John Skelton English poet, is variously asserted to have belonged to a Cumberland family and to have been a native of Diss in Norfolk. He is said to have been educated at Oxford. He certainly studied at Cambridge, and he is probably the "one Scheklton" mentioned as taking his M.A.degree in 1484. In 1490 Caxton writes of him, in the preface to The Boke of Eneydos compyled by Vargyle, in terms which prove that he had already won a reputation as a scholar. "But I pray mayster John Skelton," he says, "late created poete laureate in the unyversite of Oxenforde, to oversee and correct this sayd booke . . . for him I know for suffycyent to expowne and englysshe every dyffyculte that is therm. For he hath late translated the epystlys of Tulle, and the boke of dyodorus siculus, and diverse other works ... in polysshed and ornate termes craftely ... I suppose he hath drunken of Elycons well." The laureateship referred to was a degree in rhetoric. Skelton received in 1493 the same honour at Cambridge, and also, it is said, at Louvain. He found a patron in the pious and learned countess of Richmond, Henry VII's mother, for whom he wrote Of Mannes Lyfe the Peregrynacioun , a translation, now lost, of Guillaume de Deguilleyule's Pèlerinage de la vie humaine . An elegy "Of the death Of the noble prince Rynge Edwarde the forth," included in some of the editions of the | |
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