TAMIA, or WIT'S TREASURY, published in 1598. «Skelton applied his wit to skurilities and ridiculous matters: fuch among the Greekes were called pantomimi, with us buffoons"." Skelton's characteristic vein of humour is capricious and grotefque. If his whimsical extravagancies ever move our laughter, at the fame time they fhock our fenfibility. His feftive levities are not only vulgar and indelicate, but frequently want truth and propriety.. His fubjects are often as ridiculous as his metre: but he fometimes debafes his matter by his verfification. On the whole, his genius feems better fuited to low burlefque, than to liberal and manly fatire. It is fuppofed by Caxton, that he improved our language; but he fometimes affects obfcurity, and fometimes adopts the most familiar phrafeology of the common people.

He thus defcribes, in the BOKE OF COLIN CLOUTE, the pompous houses of the clergy.

of which is this. Gefippus, falling into
poverty, thought himself defpised by Titus ;
and thence growing weary of life, gave out
that he was guilty of a murther just com-
mitted. But Titus knowing the true state
of the cafe, and defiring to fave the life of
his friend by lofing his own, charged him-
felf with the murther: at which the real
murtherer, who flood among the croud at
the trial, was fo ftruck, that he confeffed
the fact. All three are faved; and Titus,
to repair the broken fortunes of Gefippus,
gives him his fifter in marriage, with an
ample dower. Bocc. DECAM. Nov. viii.
GIORN. X. This is a frequent example of
confummate friendship in our old poets.
In the FAERIE QUEENE, they are placed
in the temple of Venus among the cele-
brated Platonic friends of antiquity, B. iv.
c. x. ft. 27.

Myld Titus and Gefippus without pryde.
See alfo SONGES and SONNETTS written
by E. G. At the end of lord Surrey's
Works, fol. 114.

Building royally

Their mancyons, curiously

With turrettes, and with toures,
With halles, and with boures,
Streching to the starres;

With glaffe windowes and barres :
Hangyng about the walles
Clothes of golde and palles ;

Arras of ryche arraye,

Freshe as floures in Maye:

With dame Dyana naked;
Howe lyftye Venus quaked,
And howe Cupide shaked
His darte, and bente his bowe,
For to fhote a crowe

At her tyrly tyrlowe :
And how Paris of Troye
Daunced a lege de

moy,

Made luftye fporte and toye
With dame Helyn the queene:
With fuche storyes by deen',
Their chambres wel be feene.
With triumphes of Cefar, &c.-
Now all the world ftares

How they ryde in goodly chares,
Conveyed by olyphantes.
With lauriat garlantes;

And by unycornes

With their femely hornes;

Upon these beastes riding

Naked boyes ftriding,

With wanton wenches winkyng.

⚫ By the dozen.

• This is still a description of tapestry.

For

4

For prelates of estate

Their courage to abate;

From wordly wantonnes,'

Their chambers thus to dres

With fuch parfytness,
And all fuch holynes,

How beit they lett down fall

Their churches cathedrall '.

These lines are in the best manner of his petty measure: which is made still more disgusting by the repetition of the rhymes. We should observe, that the fatire is here pointed at the subject of these tapestries. The graver ecclefiaftics, who did not follow the levities of the world, were contented with religious fubjects, or fuch as were merely historical. Roffe of Warwick, who wrote about the year 1460, relates, that he saw in the abbat's hall at faint Alban's abbey a suite of arras, containing a long train of incidents belonging to a most romantic and pathetic ftory in the life of the Saxon king Offa, which that historian recites at large ".

The Boke of Colin Cloute, p. 205. feq. " J. Roff. WARWIC. HIST. REG. ANGL. edit. Hearne, p. 64. Hugh de Foliot, a canon regular of Picardy, fo early as the year 1140, cenfures] the magnificent houfes of the bifhops, with the fumptuous paintings, or tapestry, of their chambers, chiefly on the Trojan ftory." Epifcopi "domos non impares ecclefiis magnitudine "conftruunt. Pictos delectantur habere "thalamos veftiuntur ibi imagines pre"tiofis colorum indumentis. Trojano"c rum geftis paries, purpura atque auro << veftitur. Græcorum exercitui dantur arma. Hectori clypeus datur auro fplen"dens, &c. Bibl. Bodl. MSS. JAMES. ii. p. 203. But I believe the tract is publifhed in the Works of a cotemporary writer, Hugo de Sancto-Victore. Among the manufcript EPISTLES of Gilbert de Stone, a canon of Wells, and who flourished about the year 1360, there is a curious paffage

In the poem, WHY COME YE NOT TO THE COURT, he thus fatirifes cardinal Wolfey, not without fome tincture of humour.

"Is not my reason good?

"Good! —even good-Robin-hood!-

Borne up on every syde

With pompe and with pryde,

With trump up alleluya ',
For dame Philargyria*

Hath so his hart in hold, &c.

Adew Philofophia!

Adew Theologia!

Welcome dame Simonia",

With dame Caftimergia,
To drynke and for to eate
Swete ipocras, and swete meate':

MARGIE Libera nos domine!" LAT. GLOSS. i. p. 398. Carpentier adds, among other examples, from the statutes of the Ciftercian order, 1375," Item, cum

propter deteftabile CASTRIMARGIE "vitium in labyrinthum vitiorum defcen"datur, &c." SUPPL. tom. i. p. 862.

I have before spoken of Hypecras, or fpiced wine. I add here, that the fpice, for this mixture, was ferved, often feparately, in what they called a Spice-plate. So Froiffart, defcribing a din ner in the caftle of Thoulouse, at which the king of France was prefent. "After "dyner, they toke other paftymes in a "great chambre, and hereyng of inftru

ments, wherein the erle of Foiz greatly delyted. Than WINE and SPYCES was brought. The erle of Harcourt served "the kyng of his SPYCE-PLATE. And

46

"fir Gerard de la Pyen ferved the duke " of Burbone. And fir Monaunt of No✶ "ailles ferved the erle of Foiz, &c." This was about the year 1360. CHRON. tom. ii. cap. 164. f. 184. a. Again, ibid. cap. 100. f. 114. a. "The kynge alyght"ed at his palis [of Westminster] whiche "was redie apparelled for him. There "the kynge DRANKE and TOKE SPYCES, "and his uncles alfo: and other prelates, "lordes, and knyghtes." Lord Berners's TRANSL. In the Computus of Maxtoke priory [MS. fupr. citat.] an. 1447, we have this entry, "Item pro vino cretico cum

fpeciebus et confectis datis diverfis generofis in die fancti Dionyfii quando "Le fole domini Monfordes erat hic, et "faceret jocofitates fuas in camera orioli." Here, I believe, vinum creticum is raifinwine, or wine made of dried grapes; and the meaning of the whole feems to be this. "Paid for raifin wine with comfits and "fpices, when fir S. Montford's FOOL was "here, and exhibited his merriments in "the oriel-chamber." With regard to one part of the entry, we have again, "Item, extra cameram vocatam le geftis "chamber, erat una lintheamina furata in "die fancti Georgii Martiris quando les fole de MON FOR DES erat hic."

To