumming,
And make thereof a jape."

They gasp and they gape
All to have promotion,

There is their whole devotion,

With money, if it will hap,

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In their provincial cure
They make but little sure,
And meddle very light
In the Church's right;
But ire and venire

And sol-fa so a-la-mi-re,9

That the premunire

Is like to be set a-fire

In their jurisdictions

Through temporal afflictions; Men say they have prescriptions Against spiritual contradictions, Accounting them as fictions.

And while the heads do this,
The remenaunt is amiss
Of the clergy all

Both great and small.

I wot never how they wark,
But thus the people bark,
And surely thus they say:
Bishoppes if they may
Small houses would keep,
But slumber forth and sleep
And assay to creep

Within the noble walls
Of the kingés halls,

To fat their bodies full,
Their soulés lean and dull,
And have full little care
How evil their sheep fare.
The temporalitie say plain
How bishops disdain,

Thomas puts forth his hand to what is strong, he contemns losses, contemns insults; no wrong causes Thomas to break down. 5 Keke, kick.

To seck, wanting. So in Milton's "Comus: "

"I do not think my sister so to seek,
Or so unprincipled in Virtue's book."

7 As far as Mount Seir (named in Joshua xv. 10, as on the borders of Judah, "From Baalah westward unto Mount Seir ").

8Ye cannot appeire (French "pire," Latin "pejor "), become worse than you are. This is Mr. Dyce's reading of the lines

"For usque ad montem Sare

Ye cannot appare."

"GO YE ALSO INTO THE VINEYARD." (Holbein.)

And how when ye give orders

In your provincial borders,
As at Sitientes,15

Some are insufficientes,

16

Some parum sapientes,16

Some nihil intelligentes,17

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9 The hobby was a small hawk (only the merlin smaller), and was used in catching larks, because, through fear of it, they would not rise while the net was being drawn over them.

10"He that meddleth with all things may shoe the gosling." (Heywood.)

11 Simony.

12 Pranes, prawns.

13 Werynge, restriction, covenant. First English "we'ran " and "werian," to defend, check; "we'r," a caution, compact, pledge, covenant.

14 The crop of a hawk was called the gorge, and Dame Juliana Berners, in the "Book of St. Alban's" (quoted by Mr. Dyce), says "she enduyth when her meate in her bowelles falle to dygestyon."

15 Sitientes, ye who thirst. First word of the Introit of the mass for Passion Sunday. Sitientes Saturday was here, and is still abroad, the name for the day before Passion Sunday. (Dyce.)

16 Little wise.

17 Understanding nothing.

8 Ale stake. The old sign for an alehouse was a stake with a garland or bush of twigs at the end of it. Hence our saying that good wine needs no bush, because all take care to remember where they found it; and "hanging out the broom," which is a stake with twigs at the end of it, also has become a phrase for turning one's house into a place of public entertainment.

9 Hake and make, loiterer and mate or comrade. Hake, perhaps allied to the Dutch "hachelyk," German "häkelig," difficult, troublesome, against one's will. From the root "hage," which is hooked or crooked. In Scottish dialect "hashy" means slovenly, and "hash" or "hachal," a sloven.

10 Peaks, simpletons.

11 Apposed, questioned.

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Farly fit, strange song. First English "fæ'rlic," sudden, surprising. So in the opening of the vision of "Piers Plowman :' "Me befel a ferly, of fairy methought."

5 Old St. Paul's, of which various parts were in building during 224 years before its completion in 1312, had a tower and spire 534 feet high, with a ball on the top that could contain ten bushels of grain, and over the ball a cross that was fifteen feet high. In 1444 this spire was fired by lightning, and the damage thus caused was not fully repaired till 1462. The refitted spire was then surmounted with "a stately eagle weathercock of gilt copper," which the mocker from below, missing the ball and cross, could liken to a bright butterfly settled upon it.

6 Aquilonis, on the sides of the north. "Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north." (Isaiah xiv. 13.)

7 Prestes, forced payments of ready money in advance, and loans. In 1522 Wolsey levied a loan of a tenth on lay subjects, and a fourth on the clergy. In 1523 he got a subsidy from the clergy of half their year's revenue, and asked four shillings in the pound of the laity, getting half that sum.

8 Tayde, tied.

And the selfsame game

Begun is now with shame
Amongst the sely nuns:
My lady now she runs,

Dame Sybil our abbess,

Dame Dorothy and Lady Bess, Dame Sare our prioress,

Out of their cloister and

With an heavy cheer,

quere

13

Must cast up their black veils

And set up their fore sails

To catch wind with their ventales

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What, Colin, there thou shales!" 14 Yet thus with ill hails

The lay people rails.

And all the fault they lay

On you, prelates, and say

You do them wrong and no right To put them thus to flight;

No matins at midnight,

Book and chalice gone quite:

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It is used

9 Tenure by socage was on condition of fixed services. here for the play on words with service of sottage or folly. 10 Thomas Littleton, of a good Worcestershire family, became serjeant-at-law in 1455, a Justice of Common Pleas in 1466, a Knight of the Bath a few years later, died in 1481, and was buried in Worcester Cathedral. He compiled, perhaps when judge of Common Pleas, the famous book on Tenures, which was afterwards the subject of a commentary by Sir Edward Coke, who looked upon Littleton's "Tenures" as "the most perfect and absolute book that was ever written in any science."

11 Vagabondize through the market-place.

12 Against the rule of manners, or discipline, either of the bla monks or, &c. &c. 13 Quere, choir.

14 "I shayle as a man or horse dothe that gothe croked with his legges: Je vas eschays. A shayle with y knees togyther and tar (Palsgrave, 1530, quoted by Dyce.)

fete outwarde: A eschays."